Marriage Equality In Australia: How Did We Get Here?

I would have published a short blog announcing that Australia has voted for marriage equality on Wednesday, had I not been so freakin’ happy over it, and also having an exam that night. But what I can tell you is how we got to where we are now.

The story begins in 1900, when the British Parliament was writing our Constitution. In Section 51 - the primary section dealing with the legislative powers of the federal Parliament - it included subsection xxi, which granted the federal Parliament the power to legislate for marriage. In 1961, the federal government exercised this power for the first time, passing its first marriage laws, the Marriage Act. It did not specify gender as a requirement of marriage, believing that it was too obvious to have to explicitly include.

Until 2011, both parties remained opposed to marriage equality. But in December 2011, at its national conference, the Labor Party resolved to support it. However, a significant number of Labor MPs remained opposed to marriage equality, some to the point where they would vote against it despite the party’s official position. Ordinarily, Labor expels MPs (Members of Parliament) from the parliamentary party if they vote against Labor platform. However, this time, Labor decided that its members would have a conscience vote on the issue. A conscience vote is permission granted by a party to its members to vote against the party platform without being sanctioned by the party. The question of a conscience vote will become very relevant later on.

September 2012 saw the last time the Parliament voted on marriage equality, and it was comprehensively rejected. At this time, Labor had a minority government. In our Westminster system, to form an executive government, a party must have either have a majority of seats in the lower house of the Parliament (majority government) or, failing that, have a majority of seats supporting the government (minority government). A slight majority of Labor MPs supported it, but this was nowhere near enough for passage through the Parliament.

In May 2013, Labor MP and former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd changed his mind on marriage equality and supported it. In June 2013, he once again took over the Prime Ministership. This was very significant because it was the first time we had a pro-marriage equality Prime Minister. However, with an election less than three months away, there was no time to legislate marriage equality in the 43rd Parliament, and besides, the conscience vote was still in place for Labor MPs, leaving them free to vote against it. As such, Labor couldn’t muster the numbers to pass the Parliament even if they wanted to. However, Rudd did promise to legalise marriage equality within 100 days if elected in September.

This didn’t happen. On September 7, 2013, the election of the 44th Parliament took place. The Liberal-National coalition, led by Tony Abbott, won in a landslide, gaining 90 seats in our 150-seat lower house, and with it, executive government. Abbott and the Coalition both opposed marriage equality at this time, putting it off the political agenda for the moment. In October 2013, the Australian Capital Territory attempted to legalise it, but the federal government successfully challenged the legislation in the High Court in December 2013. This does not form a relevant party of the marriage equality story anymore.

Throughout 2014, a series of terrible blunders saw the Abbott government in a precarious position by the end of the year. On January 26, 2015, he gave a knighthood to the British royal Prince Phillip. This unleashed such a near-unanimous national wave of derision against Abbott that in February 2015, he faced a leadership spill. A leadership spill is an attempt by some members of a political party to change its leader. Leadership is decided by the party room - the MPs in that party. If the party changing leadership is in government, a change in leader means a change in Prime Minister. (This is how Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister again in June 2013.) The effort to replace Abbott was leader was defeated 61 to 39.

In May 2015, a series of events happened that sparked our national marriage equality debate that continued, non-stop, for two-and-a-half years. Here’s what happened: First, beginning on May 20, a number of MPs publicly declared that they now supported marriage equality all within a few days of each other. This made the numbers in both houses very close, although the lower house was still slightly more against. Then, on May 22, Ireland voted for marriage equality in a referendum. After the referendum, Abbott made a series of comments that strongly suggested he would allow Coalition MPs a conscience vote on the issue - just like Labor. Achieving a Coalition conscience vote constituted an enormous part of the activism for marriage equality - without one, there was absolutely no chance of it passing in the 44th Parliament.

These events had greatly increased public awareness of the issue, and pressure was now mounting on the Coalition to respond. Before the 2013 election, Abbott had said that further considerations of the Coalition’s policy on marriage would be discussed by the party room. It was time for that to happen, and it did in a party room meeting on August 11, 2015.

Abbott was in a tough spot. There were many groups he had to placate and appease to avoid either turning on him. On the one hand, he had to offer to opponents in the party (and to himself) sufficient reassurance that marriage equality would remain illegal. On the other hand, he had to offer to supporters in the party (and to the Australian people, who by now strongly supported it) a sufficient opportunity for it to become legal that they would not be increasingly frustrated over the lack of progress.

The party room voted two-thirds to one-third against a conscience vote, requiring Coalition MPs to vote against marriage equality or face party sanctions (however, the Coalition’s sanctions are quite minor (though still influential), and are basically limited to party disapproval, and remaining on the backbench rather than being elevated to the Cabinet). Abbott could have overruled the party room and allowed a conscience vote anyway, but didn’t (he opposed a conscience vote personally). This was the effort to satisfy conservatives. However, to satisfy them, he pissed off everyone else.

