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. ratsak: “Should she be also ineligible despite not teaching at any time from nominating to issue of writs, simply because she took a day as a casual teacher in a public school a year after the election?”

    The words of section 44 are that anyone who “holds any office of profit under the Crown…shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.”

    I haven’t seen the grounds for the decision (I assume they haven’t been released yet), but it seems to me that Hughes clearly held an “office of profit under the Crown” at the time at which she was “chosen”. If zoomster was doing casual teaching work on and off, and wasn’t actually teaching on the day that she could be “chosen”, then (depending on the basis of the High Court ruling) she ought to be ok.

  2. Note that it also only impacts on Senate candidates, as the ‘cure’ for an improper House election is a by-election, for which the person can just resign their position prior to nominating.

    Precisely.

  3. lnp great apes declaring true colours, maybe mal won’t last until xmas

    lnps Canavan, Ruston, Seselja, Abetz, O’Sullivan plus onp hanson supported Bernardi motion against Medicare funding for abortion.

    lnp senators supported Bernardi motion commending NSW govt for abandoning Crossroads program in schools.

    Cormann plus other senior govt ministers supported Bernardi motion against White Ribbon day.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/the-pulse-live/samesex-marriage-debate-begins-in-parliament-20171115-gzmccy.html

  4. ajm,

    State government employees are also out under s44 and not all of them are covered by similar legislation. Nods and winks get it done there.

  5. KayJay, this may provide some insight as to the possible movements of your vacuum cleaner brush. 🙂

    “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time.
    One of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon, who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the biros he’d bought over the past few years.
    There followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life.
    And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make a fool of themselves in public.
    When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.
    There did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod Beeblebrox’s highly profitable second-hand biro business.”
    Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

  6. workmanalice: Fifield says broadcasting rights of women’s sport is a matter for media organisations… but didn’t the government just give $30 million Foxtel for womens sport? #SenateQT

  7. So, if a couple want a loan from their bank to finance their wedding, can the bank refuse?
    How about the jumping castle man or the marquee supplier?
    And of course all those toll road operators around Sydney will not want same sex wedding cavalcades driving down their pristine motorways.
    Not sure where this could all end up if the trogdolites have their way>

  8. On jobs for friends, I think there is a world of difference between an appointment by the AG and someone doing relief teaching or for that matter being a headmaster in the public school system. Section 44 seems not seem to see a difference.

  9. **Cormann plus other senior govt ministers supported Bernardi motion against White Ribbon day.**

    As the link suggests, the only thing Cormann could have against White Ribbon is that they support medicare covered abortions.

  10. Best thing about that Hitch Hikers Guide passage is how self referential it is. A paragraph of nonsense that seemed like a good idea at the time

  11. MB,

    Hughes resigned from the job 45 mins after the decision to knock out Nash. She wasn’t ‘chosen’ at the original election, and she really wasn’t in the race to be chosen again until the recount.

    It seems (and obviously until the reasoning is released we can’t confirm) that the HC has held that the amicus’ argument that the time for being chosen extends uninterrupted from the date of nominations right up until a completely unpredictable and very unlikely situation like Nash occurs which could be even more than 6 years after the relevant election (as normally Senator’s take their seat the July 1 after the election, so can be waiting many many months after election before actually having their term start).

    Zoomster on this reading would also be out if she did just the single paid hour of casual teaching for a public school in the 6 or so years between the election and the end of the relevant senator’s term. It’s a joke.

  12. kakuru says:
    Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 1:16 pm
    sprocket
    “If Justine Keay is disqualified in Braddon, Jacqui Lambie could run for this Reps seat. She would probably romp it in.”

    I’m not so certain of that (Lambie winning Braddon). May depend on if the Libs run dead (or run at all).

    I don’t think that Lambie could beat Keay in Braddon. Both would face the election as the unfortunate ‘victims’ of s.44 and, like Barnaby Joyce, might expect an element of sympathy vote. As the local member, Keay would well known around the electorate whereas Lambie represented the whole of Tasmania and spent a lot of time espousing causes that had national connotations.

    Lambie would most likely prefer to return to the Senate somehow, where she could resume her crusades on various issues.

