When will Germany and Australia legalize gay marriage?

[Mr. Morden]

The Labor Party has officially supported SSM but promised a conscious vote to its members since the 2011 federal party conference.

I'd love to see how the vote would turn out if they were unconscious.

[Barnes]

The Labor Party has officially supported SSM but promised a conscious vote to its members since the 2011 federal party conference.

I'd love to see how the vote would turn out if they were unconscious.

Hahaha!

[DavidB.]

What groups in Labour are against this? Why is this still an issue within Labour?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The more Catholic-aligned unions. The Shop Union is notorious for its social conservatism, as anybody who remembers the half-senate by-election disaster last year will attest to.

[Famous Mortimer]

What groups in Labour are against this? Why is this still an issue within Labour?

The ALP rivals the American and Italian Democrats in being one of the least leftist centre-left parties out there.

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

I hope that some day we will deliberate about possible future European countries which will delegalize those "marriages" not legalize

[politicus]

The thing is now with polling firms we now have accurate (well, somewhat accurate) reflections on how the public feels anyway. Isn't a plebiscite just a glorified poll?

There is big difference between expressing an opinion to a pollster and actually voting on it. After all most people do a bit of thinking before they vote and some take it quite seriously.

Besides if you have a political culture where going against the result of a plebiscite is unthinkable the difference between a referendum and a plebiscite becomes a trivial technicality. So it is a matter of establishing such a norm. But of course I am biased by coming from a country where the difference between "real" referendums and "consultative referendums" (=plebiscites) has never been considered anything but a trivial legal detail. Still, this is a norm that can be established over time.