Common Dreams | Liberals Strike Back... Against Single Payer Common Dreams In the name of political reality, some liberal pundits, politicians and policy wonks are scolding progressives to give up on Medicare for All. There are many ways to achieve "universal coverage," we're told. "Overhauling" the entire system is too hard ... |
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Liberals Strike Back... Against Single Payer - Common Dreams
Five and a half years ago, a mustachioed Justin Trudeau rose from his seat in the corner of the House of Commons opposition benches to challenge the Harper government on cuts to scientific research.
Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question on ozone monitoring, based entirely on what the minister of the environment himself has already said, Trudeau declared on Nov. 24, 2011.
Then-environment minister Peter Kent was portraying cuts to Canadas crucial and world-renowned ozone monitoring networks as simply consolidating and streamlining, Trudeau began.
The Liberal MP for the Montreal riding of Papineau then flashed a document signed by Kent that contradicted the Conservative minister's position. Hopefully not an unreliable source, he quipped.
Justin Trudeau, then in opposition, challenges Peter Kent, then the environment minister, about the Harper government's cuts to ozone monitoring on Nov. 24, 2011. House of Commons video
It was a sly reference to the day before, when Kent had told then-Liberal environment critic Kirsty Duncan she should "use more reliable research" after she questioned the Tories over a briefing note titledfittingly enoughozone monitoring cuts.
Trudeau and Duncan would spar with Kent several times that week over the issue.
At one point, Trudeau even challenged Kent by asking whether he knew what ozone actually was.
"I just need to know that he understands the issues," Trudeau asked.
Fast forward to 2017.
The Liberals are in power, Trudeau is prime minister and Duncan is his science minister. Kent has swapped positions with them on the opposition benches, assuming the mantle of foreign affairs critic for the Conservatives.
With the science-defending duo now at the controls, Canada boasts about scientific breakthroughs in ozone research, and the government claims it is unmuzzling scientists, undergoing a fundamental science review, launching a search for a chief science advisor and creating a $2-billion investment fund for post-secondary institutions, among other initiatives.
Trudeau's cabinet launched these initiatives after campaigning in the 2015 election to restore evidence-based decision-making in government. This followed years of criticism that the Harper government was putting science on the back burner and making decisions that benefited the oil and gas industry in Western Canada, where the Conservatives have deep political roots.
The criticism culminated with scientists mourning the "death of evidence" in a mock funeral march on Parliament Hill to protest the Harper government in July 2012.
One might be tempted to think that after all this, the cuts to ozone monitoring would have been restored. The reality, however, is more complicated.
In responding to National Observers questions, raised in June, about whether the cuts had been restored under the Liberals, a spokesman for Environment and Climate Change Canada first denied that cuts had ever been made.
After further questioning, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's office would later acknowledge in July that ozone monitoring stations had indeed been closed. But her spokeswoman would still argue that the efficiency of monitoring hadnt changed as a result.
Kirsty Duncan, then the Liberal environment critic, challenges Kent about the cuts to ozone monitoring on Nov. 23, 2011. House of Commons video
The reaction to this chain of events has been one of frustration or vindication, depending on who's reacting.
Thomas Duck, an associate professor in the department of physics and atmospheric science at Dalhousie University, said the government's claim in 2012 under former prime minister Stephen Harperthat Canada could sufficiently monitor ozone while still closing monitoring stationsreminded him of the position it was now taking under Trudeau.
"Does the Trudeau government really want to take ownership of what Harper did? said Duck.
The NDP said the Liberals weren't honouring their commitment to restore scientific integrity in government post-Harper. The Trudeau government thinks theyve kind of ticked the science box on their to-do list and now theyve moved onto other things, said science critic Kennedy Stewart.
Duncan and Trudeau question Kent about the cuts to ozone monitoring on Nov. 21, 2011, kicking off a week in which they would repeatedly question the then-environment minister. House of Commons video
The Conservatives, meanwhile, see it as an example of the Liberals saying one thing in opposition and another thing once in government.
"Environment Canadas scientists have apparently convinced the Liberals that the monitoring of atmospheric ozone, as amended by our Conservative government on the advice of the same scientists, is appropriate and effective," said Kent.
Duncan and Trudeau's offices declined comment. McKenna's spokeswoman, however, attempted to draw a distinction between the two governments' approaches.
Our government has been clear from the outset that were taking a different path from that of the Harper government, which set targets with no plan in place to meet them, and undertook no action on climate change, said Marie-Pascale Des Rosiers.
