02:08

It appears increasingly unlikely the court will hand down its decision today. Court is set to adjourn at 4.15pm. Senior counsel for the plaintiffs, Kate Richardson, is currently rebutting some of the arguments put forward by government barrister Stephen Donaghue today. You can read a summary of those arguments here.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t make some guesses of what might happen based on how things unfolded over the past couple of days.

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs faced much more rigorous questioning from the bench. The judges seemed unconvinced by the argument that collecting opinions on same-sex marriage was any different to historical surveys that asked Australians for opinions on what Australia should look like as a nation.

Kathleen Foley, junior counsel for Wilkie, PFlag, and Felicity Marlowe, responded that those past surveys never asked Australians about their personal beliefs, prompting discussion whether opinion could be considered a statistic.

Donaghue faced less questioning when he outlined the government’s case on Wednesday. This doesn’t necessarily mean the court is convinced, but suggests that they had fewer issues with his argument that the postal survey was both unforeseen and urgent, and therefore the $122m allocated by the government outside of the budget towards the survey was necessary.

It’s safe to assume the Australian Bureau of Statistics would be confidently unpacking their envelopes and preparing to head to the post office.