The Turnbull government decided this week to hold a voluntary postal plebiscite on gay marriage, but The Garter can now reveal that this vote would still leave gay marriage illegal on Sundays.
Australia Post’s chairman, John Stanhope, was unapologetic about his organisation’s shortcoming.
“Look, that’s just how it is. Australia Post’s powers don’t cover Sun-… Sund… that day. If the government wanted gay marriage to be legal on every day, then they should have done this vote over the internet.”
The Garter understands that the Coalition avoided this option because it would drastically reduce the number of votes cast by old homophobes who are well-practiced in sending letters containing bigoted beliefs to The Daily Telegraph.
Nonetheless, for supporters of gay marriage, the postal vote may actually carry advantages.
“A lot of the rich conservatives on my mail route have multi-million dollar properties with really long driveways,” said one postal worker. “The chances are pretty high that I’ll just end up dumping their postal votes on the sidewalk.”
Australians have less than two weeks to enrol in order to vote on the matter. This is still significantly longer than the “negative 40 years” originally proposed by the government, which would have ensured that only people enrolled to vote in the 1970s would have been allowed to participate.
Stanhope has been quick to downplay the impact that the vote will have despite its $122 million price tag,
“I mean, in the end, the vote’s about as binding as our guarantee to deliver things in two to four business days. Still more likely to happen than Turnbull standing up for his own beliefs though.
