She said it was still possible to achieve marriage equality by Christmas, but said if it didn’t happen, Labor would certainly achieve it within the first 100 days of its next government.
Advertisement
Mr Shorten said he was not afraid of a coalition “carbon tax” scare campaign, which damaged Labor in 2010 and defeated it in 2013.
Inside the exhibition centre, delegates were quick to show their outrage over the party’s immigration policy backflip but warmed to the rest of leader Bill Shorten’s address on everything from climate change to same-sex marriage.
Addressing the “elephant in the room”, Mr Shorten said the ALP leadership’s new immigration policy of turning back boats was part of the party’s “humane” answer to border protection.
Australia’s opposition leader Bill Shorten endorsed Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s hard-line anti-asylum seeker policy Wednesday – a policy broadly condemned internationally as mired with human rights abuses.
Matthew was also upset by the method with which the vote was decided, which he says had “no accountability”: “there was no official count, just a which-side-yelled-‘aye’-or-‘no’-the-loudest” situation.
In an opinion piece, Shorten has warned that a binding vote on same-sex marriage would place “a handful of Labor MPs” in a very hard position. Moreover, according to the Skynews, Shorten advocated for the preselection of the indigenous people and women as Labor candidates at the conference.
“Either they vote against their conscience – or they vote against the party they’ve dedicated their working life to serving”, he writes.
An amendment moved by Victorian left-faction MP Andrew Giles that would prohibit Labor from supporting turnbacks in future asylum seeker policy was defeated.
“We can build an economy where growth is strong, where prosperity is shared and opportunity belongs to everyone”, he said, adding that Labor would deliver tax reform without changing the GST.
Mr Shorten also acknowledged those within his own party who did not support changing the law.
“What we have is more displaced people, more refugees than the world has ever seen”, he said.
Advertisement
If the preselection changes are approved, the say of rank and file party members would increase from 50 per cent to 70 per cent in Victoria and from 25 per cent to 45 per cent in South Australia.
