Bill Shorten to introduce private members bill to legalise same-sex marriage

Updated

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has confirmed Labor will move a bill to legalise same-sex marriage next week.

The move follows an announcement by the Greens that their Marriage Equality Bill would be brought on for debate in the Senate on June 18 with a view to vote on November 12.

In a statement, Mr Shorten said the time had come for Parliament to debate marriage equality and that he found it unacceptable current laws excluded some individuals.

The bill will come before the House of Representatives on Monday.

"I know this private members bill will not have the universal support of my colleagues," Mr Shorten said.

"It will challenge the deeply held personal beliefs of MPs and senators on both sides of politics.

"This is why Labor members have the freedom to vote their conscience, a freedom Tony Abbott is currently denying his party."

Even with a conscience vote in the Labor Party, Mr Shorten does not have the numbers to pass his bill.

Rather he is using it to urge the Prime Minister to grant a conscience vote to his MPs, something the Coalition already appears to be edging towards.

In recent days, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull described Australia as the "odd one out" on same-sex marriage among Commonwealth nations including the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada.

Renewed debate in Australia has been triggered by Ireland's vote in favour of marriage equality in a referendum at the weekend.

"The world isn't waiting for Tony Abbott and our Parliament shouldn't have to," Mr Shorten said.

"I know there are Coalition MPs who'd support marriage equality if Tony Abbott granted them a free vote."

Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos said the Coalition had been waiting to see how the Labor Party would move on the matter.

"I know some of my colleagues, like Warren Entsch and others, want to raise the issue and have talked about having game plans on this," he said.

"So we'll wait until next week, but certainly I would support a conscience vote on this."

Labor MPs not bound to support bill: Plibersek

Labor has granted MPs a conscience vote on marriage equality, however deputy leader Tanya Plibersek has pushed for a binding vote in favour of the issue.

In an interview on 7:30, Ms Plibersek was asked if all Labor MPs would be bound to support the bill, or if it would be subject to a conscience vote so that some could dissent.

"It will be a free vote," she said.

"We decided at our last national conference that while the Labor Party position was to support ... equality, that there would be a free vote for Labor MPs and the question, of course, is will there also be a free vote for Liberal MPs?

"We've had quite a few Liberals this week saying that Tony Abbott should allow their side of politics a free vote also."

Ms Plibersek was questioned why Labor was acting now rather than when they were in government.

She said there was now greater community support for the change.

"We changed 85 laws at the time, removed every piece of legal discrimination against gay men, lesbians and same-sex couples on the statute books," Ms Plibersek said.

"This is a piece of unfinished business and both Bill Shorten and I were supporters of marriage equality in the past.

"We have the opportunity now as the leader and deputy to move this bill."

Topics: marriage, lgbt, human-interest, community-and-society, federal-parliament, federal-government, bill-shorten, australia

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