  13. MartinHaese: The @CityofAdelaide is proud to offer free weddings in our beautiful Park Lands.
    To celebrate marriage equality, Council will waive site fees for all wedding ceremonies in our Park Lands and Squares from 1 January until 30 June next year, should marriage equality become law. pic.twitter.com/qEM5aeDEQJ

  14. Roger Miller @ #1089 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 2:28 pm

    The High court are not making section 44 a pile of shit. Section 44 is a pile of shit and should go.

    The Hollie Hughes ruling is the only one so far that appears questionable, and the HC have not yet released their reasons for that ruling. While I do think the ruling is bad, it is to soon to say whether it is section 44 that is at fault, or just an over-enthusiastic interpretation.

  15. ratsak @ #580 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 1:54 pm

    the time for being chosen extends uninterrupted from the date of nominations right up until a completely unpredictable and very unlikely situation like Nash occurs

    It’s more that the time for being chosen extends uninterrupted until the formal end of the relevant term. Which is neither unpredictable nor unlikely.

    The unsuccessful candidate either accepts their loss and moves on with their life, or they can choose to maintain their eligibility and cling to the unlikely and unpredictable hope that a situation like Nash will occur during that particular term.

  16. Will today be the first day for a long time Mal has a day without a pie in the face, a cigar exploding,sitting on a whoopee cushion, stepping on a banana skin, or a ‘kick me’ sign stuck on his back ?

  17. timdunlop: Australia is not the Telegraph. It is not Sydney talkback. It is not Latham or Jones or Devine, Bernardi, Abbott, Hanson, the IPA or the BCA. It sure as shit ain’t Lyle Shelton. And yet we let these tails wag the dog of social and political discussion. Time for that to change.

  18. Barney in Go Dau (Block)
    Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 2:48 pm
    Comment #1105

    My beloved wife told me that there would be days of ecstacy approaching nirvana.

    Ecstasy may refer to: Ecstasy (emotion), a trance or trance-like state in which a person transcends normal consciousness; Religious ecstasy, a state of …………………

    Today is such a day.

    You have such understanding and, I am quietly confident, that as you move to the final edition of your treatise on the rise and fall of the transmissionability of weasels via wormholes (witness one J.W. Howard’s transition from state to state of being/unbeing), glory will be yours.

    Glory, I say Glory (Foghorn Leghorn imitation) in the knowledge of your existence.

    We who are about to have an afternoon nap, salute you.

    🖖

  19. This article says Christine Foster kept her British citizenship to possibly get married under British law but will now renounce it and be married in Australia.

    That’s all well and good but she doesn’t have to renounce British citizenship – unless she has an ambition to join her brother in Federal Parliament.

    I will give up my British citizenship on the back of same-sex marriage result

    Christine Forster

    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/i-will-give-up-my-british-citizenship-on-the-back-of-samesex-marriage-result-20171115-gzlu7p.html

  20. ratsak @ #1112 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 1:54 pm

    MB,

    Hughes resigned from the job 45 mins after the decision to knock out Nash. She wasn’t ‘chosen’ at the original election, and she really wasn’t in the race to be chosen again until the recount.

    It seems (and obviously until the reasoning is released we can’t confirm) that the HC has held that the amicus’ argument that the time for being chosen extends uninterrupted from the date of nominations right up until a completely unpredictable and very unlikely situation like Nash occurs which could be even more than 6 years after the relevant election (as normally Senator’s take their seat the July 1 after the election, so can be waiting many many months after election before actually having their term start).

    Zoomster on this reading would also be out if she did just the single paid hour of casual teaching for a public school in the 6 or so years between the election and the end of the relevant senator’s term. It’s a joke.

    I would think that Hughes was “chosen” at the moment when the HC handed down its decision booting Nash. It is after all the Court of Disputed Returns and it had just handed down its decision on a disputed return, resulting in a count back which elected Hughes. Will be interesting when we can see the full reasons to see if this is the correct reading of the decision. Perhaps if Hughes had anticipated the decision and resigned before the decision on Nash she would have been OK.

    Don’t think Zoomster would be in much trouble – “office of profit” has usually been taken to refer to an established permanent position in the public service or under another act, not to casual employees.