"Canada continues to operate one of the largest stratospheric ozone monitoring programs. This program meets our operational requirements."
Canada monitors ozone both up in the Earths atmosphere, where the ozone layer helps block harmful ultraviolet radiation, and closer to the surface, where the reactive gas has been linked to health problems and smog.
It was cuts to atmospheric ozone monitoring that drove the controversy during the Harper government. The monitoring is done using two different technologies, brewers and ozonesondes, that measure different aspects of the ozone layer.
The statement signed by Kent during the Harper government confirmed that the two measures complement, but dont duplicate each other. As Duncan explained in 2011, that means they can't be optimized and streamlinedonly cut."
The Harper government ended up overseeing the closure of two ozone monitoring stations, at Bratts Lake, Sask. and Egbert, Ont.
It also moved the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre, one of six centres that form a global atmospheric monitoring program, out of the environment departments science and technology branch to the meteorological services data management system. The data centre is run by the department with the support of the World Meteorological Organization.
National Observer asked the department whether cuts to ozone monitoring had been restored. Spokesman Mark Johnson responded that the departments monitoring of ozone was not cut.
Rather, portions were transferred to another group that continued with the delivery, Johnson said. "Environment and Climate Change Canada continues to be committed to research and monitoring related to stratospheric ozone." He added stratospheric ozone observations "are made at eight sites across Canada."
The problem: There used to be 10 such sites.
Duncan pointed this out in 2012, when she complained at a House environment committee meeting that activity at the Bratts Lake and Egbert sites had "ceased."
The status of the monitoring sites also appear on the world ozone data centre's website, hosted by the Canadian government. The website shows that Bratts Lake and Egbert stations stopped producing data after 2011 and have remained dark.
Johnsons statement also confirmed that the ozone data centre was still in the meteorological service, but that scientific oversight is provided by science and technology branch scientists and others.
McKennas office eventually confirmed that the department did once have 10 stratospheric monitoring stations. But Des Rosiers said a departmental analysis showed Canada can deliver robust stratospheric ozone monitoring with eight stations.
This is why two stations were closed in 2012. The remaining eight are sufficient for robust monitoring of stratospheric ozone, said Des Rosiers.
Canadas commitment to monitor stratospheric and ground-level ozone has not changed and neither has the efficiency of the monitoring.
National Observer then asked the department for a copy of the analysis mentioned by McKenna's office.
It declined to respond, but Des Rosiers followed up with an email saying that the government was "committed to science" and that it didn't receive "negative feedback" on the Canadian ozone monitoring program at a recent international conference of ozone research managers hosted last March in Geneva, Switzerland.
Dalhousie's Duck questioned how the department could claim that it hadn't lost a valuable resource in the shuttered Bratt's Lake and Egbert stations.
He pointed to two scientific papers released last year that both reference data from the Bratt's Lake and Egbert stations. One paper was led by the environment department, while the second was from an international collaboration. "Clearly the data are of continuing scientific importance," he said.
Duck, who says he co-founded a university consortium that took on responsibility for an instrument that was jettisoned in the Harper-era restructuring, also argued there were other scientific reasons for wanting launches of ozonesondes, a type of weather balloon, at the two stations.
In addition to ozone, ozonesondes can also be used to examine atmospheric pollution like emissions from oilsands, or pollution around Toronto, he said. They help differentiate between ground-level and ozone-layer sources, argued Duck, but "the loss of these two stations impacts our ability to do that."
He said Bratts Lake was "the only ozonesonde station immediately downwind from the oilsands." Although there is an operating station in Edmonton, geographically closer to the oilpatch, winds tend to blow from west to east, putting Bratt's Lake more downwind in terms of weather patterns, he said.
A network of stations would be the best approach, he argued, but "given how few stations there were around the oilsands to begin with, the loss of Bratts Lake [is] really grievous."
At the same time, Egbert was the only ozonesonde station in the vicinity of Canadas most-populous city, Toronto, he said. Taken together, "This suggests to me that the stations were cut for non-scientific reasons," said Duck.
Finally, he questioned the assertion that the ozone date centre had true scientific oversight, arguing a drop in data demonstrated otherwise.
Usage of the centre has declined since the management changes in 2012, he said, pointing to the centres own data for Brewer Ozone Spectrophotometer, a Canadian invention used around the world to measure UV, that shows a drop-off since 2012.
Johanne Fillion, communications officer at the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said the ozone monitoring cuts were an example of prioritization in Ottawa.
