Education minister says there is ‘no legal basis for a referendum’ as Coalition remains visibly divided on the issue following joint partyroom meeting

Christopher Pyne has followed his frontbench colleague George Brandis in publicly shooting down a referendum on same-sex marriage, as divisions within the Coalition on the issue deepen.

The leader of the house appeared on Channel Nine on Friday morning, saying a referendum – traditionally used to change elements of the constitution – on same-sex marriage was unnecessary.

“We have decided to put it to the people. Obviously that should be done through a plebiscite, because there is absolutely no reason to change the constitution. The attorney general [Brandis] has made that entirely clear,” Pyne said. “A referendum would cost a great deal of money, in fact only to achieve no outcome because there is no legal basis for a referendum.”

The Coalition decided, after a marathon six-hour meeting on Tuesday, to reject a free vote on same-sex marriage. The prime minister, Tony Abbott, said afterwards the Coalition would take the issue to the people in the form of a plebiscite or a referendum.

But the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, told reporters on Friday that nothing has been settled.

“As far as consulting the public through a plebiscite, that’s not yet determined. The mechanism’s not yet determined, the timing of it is not yet determined,” he said.



The social services minister, Scott Morrison, on Wednesday night backed a referendum.

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The threshold to pass a referendum is high, as it requires a majority of people in a majority of states to agree with a proposal. As a result, few referendums have been carried.

“When you have a referendum, there is an opportunity for both sides of this debate to be fairly put to the Australian people, for all of the issues to be fully considered and presented I think in an even-handed way,” Morrison, an opponent of same-sex marriage, told ABC TV’s 7.30 program on Wednesday. “I don’t think we’ve been having a very even-handed debate on this issue.”



Morrison was slapped down by Brandis, himself a lawyer, who said there is “no legal doubt” that changing the constitution to allow same-sex marriage was unnecessary.

“I can’t imagine that there will be a referendum on this question,” he said during Senate question time on Thursday. “If there were a public vote, it clearly would be a plebiscite.”

Turnbull has also shot down the idea of a referendum, saying that a plebiscite, on the other hand, is “something that can be done”.

Despite the public spats, Pyne has denied that a schism has formed in the leadership team of the Liberal party.

“The prime minister and I are tight as a drum,” Pyne said.

Pyne acknowledged that he lobbied for the Liberal party and National party to hold separate party room meetings to decide on the free vote, after news emerged that he had personally intervened and asked the Nationals leader, Warren Truss, not to bring his party to Tuesday’s joint meeting.

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“My first preference is that this matter should be dealt with by the parliament, through a free vote. And the Liberal party should have had the chance to discuss that on its own,” Pyne said. “Whether we then had a subsequent joint party meeting with the National party – of course we would have.”

Pyne had been critical of the prime minister for including the Nationals in the vote, accusing him of “branch-stacking” by using the Nationals to bolster the “no” vote.

“Mr Pyne doesn’t run the show, Mr Abbott does,” Nationals MP George Christensen said.

“The Nationals have a right to be in the party room, and if we’ve got ministers in there saying we don’t want Nationals there when decisions are being made, boy oh boy, isn’t it going to be tricky for them if they take a different point of view in every policy? It was only right and appropriate and fair that Nationals were in the party room,” he told reporters on Thursday night.

Labor has accused the Coalition of dysfunction.

“It’s a tragedy in my view that the Liberal party of Robert Menzies set up on the basis of individualism has resorted to basically rorting their own party room processes as Christopher very correctly nailed the prime minister on just this week,” infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese told Channel Nine. “The problem here isn’t that Tony Abbott is stuck in the past, it’s that he wants the rest of Australia to go back there and keep him company.”