  21. The unsuccessful candidate either accepts their loss and moves on with their life, or they can choose to maintain their eligibility and cling to the unlikely and unpredictable hope that a situation like Nash will occur during that particular term.

    and this is some sort of defence of the decision?

    If you’re a lawyer or union boss no probs go out and make your money in private practice or your union like you always have.

    But if you’re a teacher or policeman. Ha sucks to by you eh? Go and get another job for the next six and a half years if you want to not be deemed ineligible if by some strange circumstance there is a recount.

    It’s stupid. If you wanted to fill a casual vacancy you resign the day before the state government appoints you. You want to stand for a by election, resign the day before you nominate. Want to not be excluded from any potential future Senate recount, don’t ever do a dollars worth or work for any state or federal government body. It treats a people like Hughes in a demonstrably different fashion to someone others for no practical purpose.

    It’s clearly unjust, impractical for the individuals, unnecessary to the aims of s44, and utterly avoidable if the HC had just stepped back a bit from the narrowest possible reading of the text and instead made the quite logical conclusion that someone who has been officially excluded and declared a loser in an Senate election is no longer in the process of being chosen, and doesn’t restart being in the process of being chosen until any recount that might be relevant occurs.

  22. Hang on. Wasn’t Lamby a senator and therefore occupying a position of profit under the Crown and therefore in breach of S44?

    Surely she can’t have it both ways?

  23. I have read on a number of occasions a suggestion people turn to religion for comfort during difficult times. This in a report from Manus shows traffic the other way. RC NOW !

    Decay, despair, defiance: inside the Manus Island refugee camp
    by Ben Doherty on Manus Island

    ………………………“In this place there are people from every religion – Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists. But most of us now are atheists. We know there is no fucking God in this place.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/16/decay-despair-defiance-inside-the-manus-island-refugee-camp

  24. ratsak: “Hughes resigned from the job 45 mins after the decision to knock out Nash. She wasn’t ‘chosen’ at the original election, and she really wasn’t in the race to be chosen again until the recount.”

    Thanks, I hadn’t been aware of exactly when it was she resigned.

    You’ve certainly got a point. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975 makes it clear that a resignation takes effect from the day it is notified to the G-G (which arguably means that a resignation given to the G-G at 11.55 pm applies from 12.00 am the previous night.

    So it seems reasonable for you to expect that the High Court is going to inform us all that “chosen” means any time from the issuing of writs for the relevant election until the dissolution of parliament prior to the next election.

    And I agree that, if the High Court rules this way, it would completely defy common sense and also perhaps raise questions about the eligibility of other senators who have filled casual vacancies and who might even have only briefly “held an office of profit under the crown” since the previous election.

    Oh dear. What a mess.

  25. a r @ #1117 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 3:04 pm

    It’s more that the time for being chosen extends uninterrupted until the formal end of the relevant term. Which is neither unpredictable nor unlikely.

    I think this is where legalism and logic part company. Surely the “time for being chosen” should extend from nomination to the time when someone is actually chosen (including having all challenges and recounts resolved). Once a person is chosen, it is impossible for anyone else to be chosen – or to sit as a senator – unless and until the original person chosen is found to be ineligible. If this happens, the “time for being chosen” should restart at that point and continue until the recount is complete, and someone else is chosen. Anything else defies logic – the time the ineligible person was sitting as a senator is not invalidated, which makes it impossible for anyone else to have been chosen or to have sat, so why keep up a legal fiction that it was continuously possible to “choose” another person during the intervening time?

  26. ajm

    The provision permitting Commonwealth Public Servants to resume their careers after unsuccessfully contesting an election is not a “gentlemen’s agreement” – it’s in the Public Service Act

    Yep.

    It’s got nothing to do at all with whether they would be considered to be in “office of profit under the Crown” for the purposes of being elected to federal parliament.

  27. BW: “Hang on. Wasn’t Lamby a senator and therefore occupying a position of profit under the Crown and therefore in breach of S44?”

    Section 44 specifically excludes the remuneration received by members of parliament from the definiton of “office of profit under the Crown”.

  28. ratsak @ #593 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 2:23 pm

    and this is some sort of defence of the decision?