Our feeling is that with ozone, its not because they dont care, its because it wasnt the top priority when they arrived [in government], she said.
But Kent said "sarcastic questions and denunciations" from the Liberals in 2011 over atmospheric ozone monitoring were "uninformed and wrong."
"Their statements today are in line with any number of policy positions in opposition that Liberals now contradict," he said.
For his part, Stewart said the Liberal government isnt waging a war on science, but he said their policies have almost all the same effects of Harpers war on science.
He said federal scientists appeared to be ecstatic that Harper was gone, but he is now starting to field calls from some of them who are concerned that longstanding policies havent changed.
I dont think youll see death marches on Parliament Hill, but you will see more upset scientists.
With files from Mike De Souza
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Trudeau Liberals change their tune on ozone monitoring - National Observer
In the summer of 1917, Walter Lippmann strutted into Washington as it prepared for war. Both he and his young country were ready to prove their worth as superpowers. He was 27 and newly married, recruited to whisper into the ear of Newton Baker, the secretary of war. Lippmanns reputation already prefigured the heights to which it would ultimately ascend. None other than Teddy Roosevelt had anointed him the most brilliant young man of his age.
Following the timeless capital tradition of communal living, the Lippmanns moved into a group house just off Dupont Circle. Their residencewhich they shared with a coterie of other fast-talking, quick-thinking, precociously influential 20-somethingsinstantly became the stuff of legend, the wonkish frat house of American liberalism. Denizens included Felix Frankfurter, the Harvard Law professor who went on to make his mark with forceful crusades on behalf of unpopular causes, and then with Supreme Court opinions and a wide array of well-placed protgs.
Dinner conversations at the rowhouse extended late into the night. Older minds gravitated to these meals, eager to watch a new vision of government being hammered out. Among the eminent guests who welcomed a respite from stuffy, self-important Washington were Herbert Hoover, Louis Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. It was Holmes, a regular and enthusiastic presence at the table, who gave the place a namethe House of Truth.
The legal historian Brad Snyder has reconstructed the glories of this group house in a bulging, careful study of its inhabitants. Though The House of Truth drowns in detail, Snyders account usefully maps a hinge moment in American political history. Progressivism, that amorphous explosion of reformism in the early years of the century, had come and gone. Thinkers like Lippmann and Frankfurter increasingly referred to themselves as liberals, by which they didnt mean advocates of laissez-faire governance. Their use of the label connoted something closer to its present-day meaning, and their faith in governments capacity to improve the world was boosted by the war. Liberals believed that Americas entry into the global conflagration would transform their country. The experience, they hoped, would rouse a new spirit of solidarity. It would corrode the ingrained Jeffersonian hostility to the state, and would permit America to exert a beneficent influence beyond its borders.
These messianic hopes were quickly shredded by brutal realities: the savage nature of martial nationalism, the suppression of dissenting opinions, the way their hero Woodrow Wilson permitted the imposition of vindictive terms on vanquished Germany. The pessimism acquired during those harsh years became foundational to liberalism, too, endowing it with a newfound passion for civil liberties and the rights of minorities. Liberalisms enthusiasm for the state was painfully tempered.
One of the essential qualities of liberalism is that it always disappoints. To its champions, this is among its greatest virtues. It embraces a realistic sense of human limits and an unillusioned view of political constraints. It shies away from utopian schemes and imprudent idealism. To its critics, this modesty and meliorism represent cowardice. Every generation of leftists angrily vents about liberalisms slim ambitions and its paucity of pugilism. Bernie Sanders and his followers join a long line of predecessors in wanting liberalism to be something that it most distinctly is not: radical.
Liberalisms enemies on the right cultivate precisely this confusion. They have always tried to smudge liberalisms identity, to insinuate that it exists on the same continuum as communism and other terrifying ideologies. And, in truth, liberalism wasnt always entirely clear about the gap that separated it from the left. Before the disappointments of World War I, many of the earliest liberals styled themselves as radicals. They shared the primary concerns of the activist left (womens suffrage, the labor movement) and championed the same assault on the repressive mores of Victorian culture. For a brief, Edenic moment, liberals and radicals carried an almost identical sense of possibility about the world.
In Young Radicals, Jeremy McCarter (with whom I briefly worked at the New Republic, the magazine Lippmann helped establish in 1914) has written an extremely readable, theatrically narrated group biography of the men and women swept up in the optimistic prewar spirit. Its a romantic account of a romantic period. Among McCarters subjects is a young Lippmann, back before his Washington group-house days. Fresh from Harvard, he went to work for the socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York, and mingled with poets and revolutionaries in Greenwich Village. He became a favorite of the heiress Mabel Dodge, who presided over bohemias preeminent salon in her lowerFifth Avenue apartment.
