Why does my script omit leading whitespace in console output?

Just quote the echo in your function:

function consoleWriteLine() {
  echo "$*" >&2
}

echo just notices multiple arguments separated by space and prints them separated by a single space. See:

$ echo a b c
a b c
$ echo a b             c
a b c
$ echo "a b             c"
a b             c

In the last example the string a b c is one single argument and echoed as it is.

Had this problem myself,

As per This blog you need to change the IFS as by default it contains white space and so sees "xxx yyy zzzz" as 3 strings with white space between them.

IFS='\n'

prior to the command will fix it, and unset IFS to remove the change

unset IFS