Entsch fired up for gay marriage talks

WARREN Entsch is “looking forward” to a fiery emergency Liberal Party meeting called to debate gay marriage next week.

The Member for Leichhardt confirmed all Liberal MPs would be mustered to Canberra to thrash out the issue behind closed doors on Monday.

Barnaby Joyce and his Nationals will be brought into the fray at a joint party room meeting which is already scheduled to coincide with parliament’s return on Tuesday.

“I’m looking forward to it, I think it’s great. We’ve been hoping for that for a while,” Mr Entsch said.

“As the National Party discuss it in their party room, we discuss it in our party room. So I’m very excited by that.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is wrestling with potential mutiny over the issue amid reports six backbenchers, including Mr Entsch, are willing to cross the floor against the party’s plebiscite line.

The possibility of a voluntary postal vote will be discussed alongside Mr Entsch’s push to allow members of parliament to make a conscience vote.

The last time the Coalition had a full party meeting on the issue was disastrous for marriage equality advocate MPs.

Mr Entsch requested a Liberal party room meeting for August 2015, claiming thenprime minister Tony Abbott had given it his approval before later denying any knowledge and calling a joint meeting with the Nationals to consider a referendum.

The debate Mr Entsch hoped for was temporarily doomed, until now.

Speaking at the Cairns Aquarium where he was announcing funding for a new reef research facility, he refused to speculate on how Mr Abbott would act during Monday’s meeting. “We’re here to celebrate a very significant piece of investment and a significant piece of infrastructure and I think we should be celebrating that,” Mr Entsch said.

“The rest of it’s pretty much old hat.”

Coalition MPs could also be asked to take the plebiscite option to the 2019 election.

Pundits have declared the move unlikely to bear fruit given it was already brought to the 2016 election and then failed.

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