Young Radicals isnt intended as an intellectual historyits a study of the politically engaged life. McCarter sets out to answer the urgent questions that preoccupy critics of liberal expediency: Where do idealists come by their galvanizing visions of a better world? Why do they give up health, safety, comfort, status to see those visions made real? In the process, his book helps chart the emergence of a sharp divide between staunch radicals and ambitious liberals, as Walter Lippmann and his old comrades go their separate ways. Over the course of McCarters narrative, Lippmann assumes his role as the archetypal liberal thinkeror, from the perspective of his leftist former friends, the epitome of the self-satisfied establishment.
The hero of McCarters cast of radicals (which also includes Alice Paul, John Reed, and Max Eastman) is the most formidable of Lippmanns critics, and in almost every way his antithesis. While Lippmann exuded the suavity of his Upper East Side breeding, Randolph Bourne was rough-hewn, emotive, and winningly vulnerable. He described himself as a puny, timid, lazy, hypochondriacal wretch. An obstetricians forceps deformed his face at birth; a childhood bout with tuberculosis twisted his spine and wrecked his gait. When Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of The Atlantic, invited Bourne to lunch at the Century Club, he canceled upon Bournes arrival, terrified at the prospect of being seen with him. (That didnt stop Sedgwick from assigning Bourne pieces.) A self-styled outsider, Bourne wrote beautifully about the comforts of friendship and the value of marginalized opinion.
Overcoming abandonment by his alcoholic father, Bourne studied at Columbia with John Dewey and imbibed his mentors ecstatic faith in democracy. His most lasting essay, Trans-national America, was published in this magazine in 1916. It poetically celebrated what we now call identity politics. Bourne shunned the idea of the melting pot. Instead, he imagined a cosmopolitan nation in which new arrivals would resist assimilation and inhabit their ancestral traditions. America is coming to be, not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and color. Freed of the pressure to fit into a monolithic American mold, immigrants would help create a new national culture. Bourne dreamed that it would be more creative, more tightly bound by mutual understanding. A beloved community was the phrase he borrowed (from the philosopher Josiah Royce) to describe his vision.
Bourne and Lippmann, nearly exact contemporaries, were never close friends. But Lippmann encouraged Bourne to write for the New Republic. And Bourne looked at Lippmanns intellectual ease and sweep with admiration bordering on envy, even if his own thinking propelled him in quite a different direction. He called Lippmanns Drift and Mastery, his 1914 case for imposing scientific order on society, a book one would have given ones soul to have written.
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War brought an end to Bournes idolization. Although he never publicly attacked Lippmann by name, he hurled spears at him, excoriating liberal intellectuals for dragging America into the conflict. It was a war made deliberately by intellectuals, Bourne fumed, arguing that they championed the war only so they could exploit the mobilization efforts in order to build the national government of their dreams. (War is the health of the state, Bourne aphoristically argued in a manuscript found after his death.) In the proximity of power, the intellectuals felt the thrill of being on the craft, in the stream, even though they didnt fully believe in the wars underlying justifications.
When Bourne denounced Lippmann and his ilk, he leveled a charge that has dogged liberal elites ever since. He skewered them as disingenuous and greedy for power. They supported immoral policies for their own purposeswhich they considered loftywhen they should have known better. Decades later, the broadsides against the liberal hawks who lent their imprimatur to the Iraq War echoed this sentiment. And Bournes indictment anticipated the accusation of callous cynicism directed at Bill Clintons criminal-justice policy, seen as a ploy to win back white working-class voters. Barack Obamas response to the financial crisis, which let bankers slip away unpunished for their misdeeds, roused similar ire.
Over his career, Lippmann provided plenty of examples that validated the core of Bournes critique. As Snyder tells the story, Felix Frankfurter turned on his roommate from the House of Truth for similar reasons. Frankfurter worked tirelessly to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti from the accusations that sent them to death row. He eloquently transformed their fate into the quintessential liberal crusade of the 20sand was apoplectic that when he tried to enlist Lippmann in his effort, he struggled to rouse him from his icy evenhandedness.
