Australia, we’re being screwed over. We’re being used as a pawn in someone’s petty game of internal politics… so why aren’t we pissed off?

For a man who bleats about responsible spending and living within your means, Malcolm Turnbull is strangely content with wasting $160 million of our money on a pointless same-sex marriage plebiscite.

It’s a sizeable chunk of change that could be far better spent. Here are just a few ways:

- We could fully fund the uni fees of almost 6000 nursing students, helping them to get a three-year degree.

- It would pay for a full year’s childcare rebate for 21,333 families.

- It would also fund 4.3 million bulk-billed GP visits for sick Australians.

- We could put that money into cancer research, scientific innovation programs, affordable housing, new kindergartens or employment retraining for mining sector workers who’ve lost their jobs because of the downturn.

The list is endless. Just think about the areas of your life that you struggle with — the cost of your kids’ education, trying to afford a home, healthcare costs, making ends meet... that’s what we could use that sort of money to help address.

Here are some facts about the same-sex marriage plebiscite that Prime Minister Turnbull and the Coalition are desperate for us to have:

- It’s non-binding. Turnbull admitted last week that his MPs can vote however they like, regardless of the outcome of a public say, making the whole thing a huge waste of time.

- Secondly, the campaign leading up to the plebiscite will be one of the ugliest and most divisive things we’ll see in a long while. The “No” camp is already famed for its vile tactics, whether it’s comparing gays and lesbians to paedophiles, using suicide imagery or putting marriage equality on the same par as the holocaust. Imagine how much worse that’s going to get.

- And finally, the cost of staging a plebiscite will be huge. It’s at least $160 million for the basic function of it all, but experts warn the true cost could be more than double that in lost productivity and mental health impacts.

So, we’ve got a public vote that may not mean anything, carried out in an ugly and damaging fashion, for a huge sum of money with longer term detrimental impacts, at a time when education and health are suffering severe cuts.

media_camera Senator Glenn Lazarus speaks at a same-sex marriage rally in Brisbane. (Pic: AAP/Sarah Motherwell)

What’s the point then? Well, that’s the most insulting part of this shameful plan.

Turnbull is passing the buck — our buck, one-hundred-and-sixty-million of them to be exact — because he doesn’t want to do his job, because this awful strategy appeases the far right factions in his party, all because he’s just a bit too wimpy to stump up and show some leadership.

The Coalition, for all their economic grandstanding, will gleefully shell out a small fortune when this matter could be resolved quite quickly in the fashion that all other matters are. In the Parliament, with a vote.

After all, that’s literally the sole purpose of all those elected folks who fill that beautiful building in Canberra — to get stuff done.

Maybe we should just make it easy on them and have plebiscites on everything. Let’s have a plebiscite on negative gearing or health spending.

Let’s definitely have one on Parliamentary expenditure entitlements, and political pensions.

Heck, let’s have one on sacking the lot of them and replacing the whole damn system with a coin toss instead. If it’s heads, we raise the minimum wage. If it’s tails, your teenage kid gets a bit more money for working on a Sunday.

Easy. I’ve even got a banged up 20 cent piece here that I reckon makes a pretty polished potential leader.

Shannon Molloy is a National TV Writer for News Corp Australia.