Having bombed in the public survey they so loudly demanded, Coalition reactionaries have hit upon a play that shows contempt for their leader and looms as the most brazen betrayal of voter sentiment in a century.

Not since the hawkish prime minister Billy Hughes unsuccessfully foisted two consecutive conscription plebiscites on the Australian people - the second of which was 100 years ago next month - has a mainstream political party schemed to affect such an immediate repudiation of the will of the people, once sought.

Backers of an alternative marriage bill under the name of the hardline Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson (who has actually voted 'yes' in the postal survey) display a triple contempt for the Australian people, for liberalism, and for the already tarnished prestige of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull - tarnished, in large measure, because he had forsaken his own preference for change, in order to accommodate them.

Indeed, Turnbull suffered incalculable brand damage for adopting Tony Abbott's plebiscite process, which was viewed by many Australians as a betrayal in itself.