Yet however valid Bournes reasons for scything Lippmann and the liberal intellectuals were, there was also something juvenile about his attack. Indeed, Bourne himself might have described his defiance that way. His earliest essays advocated youthful rebellionand denounced the oppressive hold that the middle-aged exerted over society. Youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition, he wrote. His beef with his seniors had some of the glibness of a teenage tantrum, and so did his attack on the liberal intellectuals. He simply couldnt countenance the notion that Lippmann might want to lead American policy in a more humane, internationalist direction out of motives that were public-minded as well as vainglorious. Its true that Lippmann took smug satisfaction in his audiences with the president and in the attentions of Wilsons most trusted adviser, Colonel Edward House. Yet he didnt hesitate to brutallyand influentiallyturn against Wilson for botching the aftermath of the war.
Bourne will always make a readier hero than Lippmann. In the last days of 1918, as the war drew to a close, he died of the Spanish flua tragic end that had nothing to do with the intellectual exile he endured during the war, but that added to his aura of martyrdom. Bourne spent the last year of his life pushed out of magazines that had once welcomed him, with hardly any outlets for his thunderous denunciations. His death froze him in the fresh-faced state of youthful rebelliousness that he celebrated.
The radicals of the prewar years are good grist for inspiring yarns. But to what end? Many of the protests of these years were aesthetic gestures, statements of nonconformity rather than expressions of a political program. John Reed, Lippmanns Harvard classmate and another of McCarters protagonists, was a burly adventurer who went off to chronicle the Russian Revolution. The thrilling firsthand account he produced, Ten Days That Shook the World, was romantic and admiring. Lenin, who blurbed the book, rewarded Reed for his powerful propaganda by burying him in the wall of the Kremlin. Though you would hardly guess it from McCarters tender treatment, Reeds career is a cautionary tale of the reasons to fear idealism and high-profile protest merely for the sake of rebellion.
What makes Lippmann unappealing is his detachment, the cool logic that prevented him from shaking his fist at the status quo with Reed-esque fury. (Lippmann mocked Reed in a witty hatchet job in the New Republic, Legendary John Reed.) At the same time, that detachment produced enduring results. His hastily written books might not always thrill like a Bourne essay, but to watch him wrestle with the deepest questions about mass psychology, the behavior of corporations, and the value of tradition is to discover punditry as a philosophical discipline capable of lasting value.
Take the essays that Lippmann published in The Atlantic just after the war, collected in the slim book Liberty and the News. Lippmann wrote anxiously about the rise of what we have come to call fake news. He drew attention to the way the media spread rumors and deliberate lies, and he sounded the alarm about a public ill-equipped to sort through conflicting facts. He was concerned about filter bubbles and the power of gatekeepers. He tried to rally journalists to rise to the challenge, exhorting them toward greater professionalism and a higher sense of purpose. Preserving liberty, he argued, required redefining the concept. Liberty is the name we give to measures by which we protect and increase the veracity of the information upon which we act.
In the midst of our current convulsions, Lippmann has returned as an object of disdain. Not Lippmann the man, of course, but the technocratic spirit he once championed and embodied. To counter the rising authoritarian tide, the temptation is to run far away from that spirit. Indeed, protest and anger are essential bulwarks of democracy. And theres no doubting the moral blind spots of the reigning elite. But a truly radical solution to our crisis is actually the old liberal one, to reestablish the legitimacy of disinterested experts, to restore the institutions that provide a basis for common conversation. The path to Bournes beloved community now runs through Lippmann.
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Why Liberalism Disappoints - The Atlantic
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Laura Ingraham says that President Trump has accomplished a lot in his first 200 days in office, despite getting little help from Congress and facing resistance from both the right and the left.
"What unites all of them is their sad and rather pathetic fear and loathing of President Trump," Ingraham said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
She said that a successful Trump presidency would be like "Armageddon" for liberals and Never Trumpers.
She said that's we're oversaturated with stories about White House intrigue or Russia's meddling in the presidential election.
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"These people are happiest when his numbers go down, when his legislation and his confirmations stall, even if their own approval numbers go down too," Ingraham said.
She acknowledged that Trump is lacking marquee legislative successes and his poll numbers could use a boost, but she said he's still been able to accomplish a lot, even without the help of Congress.
She pointed out that the stock market, consumer confidence, wages and the GDP are all up, and Trump has streamlined onerous regulations in almost every federal department and gotten Judge Neil Gorsuch appointed to the Supreme Court.
"Considering the 24/7 media onslaught against him, the distraction of the Russia probe, and the resistance from Congress - both sides in Congress - he's done a heck of a lot in just 200 days," Ingraham said.
"And if he can keep focused and he can keep his team motivated, keep them together, and put pressure on the Hill to deliver on some of these big issues, he'll improve his numbers and he'll grow the populist movement."
