Appeals by Harris lost

CONSERVATIVE amendments to allow bakers and florists to refuse services for gay couples “will not be moved or get hardly any support”, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday.

Ceremonies will be able to be held from January, with the Bill expected to be passed into law by December 7.

There are talks taking place among conservative MPs about appropriate religious protections being put in place.

Attorney- General George Brandis said he would move to ensure civil celebrants would get the same protections as religious celebrants and priests to decline to conduct same- sex weddings. But he said he would not support extending those protections to other service providers such as bakers.

Mr Turnbull said he did not believe amendments would be moved along those lines.

“I certainly wouldn’t support it and I don’t think anyone else would,” he said.

RICHES AHEAD: page 8 DISGRACED former children’s entertainer Rolf Harris has lost a bid to clear his name, with a court in London refusing to overturn his convictions for indecently assaulting children.

The Court of Appeal rejected Harris’s bid to throw out 11 of 12 convictions for indecently assaulting three girls aged up to 19 at the time.

But the court quashed one conviction against Harris over allegations that he touched a girl aged seven or eight between her legs after she sought an autograph from him in the late 1960s.

In a ruling by three judges, the court found that conviction was unsafe after fresh evidence cast doubt on whether Harris was at the community centre in Portsmouth where the assault was alleged to have happened.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek a retrial on this conviction and the judges said this was in the public interest. But the court rejected Harris’s bid to appeal the 11 other charges.