The history of federal referenda is fairly well known in this country. As with an election, voting is compulsory if you are on the electoral roll, and a majority of voters in a majority of states is required to get a referendum up – which is quite a high bar to reach.

Only eight out of 44 referenda put to the Australian electorate have succeeded.

Australians are less familiar with plebiscites, but they are about to learn a whole lot more about them.

A recent plebiscite that rocked not only the United Kingdom, but the whole of Europe – indeed the economic world – was the Brexit vote.

That vote, as with all electoral voting in the UK, was non-compulsory, and was taken by plebiscite because it did not involve any constitutional point.

The withdrawal from the European Union has been debated up hill and down dale in terms of the legal machinery needed to achieve it, with the view of many being that it could have been done without even the intervention of Parliament.

That latter point is currently being tested before the courts in the UK. Under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty dealing with withdrawal of a European Union member state, it looks much like the relevant minister in Britain can simply pull the trigger enabling exit and report that fact to the House of Commons without any Parliamentary vote required at all.

The plebiscite, then, was only to judge the mood of the people – and, more interestingly, in a non-binding way. The point of the current legal challenge is to force the Parliament to vote, notwithstanding the result of the plebiscite, on the assumed basis that a majority of the Parliament would likely opt to remain with the EU. However, that seems to be a relatively vain hope for “remainers”, and there is a changed political reality in Britain.

In Australia before our recent federal election, the federal Attorney-General announced that the decision over whether to legalise gay marriage would be dealt with by plebiscite.

There was really no debate about what type of public vote would be used once it had been decided to put the question to the people. A referendum is reserved for constitutional amendments only, whereas legislation for gay marriage requires an amendment to the Commonwealth Marriage Act. When the ACT attempted to legalise same-sex marriage, the High Court of Australia found that on a constitutional basis, it was a commonwealth issue, not a state one.

As in the UK, a plebiscite is non-binding on the Parliament of Australia and the rules regarding a referendum don’t apply.

The issue will be decided by a simple majority of all voters; however, one would assume the vote will be non-compulsory. Thus, as with Brexit, the challenge may be for supporters of either side of the debate to get people out of their houses and to the polling booth. The fact that there was very poor weather on the day of the British vote, and that it was on a week day, may well have influenced the result.

According to reports, Australia had the worst turnout for a federal election since compulsory voting began in 1925. The major parties are licking their wounds after losing a combined 1.5 million primary votes, and they must have regard to the fact that the no-show this election in lower house voting was 1.4 million, or 9 per cent, of registered voters. What is the likely interest in a non-compulsory plebiscite concerning a question that may not be regarded as directly relevant to a majority of Australians?

Recent commentary about our looming plebiscite concerns the likely cost of the exercise. Labor has argued in the past that the cost isn’t worth it. Irrespective of its stance, has it in fact under-estimated the figure at $160 million?

PricewaterhouseCoopers has calculated the all-up economic cost to be in the order of a whopping $525 million, although some have cast doubt on the accuracy of that number. Any which way, the cost is huge.

So why doesn’t Parliament just do the job? Is not Parliament the place for these debates, considering that a plebiscite result is ultimately non-binding and the Parliament still has to vote to change the Marriage Act?

Why waste Australians’ time and money when the question could be so easily decided in that forum? We elect our politicians knowing what they stand for. Public debate can transpire and then the parliament can do its job. Or can it?

Part of the answer is probably that there are such deep divisions about the question within both major parties that a handball to the people happens to suit both. It also kept a divisive debate off the federal election agenda.

I fear that until the people have spoken the politicians will never be able to settle this once and for all, and there will no end to the matter

It is tempting, as an aside, to conclude that what is transpiring here is an abrogation of responsibility by the Parliament, dressed up to look like something else. Every other matter of national importance for the past 40 years has been dealt with by the Parliament, whose members can test their own electorate and read the opinion polls for themselves. Why not this one?

However, the problem is compounded by the fact that this issue has been before the Parliament time and time again without apparent resolution. Since the Howard era, amendments to the Marriage Act and numerous bills have been presented to Parliament – some debated, some not. All sought to redefine marriage and none have.

As to earlier plebiscites in this country, is anything to be learnt?

Well, there have only been three, as distinct from the many referenda. Two concerned conscription during World War I, and these both failed. Interestingly, when it came to conscription for the Vietnam War, the Parliament – unlike in 1916 and 1917 – didn’t consult the people by plebiscite; it just legislated.

The last plebiscite related to our national anthem in 1977. As an aside, South Australia voted overwhelmingly in favour of a “Song of Australia” but “Advance Australia Fair” prevailed. “Waltzing Matilda” was also in the mix. It goes to show though that not all will ultimately be satisfied. (I love “Waltzing Matlida” but sadly was only in Grade 7 when the matter was decided.)

Brexit could have gone the other way if David Cameron hadn’t, in the heat of an election campaign, promised a plebiscite and had instead just left it to the Commons. Or the vote result might have been different if the day of the poll had been sunny and fine.

A non-binding plebiscite can be such a fickle thing. Those in favour of gay marriage must accept a risk that the vote may not go their way.

So what is the wash-up? While every bit of me wants to say of the Parliament, “Just get on with it”, I fear that until the people have spoken the politicians will never be able to settle this once and for all, and there will be no end to the matter.

It is an instance of social change evidently so fundamental that Parliament cannot or will not conclude it; a political hot potato thrown to the electorate to sort out, because politicians, finding themselves in a classic “no win” scenario, want the people to decide what could have been determined in the election just past.

Thus with all of its foibles and all its downsides, a non-binding plebiscite might be the way to go.

Anyway, while you won’t get to choose if we have a plebiscite, you can decide whether to turn up on voting day. And that, at least, is democracy.

Morry Bailes is the managing partner at Tindall Gask Bentley Lawyers, treasurer of the Law Council of Australia and is a past president of the Law Society of SA. The opinions expressed in this column are his own.

His column appears every second Thursday.

Disclosure: Morry Bailes is a member of the Liberal Party.