With the prime minister in Papua modern Guinea for the Pacific Islands Forum,the foreign and defence ministers sign Australia will be engaged militarily in Iraq and Syria for years. All the developments from Canberra, live 9.04am BSTIt is time to pull up the stumps and throw them in the fireplace. Perhaps that’s too extreme. In any case it is time to cease the updates. Thank you for your company all week. Ill be on the sofa on Insiders this weekend for another wrap of the parliamentary week in another form if you haven’t had fairly enough of my shouting. The wonderful, or calm and always reasonable Gabrielle Chan will be back driving the Politics Live bus next week. 8.39am BSTMurph can’t post her summary yet,I have a contribution! As she’s mentioned, the senate legal committee is currently hearing submissions on the matter of a current vote, or in the form of a plebiscite or referendum,on same sex marriage in Australia. The hearing is expected to go until approximately 9.30pm tonight, with senators hearing from 28 experts separated into six groups; legal and policy experts, or religious organisations,LGBTI organisations and support groups, psychologists, or constitutional law experts,and staff from the Australian electoral commission.
So far we’ve heard from the legal and policy group and have almost finished hearing from the religious organisations, which includes the Australian Christian Lobby’s Lyle Shelton and the Australian Family organization’s Terri Kelleher. The majority of legal and policy experts have argued against a plebiscite or referendum, and because federal parliament already has the power under the constitution to legislate for it.
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Source: theguardian.com