The emphatic ‘yes’ result in the same-sex marriage postal survey should have been Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s crowning moment.
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Instead, it may portend his undoing.
Turnbull, the Liberal Party’s most prominent ‘wet’, had been relatively vocal about his support for the ‘yes’ campaign.
And the ‘drys’ were perfectly happy for the postal survey to go ahead, after two years of jostling with their moderate rivals over the idea of a plebiscite.
But with the 62 per cent ‘yes’ result, the conservative wing of the party appears to have lost this latest skirmish in Australia’s culture wars.
Cue the calls for religious protections to be enshrined in the same-sex marriage legislation, currently before the Senate.
The Prime Minister assures Australians that marriage equality will be delivered to the country before the year is out.
It may be, however, that he is left to foot the bill for this exy Christmas present.
The keys to the Lodge would fetch a good price.
It’s no coincidence that fresh discontent in the Coalition’s ranks was fomented in the wake of the postal survey result.
First we had the anonymous Coalition MP telling News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt he would defect to the crossbench if the Prime Minister didn’t relinquish the leadership by the end of December.
Then the so-called Cabinet leaker threw a spanner of their own into the works.
Reports in the Daily Telegraph this week revealed that Cabinet was considering a retreat from its staunch opposition to a potential royal commission into the banks.
The leak came as speculation mounted around Foreign Minister and acting Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop’s possible leadership ambitions.
Bishop appeared on ABC’s 7:30 on Thursday night, flatly denying any involvement in the Cabinet leak.
“Leaking from cabinet is a serious criminal offence,” she told host Leigh Sales.
This is all playing out against the backdrop of the ongoing citizenship crisis dogging the federal parliament.
The Coalition is governing in minority as a result of this debacle, with Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce having to recontest his seat in a by-election because he held New Zealand citizenship.
Joyce is widely favoured to take back New England, but, in the meantime, the government is down a man.
Liberal MP John Alexander, who quit the parliament due to concerns around his citizenship, will also go to a by-election in a bid to take Bennelong once more.
If he falls to high-profile Labor candidate Kristina Keneally (formerly the New South Wales Premier), the Coalition will have to get used to minority government.
It’s the postal survey, though, that could sound the death knell for Turnbull.
Not only did it fail to curry favour with progressive voters – the two-month campaign exerted an undeniable mental strain on LGBTQI Australians – it also seems to have sowed further disquiet within his own party.
Turnbull thought he was placating the wets and drys alike with the survey.
It didn’t quite work out that way.
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne was filmed earlier in the year telling moderate colleagues they were in the “winner’s circle” and would deliver marriage equality “sooner than everyone thinks”.
His comments are looking more and more like hubris by the day.