    No. I’m not saying the decision is fair or defensible, more that it’s comprehensible. Particularly in view of the HC probably preferring certainty over setting a precedent that would have them picking through the individual minutiae of case after case.

    I can see where the decision might have come from, and why, and I don’t think it’s quite as far out of left field as some people have suggested. Doesn’t mean I agree with it, but I think there’s more of a rationale behind it than simply ‘the HC is trying to be as irksome as possible’.

    Although I also think BiG-D’s much-less-severe reasoning (i.e. that the ineligibility occurred because Hughes waited until after the RC ruling to resign) is still in with a solid chance.

    Want to not be excluded from any potential future Senate recount, don’t ever do a dollars worth or work for any state or federal government body.

    Yes. It may be stupid and unfair, but it’s also crystal clear and unequivocal. It’s not the HC’s job to make the law less stupid, that’s what a referendum is for.

    If the politicians can’t be bothered to change the law in the proper way, why should the HC give them a backdoor means of accomplishing the same thing?

    But it’s all speculation until the actual decision is released.

  29. ajm @ #1124 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 3:17 pm

    I would think that Hughes was “chosen” at the moment when the HC handed down its decision booting Nash.

    This may indeed be their reasoning. It would at least make more sense than assuming the “time for being chosen” extends continuously from nomination till the end of that senate session (i.e. 6 years). If so, Hughes was just unlucky that she did not think to resign in anticipation of the decision.

  30. meher baba:

    I struggle to see the difference between respecting an Indigenous person’s religious sentiments about where I should walk and respecting a Muslim or Christian person’s sentiments that they should not be made to involve themselves directly or indirectly in a same sex wedding.

    I don’t see the case of Uluru as being about religion – rather, it is about land rights. We returned the land on which Uluru sits to the traditional owners, and that ownership doesn’t mean a pinch of shit if they can’t use it to control the comings and goings of people on that land.

    Similarly the local mosque can require me to take off my shoes before entering not because of religious freedom but because it is private property.

  31. Don’t think Zoomster would be in much trouble – “office of profit” has usually been taken to refer to an established permanent position in the public service or under another act, not to casual employees.

    true enough in that the question hasn’t ever been tested.

    With this HC I’m not so sure that they’d make a distinction between permanent employment and casuals. If you have a contract with the government you would be pretty much stuffed.

    I think Gillespie will be worrying. And I don’t think he ‘should’ be on the facts that I’m aware from the reporting. It seems a very tenuous relationship to the crown. But I wouldn’t be putting any money on him winning.

    And as for Hughes being chosen when the HC axed Nash? Again it would be a ridiculously legalistic reading. There would be nothing whatsoever legally or logically to prevent the court saying that since no one is campaigning or voting, nor could reasonably be expected to preempt the courts decision that the process of ‘choosing’ restarts on the day of the recount and so long as you’re all in order then. But that also isn’t what the amicus was arguing so there’s no reason to assume that is what they’d decided.

  32. “The provision permitting Commonwealth Public Servants to resume their careers after unsuccessfully contesting an election is not a “gentlemen’s agreement” – it’s in the Public Service Act”

    Yes, my bad: it’s there in the Act (was it always there? I don’t have the energy to check right now).

    I wonder if the High Court’s latest ruling will open it up to being challenged as unconstitutional on the grounds that an office to which you are entitled to be reinstated is one you still effectively “hold”.

  33. The text that extends it doesn’t technically last to the next term, any other event that provided without doubt all people returned on the writ were valid at the time of nomination through their election would also terminate the period which is meaningless in regard to this particular issue but does make the period not what you’d call clear or objective.

  34. poroti

    Manus. A timely reminder that whilst we celebrate the freedom of the yes vote for SSM couples, on PNG we imprison refugees.

  35. * Last writs sorry. If someone was replaced (either by DQ or casual vacancy) the election would be ongoing until they were settled too even if everyone on the original writ was.

    (Actually does that technically reopen an election if a casual vacancy is found to be invalid ? Even if it was terminated before that event. )

    Yeah, these are absurd questions but they flow from the conceit here.

  36. SK

    It is all over for the All Whites.

    They could get Postecoglou in to help them for next time. He sounds he’s had enough of what he’s doing now.

