Nationals Senate leader Nigel Scullion is latest to back same-sex marriage
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Version 0 of 1. The leader of the National party in the Senate, Nigel Scullion, National MP Kevin Hogan and the Motoring Enthusiast senator, Ricky Muir, are the latest parliamentarians to reveal their support for marriage reform. Liberal MP Warren Entsch confirmed he is moving ahead with his bill for marriage equality in spite of reports that Tony Abbott has made it known to colleagues that he did not see the need for a vote before the next election. “Nothing has changed, I’m in the process of preparing a bill and getting it signed off by co-sponsors,” Entsch told Guardian Australia on Thursday. “I have many more than I need and I will be bringing it to the party room in the spring.” There is growing support for a conscience vote on marriage reform, though there are a number of parliamentarians who support a plebiscite. Scullion, a Country Liberal senator for the Northern Territory, said that while he has not seen any legislation on same sex marriage yet, he supported the right of “two consenting adults” to get married. He was asked on the ABC if he believed in a “gender neutral … two adults consenting having the right to get married”. Scullion replied: “That is my view but you shouldn’t confuse my view with how I vote on a piece of legislation I haven’t thus seen. “Yes I think it is something that should be a conscience vote, that’s my view.” Kevin Hogan, the National MP for Page, on the north NSW coast, said he was comfortable with a bill supporting same sex marriage as long as the churches were legally protected from any action if they refused to marry same-sex couples.. “If those protections are there, I am much more comfortable to support a bill allowing same-sex marriage in a registered office and or a park but not a church,” Hogan said. “If the churches are legislatively and legally protected from not having to marry them, yes”. Hogan immediately won support in an online poll in his local newspaper, the Northern Star, with a majority of more than 72% agreeing with his stance. Scullion and Hogan follow Victorian MP for Gippsland, Darren Chester, in declaring their support as part of the 21 MPs and senators in the parliament who sit in the Nationals party room, which include Nationals, Queensland Liberal Nationals and Country Liberals. The majority of the party room remain committed to the traditional marriage definition, including Queensland LNP senator Matt Canavan, who said the party had always considered marriage between man and a woman. “I don’t think we should be redefining something that’s existed for generations, something that people have been married under that definition and will want to in the future as well,” Canavan told AM. “There needs to be a party that represents the traditional values of our community, our members certainly want us to represent those traditional values, and I think we will continue to do that going forward.” Australian Motoring Enthusiast party senator Ricky Muir declared his support ahead of speaking at a mental health forum in regional Victoria. “There’s two questions there: acceptance, whether we’re accepting of people who may live life differently than us, and a link with marriage equality, actually,” he told the ABC. “I would like to think into the future would be a step in the right direction of actually encouraging the conversation around acceptance.” |