Today
and tomorrow the High Court is hearing two challenges against the Australian
marriage law postal survey.
I
have previously said that the postal survey was a dead duck and unlikely to
survive a High Court challenge. Let’s
see if I’m right.
There
is a great article here about the two Court cases which are being heard
together. I think it’s quite simply the
best analysis I have seen of the Court cases.
It
is likely that the High Court will announce their orders quickly. The head of the Australian Bureau of
Statistics has undertaken to the Court that he will not distribute the survey
until 12 September.
Therefore,
the options for the Court are:
·
Pronounce orders before 12 September; or
·
Put in place a restraining order, called
an injunction, preventing the Commonwealth from distributing the ballot papers
after 12 September.
The
latter is most unlikely because of the cost to the taxpayer from such
an injunction. It is much more likely that
the Court will issue its orders before 12 September.
It
will probably be some time after that, maybe months, before the Court issues
reasons.
We
shall then discover, either tomorrow or in the next week whether the survey is
going ahead or not.
In
the meantime, those who are fighting for the Yes campaign, as I am, should
proceed on the basis that we are still full steam ahead.
I
have not put on the blog the avalanche of articles about equal marriage that
have popped up in the last week, including all the hate messages from neo-Nazi
groups amongst others. There is simplytoo much material. I have shared thatmaterial on my Twitter feed.
The live feed for the High Court challenge can be seen here.
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