Lateline Debate - 22 August 2017

Clare O'Neil, Senator Jane Hume, welcome back to Lateline. Tony Abbott says, "The ugliness is coming from the Yes camp." I want to get your opinions on that but first, let's listen to the Attorney-General on that theme. Now, those of us who have been in politics for a long time know that in any political campaign there are always outliers on the extremes, but those outliers on the extremes of the No campaign and the Yes campaign do not represent the mainstream. OK, so the Attorney-General there. Senator Jane Hume, can I start with you – does the Yes case have a case to answer here? No, I really don't think that it does. I don't think the gentleman that assaulted Tony Abbott was, in fact... allegedly assault, forgive me, allegedly assaulted Tony Abbott was in any way representative of the Yes case. Let's be frank – there's no room for violence and it should be condemned in any political debate but I don't actually think that that's what this fellow was doing. Yes, you know, he was wearing the Yes badge, but I don't think he was representing same-sex marriage advocates in any way, shape or form. Clare O'Neil, Labor said it feared what this postal survey would unleash – was this what you were thinking? Well, firstly, can I just say I completely agree with Jane. What happened to Tony Abbott is completely inexcusable and violence has no place in this or any other debate and it's really important that we just say that up top. I think it probably was always foreseeable that we were going to have issues in this debate. I say that a separate to the violence issue, just to be clear. And there are people who are on both sides of the debate who are saying that things are being taken too far, and I think there is some of that going on. I've had people in my community who are LGBTI, who have been called nasty names, told they're paedophiles in the street – these are the sorts of things that we're seeing from on the other side. It's really sad that it has come to this, but as I say we're subjecting a fundamental matter of human rights here to a public postal survey. Labor said that this was always going to happen – it is happening. The only thing I would ask of people watching today is that we don't get distracted by the people who are doing the wrong thing on both sides of the debate: we focus on the core issue, and that is a matter of equality, simply, for all Australians.