After a week of near despair over the evil that humans are capable of, my spirits were lifted when I read of the magnanimous gesture of the Prime Minister in setting aside half an hour from his multiple cares of state in such a week, to telephone dying cancer sufferer Peter Short and promise him he will allow Liberal MPs a conscience vote on the Greens' euthanasia bill ("Abbott vows to allow free vote on euthanasia", December 20-21).
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Although not personally convinced by Mr Short's arguments, Mr Abbott is at last listening to viewpoints on social issues other than his default religious position, and now recognises that in a secular parliament, a conscience vote is the only acceptable way to deal with such issues.
Given the Prime Minister's sympathetic response to Mr Short's personal approach, I will now be emboldened to write to the Prime Minister when Senator David Leyonhjelm's equal marriage bill comes before the Senate and ask for a similar half-hour phone call, in which I would hope to persuade Mr Abbott that my 47-year relationship with my partner, Arthur, deserves the same legal status and recognition by the state as that given to Tony and Margie Abbott's relationship what difference is there?
Again, if he remains constricted in his thinking by his inherited religious position, I hope that I can at least convince the Prime Minister that he should not "whip" his members into following a party line on the issue and allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage, as he is now prepared to do on the issue of voluntary euthanasia.
