The push for a “balanced debate” about whether all Australians should be equal before the law has begun.
In a heated Senate estimates hearing last night, conservative Senator Eric Abetz grilled ABC managing director Mark Scott about the public broadcaster’s stance on marriage equality, and asked why the ABC didn’t give equal airtime to both sides of the debate.
Abetz referred Scott to this Media Watch segment, which found that media coverage had skewed significantly in favour of legalising gay marriage:
“Two key spokespeople for marriage equality, Rodney Croome and Christine Forster, [scored] 32 interviews between them in the first 12 days of August. And by our count, two key speakers against — Sophie York and David van Gend — [scored] a grand total of only 12.”
In fact, this breakdown is not surprising, since it roughly lines up with the percentage of voters who oppose gay marriage. According to Essential’s latest polling on the issue, 30% of Australians are opposed to marriage equality. According to Media Watch, 27% of airtime was given to gay marriage opponents.
As Crikey has argued before, Parliament should spare us the gay marriage plebiscite — and the public debate that will necessarily come with that, about whether gay people are truly worthy of equality — and just legalise the damn thing.
But if there’s going to be a vote, and a debate that represents all Australians — especially on the public broadcaster — it should accurately represent voters’ views on the issue.
Poor Eric…. Oh for the good old daze of Utegate when his powers of perspicacity were on show for all the world to see?
We were committed to an illegal war in Iraq by a prime minister without any consultation, parliamentary debate… or a plebiscite.
I agree. Parliament should decide and spare us the plebiscite. But the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ sides should get equal opportunity to make their cases – when the plebiscite is called and funding is obtained for their campaigns, not now. Opponents of same sex marriage will get their opportunity in the plebiscite. To which the government is committed.
That didn’t seem to worry Abetz either.
“Gay marriage is a bigger moral issue than war”?
The gay marriage plebiscite will turn into a taxpayer funded poofter bashing fiasco.. the High Court has already sanctioned the Parliaments right to legislate.. this is pandering to a sharia like attitude by fundamentalists of all denominations who think discriminations alright..