It is doubtful a majority of Puerto Ricans will approve Statehood anyway, as they opted not to in three plebiscites from 1967 to 1998, and are fiercely attached to their international sports teams and beauty pageant contestants, as well as to Spanish.
It is unclear where the money to hold a plebiscite would come from.
It was a federal judge who first – privately in conversation – seeded the thought that a compulsory plebiscite was far from a constitutional certainty.
In 1929, the Vatican asked Mussolini to insure that his candidates in a coming plebiscite were "free from any tie with Freemasonry, with Judaism, and, in short, with any of the anticlerical parties".
On Lateline on Tuesday Bishop was asked what the "plan B" was if parliament rejected the plebiscite, after comments from the Labor leader, Bill shorten, that Labor would not honour Malcolm Turnbull's "deal" to have a popular vote.
Together with a law virtually establishing a system of universal male suffrage, it was submitted to the 1864 plebiscite, gaining support from 682,621 voters out of 754,148.
Seselja said a free vote in parliament would be a "radical shift" from the plebiscite the Coalition promised at the election.
He noted the former high court judge Michael Kirby's argument that a plebiscite is a departure from the way Australia has legislated on all policy issues in the past 100 years.
That "golden rule" could stand to be a bit more widely publicised – and the Coalition is still digging its heels in over a marriage equality plebiscite, despite widespread support from the public.
In the debate he was pushed into less comfortable territory – the national broadband network, the same sex marriage plebiscite he reluctantly inherited from Tony Abbott, the workability of his policies on climate change.