  37. caf: “I don’t see the case of Uluru as being about religion – rather, it is about land rights. We returned the land on which Uluru sits to the traditional owners, and that ownership doesn’t mean a pinch of shit if they can’t use it to control the comings and goings of people on that land.”

    I’m happy to stand corrected on this by anyone who knows more, but I understand that the traditional owners had leased Uluru back to Parks Australia until 2084 and that any decision about the climb rests with Parks Australia rather than them. Some of the traditional owners have wanted to close the climb for many years now, but Parks Australia persuaded them to agree to a voluntary approach through which visitors are requested not to climb the rock. Now Parks Australia is contemplating closing it, on the basis of the religious beliefs of the traditional owners. I haven’t seen it suggested anywhere that the closure of the climb would be on the basis of the owners exercising their property rights.

    “Similarly the local mosque can require me to take off my shoes before entering not because of religious freedom but because it is private property.”

    I’m not sure about the legal niceties of this. But, if it turned out that they didn’t have a legal right to make you take off your shoes, do you think it would be reasonable for you to refuse to do so? I certainly wouldn’t.

  38. meher baba @ #1138 Thursday, November 16th, 2017 – 2:41 pm

    “The provision permitting Commonwealth Public Servants to resume their careers after unsuccessfully contesting an election is not a “gentlemen’s agreement” – it’s in the Public Service Act”

    Yes, my bad: it’s there in the Act (was it always there? I don’t have the energy to check right now).

    I wonder if the High Court’s latest ruling will open it up to being challenged as unconstitutional on the grounds that an office to which you are entitled to be reinstated is one you still effectively “hold”.

    Been there for at least 4 decades that I know about.

  39. I have no idea just how good or bad a coach Postecoglou is.

    Looking at his body shape, his body language and his words, I would say that his current job is a one man OH&S disaster.

    That said, one germane point may be that he has taken a team with an average FIFA rating of 48 and managed to squeeze it into the final 32.

  40. and fair enough ajm I too can see how they have come to the decision in Hughes and as I said earlier it does have the benefits of being in accordance with the letter of the section and being predictable and easily applied to future cases.

    My point is simply that alternative decisions were entirely open to the court that shared the same virtues of compliance with the letter and predictability, but also were just, served the purpose as well as the wording, and didn’t open up further uncertainties.

    This wasn’t a decision the court was compelled to take. It was one it chose to take. It was a poor choice considering the alternative that existed. IMHO of course…

  41. Ratsak

    And as for Hughes being chosen when the HC axed Nash? Again it would be a ridiculously legalistic reading. There would be nothing whatsoever legally or logically to prevent the court saying that since no one is campaigning or voting, nor could reasonably be expected to preempt the courts decision that the process of ‘choosing’ restarts on the day of the recount and so long as you’re all in order then. But that also isn’t what the amicus was arguing so there’s no reason to assume that is what they’d decided.

    My logic is that Nash was a valid candidate until the HC decided she wasn’t. At that instant, she ceased to be a valid candidate and the votes as cast now elected someone else. It might have taken a bit of time to do the recount and work out who that “someone else” was but the point of Hughes being “chosen” was when Nash was booted by the HC.

    Just because the HC closely followed the reasoning of the amicus in the previous cases, there’s no warrant to assume they’ve done the same thing this time. The court and the amicus could well have come to the same decision by different routes. While the High Court will often (usually?) accept one of the lines of argument presented to them by the parties involved, they are not prevented from substituting their own reasoning if they consider it warranted.

  42. m b

    I wonder if the High Court’s latest ruling will open it up to being challenged as unconstitutional on the grounds that an office to which you are entitled to be reinstated is one you still effectively “hold”.

    Good question.

  43. poroti says: Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 3:04 pm

    Will today be the first day for a long time Mal has a day without a pie in the face, a cigar exploding,sitting on a whoopee cushion, stepping on a banana skin, or a ‘kick me’ sign stuck on his back ?

    ***********************************************************

    We have just had a scheduled power outage from 8am – till 410pm – so apologies if someone has already said this ;

    but now Malcolm is able to now marry the one and only true love of his life

    “Do you Malcolm Turnball take Malcolm Turnball to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death”

    “I do”

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