Charlie Pickering Destroyed Tony Abbott’s Opposition To Marriage Equality Last Night On ‘The Weekly’
"We have four different codes of men competitively hugging each other. We wildcarded ourselves into Eurovision. We're the gayest country on Earth."
On Monday, Bill Shorten took a break from his very important parliamentary schedule of making dank memes and dad jokes to announce himself as the first major Australian party leader to move a bill for marriage equality. It was both an enormous landmark for the issue itself, and the first sign that our Opposition Leader is not just a confused tourist who was elected accidentally when he wandered into the wrong room.
tfw you’re posing for a Parliamentary security pass but you just left the house to get yoghurt.
But despite the widespread celebration of the proposed bill — as well as the support it’s getting from prominent Labor members and all of the Greens — it’s far from being a done deal. For any meaningful change to go ahead, the Prime Minister would have to allow a free vote on the issue; and he’s not feeling any rush to cave in to everyone’s demands.
“If our parliament were to make a big decision on a matter such as this it ought to be owned by the parliament and no particular party,” he said on Tuesday. Then, in appeasement, he hinted that he may allow a conscience vote in the Liberal party at some point in the future, raising the possibility of cross-party collaboration on a new private member’s bill. This could be sometime in August. Maybe later. But definitely not this week, as Bill (and 72 percent of the country) might have hoped.
Of course, this isn’t all bad news.
“The way forward on marriage equality is for supporters to work across party lines, so we welcome the Prime Minister giving the green light to cross-party co-operation,” said Rodney Croome, the national director of Australian Marriage Equality, in a media release this morning.
It’s not important how we get to this thing; the only thing that matters is that we do eventually get there. “A pre-condition for cross-party co-operation is a Coalition free vote,” Croome continued. “So we ask the Prime Minister to move for one as soon as possible.”
To really drive this message home, on last night’s episode of The Weekly Charlie Pickering gave ol’ Tone about 500 more reasons to get things moving. “We have four different codes of men competitively hugging each other [and] we wildcarded ourselves into Eurovision,” he said. “We’re the gayest country on Earth.”
Also, the PM’s decision to push this crucial civil rights issue back in order to focus on propping up small businesses can be defeated in just two words: Gay. Weddings.
Because it really is what the people want, here’s another dog in a tuxedo:
