Same-sex marriage survey: 61.6 yes, 38.4 no

And the winner is …

So there you have it. Below is a tool for exploring the results at divisional level according to a range of electoral and demographic criteria. Take your pick from the drop down menu, and you will get divisional “yes” votes recorded on the vertical axis, and their results for the relevant indicator on the vertical axis. Most of these are self-explanatory, with the exception of “One Nation support index”. This equals the division’s 2016 Senate vote for One Nation divided by the party’s overall Senate vote in that state, multiplied by 100. So an electorate will score 100 if its One Nation vote is exactly equal to the state average; it will score 200 if it’s double; 50 if it’s half; and so forth. This is to prevent the party’s across-the-board high results in Queensland from spoiling the effect. “Finished school” is measured as a percent of the 15-plus population.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,326 comments on “Same-sex marriage survey: 61.6 yes, 38.4 no”

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  1. I can still remember the days in Australia when ignorant people used to swab and clean after a child with HIV came in contact with their child.

    Should we really be willing to let that sort of genie out of the bottle again by indulging the whims of bigoted bakers and marriage celebrants and the like?

    I would rather expose the seat swabbers, and their ilk now wrt SSM, rather than allow them to continue to be that way as I simply turn away from them and avert my gaze.

  2. Yeesh, nobody “forces” you to serve them now, and no way in hell does the postal survey result force you to serve gay people you don’t want to.

    You misunderstand me Confessions. The point you make is EXACTLY my point.

    I was commenting on an article quoting Kaysar Trad as saying there might be ramifications for local MPs who “go against the wishes of their electorate”: meaning the group of Labor shadow ministers from Western Sydney who say they will vote for Marriage Equality, despite the overwhelming No votes in their electorates.

    There is movement afoot from the Right for bakers and other services to be “protected” from being forced to sell their goods and services to intending gay spouses. To a great extent this generates a straw man, because there hasn’t been any great movement that I have seen which advocates forcing bakers etc. to sell to gay people.

    But, as sure as little green apples, if the RWNJs put up such a straw man, someone will come along to try to do battle with it.

    In my view, anyone who starts a fight, either to *not* serve certain customers, or to *force* businesses to serve those customers is just making trouble where it does not need to be made.

    The LGBT-alphabet community had a big win today. If they were smart they’d celebrate it and revel in it, but they would also quash any attempts to exacerbate their well-deserved victory by trying to force anyone to do anything against their will. It just plays into the hands of the nutjobs like Abbott.

    Commercial businesses are not the public or some kind of essential service. If a baker doesn’t want to make money by baking cakes, then let them do so.

  3. I dont agree with it but its relatively easy (and hard to prove) for a business or group to refuse services to someone based on sexuality, age, gender, cultural background etc. You hide behind “too busy” “love to but cant accommodate your needs/requests” etc. Being soo blatant about means you get dragged to the HRC or the courts.

  5. BB

    No thats not the point you are making.

    You are saying as soon as I know they are gay I refuse to serve them.

    Its just pure discrimination. Its no straw man.

  6. CTar1,
    Recognition of Climate Change was another of Cameron’s singular achievements. Such a pity he got played by Farage, Boris and Gove. With, of course, Rupert hovering in the background.

  8. The point really is that the law cannot be worded so as to permit discrimination on the basis of sexuality, gender or other arbitrary qualifier. People will do what people will do. But the law should define the standard we have agreed on.

    The example of Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, illustrates at a very humble level indeed – catching a bus and taking seat -that equal protection mustapply even to the simplest transactions.

    We really cannot create a situation where prejudice is lawfully excusable. This would be to extend clerical dogmas into the civil domain. We’ve spent the better part of 500 years trying to undo exactly that error. It must not be allowed to happen now. Further, on “free speech”, the right to marry is surely a very good example of the exercise of free speech. We cannot extend this freedom with one hand and take it away with the other.

  9. I was commenting on an article quoting Kaysar Trad as saying there might be ramifications for local MPs who “go against the wishes of their electorate”: meaning the group of Labor shadow ministers from Western Sydney who say they will vote for Marriage Equality, despite the overwhelming No votes in their electorates.

    Well I have no idea who this Kaysar Trad character is, but my view is that he’s using faulty logic.

    You can’t wrap Labor MPs up in this ‘must respect the wishes of their electorate’ thing because Labor policy allows its MPs a free vote until after the next election. It isn’t optimal that the Don Farrells of the Senate get to vote No when his state voted Yes, but that’s what Labor signed up to.

    Liberals like my MP however, supposedly have a free vote if they are a backbencher regardless of party policy. They spruik this to all and sundry as a way in which they are somehow superior to the ALP. Yet when it really comes down to it, as we’ve seen with my MP, who spent the SSM campaign stating he’d vote according to how O’Connor votes, when it comes time to put their money where their mouths are, they squib it.

    Kaysar Trad would be better off squirreling the Rick Wilsons of our parliament in my view. Total cowards.

  10. a r –

    That may not be fair or equitable, but it appears that’s what the Constitution requires.

    Mmmm. I wouldn’t word it like that. I would say it appears that’s what this HC thinks is the best fit with the Constitution.

    I’m quite confident that they could have made a different choice in interpreting how s44 applied to Hughes that would also have fit with what is actually written into the Constitution that would not have been so unfair/inequitable, but they chose not to do so for reasons that may or may not become clear down the track.

    To my mind the HC has the responsibility to interpret the parts of the Constitution that remain ambiguous in the manner that produces the best outcomes for Australian governance. Clearly s44 doesn’t spell out what happens in all these various specific cases. What happens when a candidate for the Senate is ineligible to stand, but is declared ‘elected’ and sits for a year, and then is disqualified and then the next candidate in line becomes employed by the Crown in the meantime? s44 certainly doesn’t provide an answer, so the HC actually do have room to provide a variety of possible Constitutionally consistent answers. To my mind they have not used that opportunity to make the existing system better.

    But yes, as you say, the HC have ruled. That means that this absurd reading of the Constitution is what the law is. We have to live with that or change the Constitution.

    I posted earlier in jest that the HC are ruling the way they are in order to promote change/repeal of s44. The more I think on it the less fanciful that idea seems.

  11. It kinda might become obvious when a particular baker, or whatever, is always ‘too busy’ to bake cakes for Same Sex Marriages.
    Word would also get around pretty quickly about it.

    Honestly, some people just don’t think things through very thoroughly.

    However, if their premise is that there may be small businesses willing to severely damage their takings for the sake of their religious beliefs, then I guess there is some validity to that argument, because it takes all sorts to make the world go around.

    I would hope they went broke though for being that way.

  12. The example of cakes is disarming. What will we do if bank refuses to open an account or offer a loan, using the cake-maker’s “right-to-refuse”? What would we do if a medical staffer refused to attend a person on the basis of their sexuality? What will we do when a police officer refuses to take the complaint of a person because of their gender? Or when a hotel refuses accommodation to the lesbian couple?

    Really. This claim for a religious or conscientious exemption is a trojan horse for more campaigns, for more hate, for more disgraceful nonsense. It should be rejected outright.

  13. If anybody can find just one baker, cake shop or florist who will refuse to provide a cake or flowers to customers who are getting gaily married, please let me and everyone else know! I have heard that such specimens exist in that strange place the US of Murrica, but in Australia – seriously? Business-people are in business to make money, not to demonstrate their bigotry. A sale is a sale, money is money. Until otherwise demonstrated, I will continue to believe that these people who want to be slective about their customers are figments of the overexcited imagination of the RWNJ club. As someone commented this morn, a market for 47,000 wedding cakes has just opened up, and most if not all bakers and cakeists will be clamouring to service it.

  14. Fess,
    Keysar Trad is a mouthy little upstart who has styled himself as a spokesman for Sydney’s Muslim community. He started his own group but has been put back in his box a number of times already due to engaging his mouth before his brains.

    There are more important and intelligent spokespeople than him around.

  15. C@t:

    It’s the reason so-called religious protections aren’t needed. This whole thing is just a front for being able to openly discriminate against gay people.

  16. Sorry but people arguing that business are entitled to discriminate with only financial ramifications are simply factually incorrect. They are breaking the law and may be prosecuted

  17. It seems Hughes was in trouble because of the definition of “election”. It appears an election – the process of “being chosen” – can be very attenuated. Maybe Hughes was appointed to an office of profit before the writs for the election had been returned. We will have to wait for the judgment to find out exactly when the 2016 Senate election was considered to have started and ended.

  18. Jack a Randa the reason that there are no such discriminatory businesses in Australia is potentially that as a society we are aware that such discrimination is illegal. If we go ahead and green light it by specifically permitting it in law then we are liable to see such discrimination increase

  20. You definitely can’t discriminate providing a service based on sex, religion, race etc. we get struck off if we do.
    You can refuse on the basis that the patient is a dickhead, unless it’s an emergency.

  21. Briefly,
    You are correct about the Trojan horse. If Eric and Tony and the rest of the Coalition Fundies got their way, how long before they would be agitating for the ‘Right’ of religious Pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives? Or a GP in a town where there are few others to refuse to write a prescription for same as a result of their religious beliefs? I know Howard was headed down that path.

  26. C@t
    I’m pretty sure a GP can refuse to prescribe the morning after pill or OCP as long as they can ensure another GP will do it in a reasonable timeframe.

  28. C@tmomma says:
    Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 11:18 pm
    Briefly,
    You are correct about the Trojan horse. If Eric and Tony and the rest of the Coalition Fundies got their way, how long before they would be agitating for the ‘Right’ of religious Pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives? Or a GP in a town where there are few others to refuse to write a prescription for same as a result of their religious beliefs? I know Howard was headed down that path.

    Spot on, C@t. If we need more religious freedom, it’s freedom from religion that we should be claiming.

  29. CT
    He plays three at the back making for a very slow defensive style. He picks crap players with an A league mentality. This included the worst selection ever which was to play Brad Smith who can’t get a game in Scotland ahead of Mooy who is an EPL midfielder. He is very abrasive and arrogant.

  30. C@ – And during it he spent a very uncomfortable full day or so on the stand re’ Andy Coulsen so I guess he must have done some other useful stuff other than going to fish markets in Portugul with Sam.

    😀

  32. Diogenes,
    As you would be aware, in small town America such practices led to women having to leave town to see a doctor for a script and sometimes their husbands wouldn’t let them. Technically another doctor was available to write a prescription but it was logistically difficult. You would hate to see that happening here. Much better to have your doctor write a script for what you require, despite their private beliefs.

  34. If anybody can find just one baker, cake shop or florist who will refuse to provide a cake or flowers to customers who are getting gaily married, please let me and everyone else know! I have heard that such specimens exist in that strange place the US of Murrica, but in Australia – seriously?

    You will always fine at least one who’ll try to make himself a “freedom” hero. Just as you’ll always find someone to take him on and try to force him to sell against his will (or beliefs, or whatever).

    There is no law that can compel a commercial enterprise to sell to anyone who walks in their front door demanding service. There just isn’t. No matterhow you try to dress it up. And, if anyone tries to force the issue, it’ll be nothing else but fodder for the greasy tabloids. Better to just leave the issue alone and go to another supplier.

    The one who refuses service will either go broke, or won’t go broke. But the issue will be solved. Caveat vendor as well as emptor.

    Personally? The only customers I don’t want to deal with are the trouble-makers, the ones who never stop whingeing or nit-picking. You soon work them out,and then you’re always “out of stock”. They’re just bad news. A sap on your productivity. Customers like that can bleed you dry with frustration.

    As to sanitizing toilet seats, I could half-understand that,but only half. I’ve met only one of those, and we took great delight in removing the tape he placed across the toilet bowl,performing the necessaries and then replacing the tape as we had found it. The alternative for the tradies and the systems integrators was to take TWO lifts up 7 levels to street level, take off our clean-room booties (that we were forced to wear inside the house),walk the plank across a muddy, unpaved “footpath” and perform our ablutions in the darkest, dankest Port-a-Loo anyone has ever seen. Then reverse the process, just to get back to work. Forget about THAT!

    No, the real nutjob was the guy who disinfected just an ordinary chair that anyone working on his site had sat in. If you touched his wood-panelling, he got out the Mr Sheen. If you put a finger on his equipment, it was Dettol’d. He’d get the mop out once an hour to swab down the front porch. The hose every two hours. After you’d visited his house once, it was easy to make excuses for never going there again.

    I wouldn’t give two hoots whether someone was gay, lesbian, queer or whatever-else the other letters indicate. But give me an OCD customer and I’ll run a mile. Eventually they’ll pick on you and find reasons not to pay yourbills. No thanks.

    No one can forcea commercial organization to service any particular customer.We still have a contract-based buyer/seller system,and if someone doesn’t want to serve you, why push the bloody point? Go down the road to the next shop who will serve you.

    By forcing the issue all you’re doing is playing their stupid game.

  36. Sorry but people arguing that business are entitled to discriminate with only financial ramifications are simply factually incorrect. They are breaking the law and may be prosecuted

    When was the last time you saw anyone prosecuted for refusing service to someone, and lose the case?

    There is no enforceable law in this country that compels any commercial business to enter into a contract of sale that they do not wish to enter into.

  39. C@t
    I looked it up and a GP can definitely refuse to prescribe the pill according to the Medical Board and AMA under a “conscientious objector” rule.

  40. Ummm, Bushfire, Anti-Discrim Act 1991 Qld:
    s 7 The Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of the following attributes—
    …..
    (l) lawful sexual activity;

    (m) gender identity; etc

    S 46 (1) A person who supplies goods or services (whether or not for reward or profit) must not discriminate against another person—

    (a) by failing to supply the goods or services; or

    (b) in the terms on which goods or services are supplied; or

    (c) in the way in which goods or services are supplied; or

    (d) by treating the other person unfavourably in any way in connection with the supply of goods and services.

    I believe most States have something similar. 20 mins or so on AustLII would find them all.

  41. All this stuff about cake shop owners and other service providers being given the religious freedom to deny service to people celebrating same sex marriages is bullshit.

    Whether or not there is a cake, or how good the cake is, will make no difference to the wedding itself. Only the person actually conducting the marriage, be it marriage celebrant, registry office or priest/imam/rabbi, makes a difference as to whether there is a marriage or not.

    The rest only goes to how much pleasure the couple have in celebrating their marriage.

    So if some cake shop owner wants to refuse service to a gay couple getting married, all he is trying to do is make their day less enjoyable than it should be – they are not doing anything that contributes to the marriage itself. If they want gays to have a bad time at a wedding they cannot influence, then they are nothing more than gay haters or homophobes.

    This has nothing to do with same sex marriage and everything to do with the age old sport of making LGBTI people feel like shit or worse. And if that is not prejudice directed at people because of their sexuality then I don’t know what is!

    If someone can refuse to cater for a wedding explicitly because the couple is gay, then it is no different to refusing to cater for them because they are black, or Chinese, or Muslim. It is just unlawful prejudice and it should stay that way!

  42. Playing three at the back with wing backs requires two things. Very fit wing backs, who need to be able to get up and down the pitch a lot more than traditional wingers, but also very technical and switched on players in a positional sense. Posta has a problem because I just don’t think the players he has at his disposal are good enough to play in this style. Australia were the width of the upright from going out against Syria. Honduras are a very ordinary side too. I think he knows that this team are going to be on the end of some hidings in Russia and he thinks it might sink a big foreign coaching move. Rangers have been suggested as a job he might be in for.

  43. I ran into a gay guy I worked with a couple of weeks ago. He and his partner are going to do the marriage thing and he was saying that they aren’t planning getting bakers to do ‘cakes’, expensive photographers or anything like that.

    They’ll just find an an agreeable CMC, do the minimal necessary formal requirements, his partners mother will probably do a couple of ‘pavs’. They’ll rally a few eskys, use the laundry sink, invite about 10 or 15 of their family and friends and have a BBQ in their back yard on a Saturday arvo.

    All low key. They’ve got other things to do with their money and just want to make sure they have the same legal protections and rights as any other married couple.

  45. The Piping Shrike‏ @Piping_Shrike
    12h12 hours ago
    Jews being denied a cake is always how Australian Conservatism should end. Where it started.

    LOL.

  46. Clem
    Behich managed it a bit but Leckie, who is actually a very good player, hated it. In the end, the wing backs end up not contributing and as you say it looks like a ten year olds game with everyone clogged in the middle.

  47. Bushfire Bill

    “The former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Keysar Trad, was pleased at the 75 per cent “no” vote in Labor frontbencher Jason Clare’s electorate of Blaxland, and surprised it was not even higher.
    The expat colonies are always behind the motherland, socially. Long after the Old Country has given up the veil, the migrants stick to the old ways.

    It’s the kids who make the changes.”

    ———

    What do you liberals do if the “kids” are more homophobic than their parents?

  48. I saw the petulant Sen Canavan on TV in the early afternoon.

    Don’t think he did his career in politics much good and as it looks like the Adani thing is unlikely to go anywhere he’ll be marked down as just another looser.

    ‘Christian Rock Groups’ FFS!

  49. Um, Jacka Randa… try proving it. All the vendor has to say is “No stock today”. A law has to be enforceable to be useful.

    It’s a pointless exercise unless the vendor wants a fight and the customer wants to fight him.

    If I was the customer I’d just go next door (and tell all my friends to do the same thing). See how long it would take a cake shop to realize the commercial downside of refusal to serve.

    Life’s too short.

    Gay people can get married. I’m truly happy for them. I voted “Yes”myself. Sent the latter back the day I got it. But it’s really not that big of an issue in the grand scheme of things.

  50. I just hope the coming weeks is an opportunity to see the religiously damaged in our Parliament subject to ridicule. Who needs Xmas pressies 🙂

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