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Ingraham: Trump Success Would Be Like 'Armageddon' for Liberals ... - Fox News Insider
Malcolm Turnbull asked people in the meeting to indicate whether or not they wanted the plebiscite dumped in favour of a free vote. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP
The Liberal party has elected to stick with its plebiscite policy with a postal vote as a backup rather than moving immediately to a free vote, after a special party room discussion on Monday evening.
Liberals were told at the opening of the party room meeting the cabinet was in favour of resuscitating the governments original plebiscite proposal, followed by a postal vote in the event the plebiscite is rejected by parliament once again.
After a two-hour discussion, only a handful of Liberal MPs, some sources say six, others say eight, raised their hands when Malcolm Turnbull asked people to indicate whether or not they wanted the plebiscite dumped now, and the party to move to a free vote.
No formal vote was taken in the party room on the plebiscite, either the current policy or the postal option.
Only one of the group of Liberal campaigners for marriage equality who have reopened the internally incendiary issue over the winter recess Warren Entsch publicly reserved his position during Monday nights meeting on bringing on a bill to legalise same sex marriage after the Senate had reconsidered the plebiscite.
But while the party room tacitly endorsed the position favoured by the cabinet to reintroduce the plebiscite, then proceed with a postal vote in the event the plebiscite was again knocked back by the parliament a number of concerns were ventilated during the meeting about the postal vote.
Government sources have told Guardian Australia the attorney general, George Brandis, also has reservations about the postal vote option.
The Victorian Liberal MP Russell Broadbent said the government should just maintain its original policy, not the postal vote, and the New South Wales MP Julian Leeser expressed concerns about the postal vote, arguing if the government tried hard enough, it would get the original proposal through.
The former prime minister Tony Abbott and Victorian Liberal Kevin Andrews also said the government should maintain the original plebiscite position.
Abbott said if the government moved off its plebiscite commitment, then voters would again gain the impression the government didnt stand for anything or fight for anything.
The prime minister pushed back against Abbotts intervention, saying the government did plenty and stood for plenty.
Entsch told the ABC on Monday night he was happy to go through the process of seeing the original plebiscite proposal resubmitted to the Senate, but he predicted the crossbench would not budge.
Entsch also argued the postal plebiscite was fraught. If they then put up a plebiscite, a postal plebiscite, they will see the warts and the prickles attached to that.
Conservative MP Craig Kelly said after the meeting the Senate negotiating team should be given wider latitude to attempt to get the original plebiscite policy through the Senate.
Specifically, he suggested the government could compromise by ditching the $15m of public funds for each of the yes and no case in the plebiscite because theres been so much debate it may not be needed, and even consider what the bill would look like.
Marriage equality campaigners have foreshadowed a legal challenge to the postal plebiscite in the event the government proceeds down that path without appropriate underpinning legislation.
In an effort to strong-arm the Senate ahead of the reintroduction of the plebiscite legislation, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, told reporters after the Liberal party meeting if there were concerns about the legality of the voluntary postal vote, then I would encourage those Senators who are so concerned to consider supporting the governments bill for a compulsory attendance plebiscite.
The government is committed to keep faith with the promise we made at the last election, Cormann said Monday night.
It is now up to others in the Senate, who may have voted against the plebiscite in the past, the full compulsory attendance plebiscite, and make a decision on whether they prefer a compulsory attendance plebiscite or whether they prefer a postal voluntary plebiscite.
Cormann declined to say how much any postal vote would cost.
Some in the government are hopeful that marriage equality groups could swing behind the original plebiscite proposal if the alternative is a postal vote.
Advocates were giving no sign of that on Monday night. Long-time marriage equality advocate Rodney Croome urged Liberals to press ahead with trying to engineer a parliamentary vote.
We urge Liberals who support marriage equality to table marriage equality legislation and cross the floor to vote for it, Croome said.
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays national spokesperson, Shelley Argent, said: We will lobby the Senate to continue to oppose a plebiscite and we will move to have a postal vote struck down in the high court.
We do not accept, and will never accept, the demeaning terms and conditions the government has attached to marriage equality.
Political parties in the Senate opposed to the plebiscite have given no sign they will budge on their opposition to the governments proposal.
Same sex marriage will be considered again by the joint party room meeting in Canberra on Tuesday, and will continue to play out as a divisive issue for much of the rest of the year.
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Marriage equality: Liberals vote to keep plebiscite with postal vote as backup - The Guardian