The move towards legalisation of same sex marriage is proceeding in small steps in Australia at the moment. Some of those steps are taking place within political parties among backbenchers and their leaders. Within the federal Liberals the matter is stuck on whether or not the leader will allow conscience voting, the ultimate freedom for an MP, on any bill that comes before the parliament. This is very much Captain's Pick territory.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
So it is surprising that this matter hasn't arisen in the controversy about whether or not Prime Minister Tony Abbott is a changed man following his near-death experience with the unsuccessful spill motion brought on in the Liberal party room two weeks ago. A conscience vote would be a welcome gesture to the backbench.
Among the small steps are those taking place among individual MPs. I don't know whether any choreographing of these steps is taking place behind the scenes, but I am assuming that personal reflection is involved.
Earlier this month the new NSW Labor Opposition Leader, Luke Foley, after earlier signalling that he was having a rethink on the issue, announced that he now supports a change to the federal Marriage Act to allow for same sex marriage. He had previously voted against same sex marriage in the NSW Legislative Council.
Last weekend, Western Australian Liberal Senator Dean Smith did the same thing in a featured "at lunch with" interview with the Australian Financial Review. He too had not supported the idea in the past.
Foley and Smith are are both socially conservative Christians on the right of their respective parties, but otherwise there are many differences, including jurisdiction and party. Foley is Catholic and Smith is Protestant. Foley is heterosexual and Smith is gay. They came to their respective personal decisions via different routes and in different circumstances.
Foley is leading Labor into the March NSW elections and must have taken electoral considerations and strategic advice into account. As a party leader this couldn't have been a random spur of the moment decision.
Smith is a little-known backbencher with extensive conservative credentials. But, as he explained to his interviewer, it was the brave role of the murdered cafe manager Tori Johnson in the Lindt cafe siege last December that caused him to change his mind. Johnson was a gay man in a lifelong relationship whose right to marry was being impeded by Australian law. This impressed Smith who is single but has gay friends considering the same sex marriage issue.
Foley and Smith are just the sort of conservative politicians who may be exemplars of the social change necessary for same sex marriage to proceed. They are both cautious about the politics. Foley says he doesn't seek to be a leader on this issue, but while he is a leader he cannot escape leading by example. Smith seems not to be calling for an immediate conscience vote, but only one when such a vote has a chance to succeed. His advocacy wasn't even headlined in his interview.
So are they genuine harbingers of change or are change advocates just clutching at straws by making too much of these two developments? International events suggest that it is more likely to be the former.
Australia is becoming more and more isolated in the Western world as far as same sex marriage is concerned. Over the past few years many countries in what Australia would regard as its "Anglo-Celtic" family of nations, including Britain, New Zealand, Scotland and Canada, as well as many European nations, have introduced same sex marriage legislation. So have many American states and the US Supreme Court seems likely to finally sweep aside anti-same sex marriage laws at the state level.
All of this change could be ignored by Australian legislators if it were not for the question of the local status of same sex marriages for Australians validly performed overseas, a matter addressed by Associate Professor Paula Gerber of Monash University Law School in a July 2014 paper. Closer to home there is also the question of same sex marriages performed on the grounds of foreign embassies, high commissions and consulates in Australia. Given the location of these embassies and high commissions in the national capital it is not surprising that there is publicity for such ceremonies in Canberra, though they are also happening in the bigger cities too.
Such ceremonies have been allowed by the Australian government since last March if one of the couple has the required dual citizenship and there are no impediments to the marriage, though such marriages are still not recognised in Australia. The Gillard Labor government had even refused to take this step in 2010 when requested to do so by Portugal.
Such recognition, described by Gerber as another "baby step", may be the next logical step taken along the road to same sex marriage in Australia. It would be open to Abbott to signal such a step as part of a new, more open persona. But once this step was taken and once the number of dual citizen, same sex married Australians and their partners grew to a noticeable number in the community the status quo would seem likely to be unsustainable.
This is the dilemma that opponents of same sex marriage, such as the Prime Minister, face. Same sex marriage is creeping into Australia, under international pressure, in small steps. Nothing is inevitable and social change can be reversed. But it certainly looks likely that the direction will continue even if the pace in Australia is still unclear.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University
