Bizarre, bespoke, benighted. The postal survey may be all of these things, but it is also legal.
Finally, Malcolm Turnbull has had something run his way.
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High Court gives postal vote green light
The Turnbull government's postal survey on same-sex marriage will go ahead but those involved in the High Court challenge have vowed to keep campaigning.
Getting here has been an unedifying process, in which mollifying fetid Coalition internals has taken priority over a wider public interest.
The ABS survey, a camel created from the political ruins of cynicism and recalcitrance, was the brainchild of Peter Dutton.
![Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull kicked off the campaign promising to vote "yes".](http://web.archive.org./web/20170909120649im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/y/c/o/l/8/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gycnoo.png/1504856490621.jpg)
No fan of change, the right-wing Immigration Minister was nonetheless adroit enough to understand that Turnbull simply could not go to the next election proposing the same delaying tactic he carried like a dead weight through the last. Not with Labor offering an immediate parliamentary path forward.
Dutton will vote no but, to his credit, has promised to reflect the majority position in a parliamentary vote.
Some of his colleagues – furious advocates of the plebiscite, the survey, or any measure to stall the change – continue to equivocate.
For Turnbull, whose year has seen one setback after another, judicial rejection of the $122 million mail-in would have been serious, sending the government back to square one and Turnbull himself to the backbench if he wasn't careful.
There has been much pseudo-democratic posturing and strategic miscalculation on both sides, but for the defeated High Court petitioners, Turnbull's procedural win must become theirs also.
That's because their imperatives have suddenly aligned: to rescue the credibility of what opponents had characterised as an abysmal process.
That means ensuring the mail-in achieves a respectable participation rate and a strong positive result.
Same-sex couples seek legal and social equality. Failure would not end their quest but could set it back by years. In Canberra the agitation would continue.
Turnbull's heart is behind the change but he is deluding himself if he thinks he can sit this out – pledging the support of him and his wife Lucy, but doing little more.
Rather, he should recognise the rare opportunity this moment offers him to redefine his premiership. He could be the Prime Minister who delivers a popular, overdue reform. Success would go some way to assuaging past disappointments.
The risk equation has now shifted for Turnbull. If marriage equality fails from here, he will get the blame no matter how far he back he was standing.
Better to get stuck in. Struggling leaders rarely get such clear opportunities.
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