The group of parliamentarians who have worked tirelessly to force same-sex marriage on to the political agenda are now elated, exhausted and nervous.



While the socially progressive forces in the federal parliament, across the main parties and the crossbench, appear to have the numbers to get gay marriage legalised without major diversions if everyone holds their nerve, the struggle to get this far has been protracted and arduous.

You can understand the nervousness. This won’t be done until it’s done.

On the plus side, conservatives seem to have inched back since the historic yes vote. You really would hope so, given they were rebuked by a majority of the Australian people and, worse, by their own supporters, with 71 out of 76 Coalition-held electorates voting yes in the postal survey.

The conservatives who matter are signalling that protections for religious freedom could be considered separately from the process of legalising same-sex marriage, in the new year, which is a substantial advance (if you can put aside the irony of a bunch of rightwingers now arguing forcefully for a mini bill of rights).

Dastyari: high number of no votes in Labor seats shows ‘huge disconnect’ Read more

The Liberal senator Dean Smith has guided his marriage equality bill safely towards parliament, and debate is already under way.

All reasons to be cheerful.

On the nail-biting side, federal parliament is now in recess for the week. At the end of the coming week, Queenslanders will go to the polls. If One Nation performs well in that poll, the predictable bobble heads will be off again, thundering portentously about smug liberal elites, conservative disaffection and silent majorities – which, oddly, are 1) minorities if facts count for anything, and 2) never that silent.

The problem with faux everyman, front-bar punditry is it tends to enliven some show ponies in the House of Representatives and the Senate, emboldening folks who don’t mind a bit of dressage.

Posturing during the same-sex marriage debate would be dull, self-indulgent and deeply annoying, but entirely manageable. But coalitions of convenience forming around particular amendments are another story.

After the yes vote, I asked Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, what she was most worried about over the next few weeks, and it was that issue: conservative consensus forming around amendments with the capacity to sink the cross-party consensus required to turn the yes vote into legislated reality.

So what’s the state of play, as of now?

Conservatives (apart from the diehards) do not seem to be openly championing measures allowing businesses to discriminate against their customers if those customers are gay, and have the temerity to want to get married, and have some catering done. But they are still talking about protecting parents from “the Safe Schools movement” (apparently unconcerned by a passing observation, let’s call it a hint, this week by the education minister, Simon Birmingham, that legislative interventions in this area may be unconstitutional).

Some will also run the religious freedom gauntlet during this legislative debate, regardless of Peter Dutton’s publicly expressed inclination to settle such matters through a separate process.

Some government naysayers are hopeful of forming coalitions of convenience with Labor people opposed to marriage equality to swell the dissident ranks.

This is our busted politics, so I’ve come to accept that pretty much anything can happen, and very often does, but I suspect the internal consequences for Labor people working in concert with people who want to obstruct this week’s yes vote by attempting to destroy the cross-party consensus would be swift and severe.

In any case, touch wood, throw salt over your shoulder, put on your lucky socks – whatever your superstition of choice – because we are now rolling towards some kind of resolution on same-sex marriage.

As well as just getting on with a vote that should have happened some time ago, our parliamentarians could do worse than absorb the messages from the hard data associated with the postal survey.

Of the 17 no-voting electorates in the postal survey, 12 were in western Sydney, with nine held by Labor MPs.

Labor people didn’t learn much new from the data showing resistance to marriage equality in western Sydney – that’s part of the reason Labor has struggled internally for the best part of a decade to adopt an anti-discrimination policy, which should have been a default for a progressive political party.

The resistance to change in Labor came from the vestige of Catholic rightwing influence (historically, a major force in the party, but now waning); from orthodox Christian religions featuring among more contemporary arrivals, as well as Muslims and Chinese voters; and from the blue-collar base.

Labor knows it faces a constant juggling act between core supporters who are socially conservative, sometimes for ethnic or religious reasons, sometimes because of class background or educational attainment, and urban progressive types.

But stocktakes and reminders are helpful in focusing minds.

Then there is that metric that 71 out of 76 Coalition-held electorates voted yes, a positive trend that can be seen right across the country, in regional and urban areas.

Full results of Australia's vote for same-sex marriage, electorate by electorate – interactive Read more

The contrast with our combative and zero sum politics could not be starker.

In centre right politics in Canberra, the conservatives strut and fret on the national affairs stage, aided and abetted by reactionary voices in the media – playing every point, asserting a tribalism and a default sense of entitlement that ranges from mildly irritating to downright overweening.

Conservatives in the current era have attempted a hostile takeover of a Liberal party. Moderates are painfully aware of the phenomenon.

While these bovver boy antics might please the power brokers and the preselectors, the truth is the strategy hasn’t gone so well. Tony Abbott, who veered hard right, was a political disaster, and would have cost the Coalition government had they not replaced him. That is just a simple fact.

It’s perhaps fitting that the postal survey the implacable right wingers foisted on the LGBTI community as a delaying tactic has dished up hard data suggesting that their voice in Canberra, and their internal sway, is oversized, and out of step with the national mood.

From the day before the survey result was reported, Malcolm Turnbull seems to have found his moderate Malcolm voice all of a sudden, lining up assertively with the zeitgeist rather than setting up for a new special session of concession, diplomacy or apologia with his right flank.

The Turnbull who replaced Abbott in 2015 has been largely missing in action throughout his prime ministership, at least in public.

You never know. Perhaps he will show up now.