A Newspoll released on August 18 - the Sunday after the party room decision - revealed that when given a choice between the two major parties, 56% preferred Labor, and 44% preferred the Coalition. In our system of government, this translates into total and utter destruction of the losing party. Had an election been held that weekend, the government would have lost 36 seats out of a 150-seat House of Representatives. This proved fatal for Abbott: he faced a second spill motion on September 14, 2015. (It’s important to note that unlike the marriage party room decision, which included both the Liberal and National parties, this was a vote on the leadership of the Liberal Party only, and therefore included only Liberal MPs.) This time, the motion passed, meaning the leadership of the Liberal Party was open. On the next question of who should be the leader, Malcolm Turnbull defeated Abbott by 54 votes to 44. He became Prime Minister the next day.

However, despite his long-known support for marriage equality, we quickly learned that this was unlikely to lead to change in the Coalition’s decision to deny a conscience vote on the issue. Turnbull had only secured the numbers to become Liberal leader by promising to continue the policy of holding a plebiscite. If he reneged on this, he risked those MPs who supported him as leader on the condition that he continued the plebiscite abandoning him and returning to Abbott. However, whether or not his would have happened is debatable.  One the one hand, Turnbull was extremely popular at the time, and immediately after becoming leader, the Coalition returned to absolute landslide support over Labor. Would these MPs would have sacrificed this party popularity and (at the time) certain electoral victory just because they didn’t get their way on marriage? That said, in September 2016, our Sunday morning political analysis show Insiders reported that some Coalition MPs would rather lose an election than legalise marriage equality.

It eventually became clear just how intransigent Turnbull had become on the issue, especially in February 2016. At this time, there was a huge national controversy over the Safe Schools Coalition, an LGBTI anti-bullying program. At the incessant agitating of conservative MPs, Turnbull ordered a review into the program on February 23. When the report vindicated the program on March 16, conservative MPs launched a second revolt, and Turnbull proceeded to ignore the report and significantly curtailed the program on March 18. Additionally, Labor attended to bring on a vote on marriage equality in the House of Representatives on March 2. This was blocked by the government.

But what was also becoming clear was that this sellout to the right wing of the Coalition was beginning to hurt Turnbull. Although he had a huge lead over Labor six months earlier, this was steadily closing. He was still ahead, but Labor was now a chance to win the next election. This election was called on May 8 for July 2, 2016.

After the calling of the election, Turnbull continued to misstep, so much that the Coalition was looking at the possibility of losing government on election night. Only ten days later did we find out that in the 45th Parliament, the Coalition had barely scraped together 76 seats to form a majority government. This crippled Turnbull significantly, as in addition to party room revolt, there was now another threat he faced to his leadership: the numbers on the floor of the House. All it would take was one disgruntled MP in the lower house to leave the Coalition and force his government into minority. Indeed, in October 2016, one Nationals MP threatened to do just that if there was conscience vote without a plebiscite. This placed added pressure on him to resist calls for a conscience vote. However, in another way, this close margin presented a golden opportunity for marriage equality: all it would take was just three Coalition MPs to cross the floor and vote with Labor and the cross bench, and a marriage bill could pass the House of Representatives.

Nonetheless, preparations for the plebiscite continued. But while the polls just a couple of months earlier had shown overwhelming support for the plebiscite, this was now dropping fast, especially as people learned the details. According to one poll, when people realised it would not require politicians to act and would cost $160 million, support fell to just 25%. By September, a clear majority opposed the plebiscite.

But also in September, the bill to hold the plebiscite was ready to go. After again making concessions to conservatives, by including in the bill public funding to Yes and No campaigns, a requirement on TV stations to broadcast both sides of the debate, and a No-leaning question “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”, the bill was introduced to the Parliament on September 14. It passed the House of Representatives in October. It was blocked by the Senate in November.

This left the government in trouble. The issue wasn’t going away. People wanted it resolved. Newspoll had them consistently down by 53-47, a significant and clearly-election-losing margin. And given the ease with which a bill would have passed Parliament had a conscience vote been granted, the government was blamed for the failure to resolve the issue, despite Labor being the significant blocker of the plebiscite in the Senate.

(One should note at this point that on November 22, 2016, a gay 13 year-old boy named Tyrone Unsworth killed himself after years of homophobic bullying at his schools. His suicide became a national tragedy, comparable to the suicides of Tyler Clementi or Justin Aaberg in America. It generated extensive media discussion for weeks, especially due to the controversy back in February over the Safe Schools Coalition. Fortunately, conservatives faced severe backlash and criticism over his suicide.)

Parliament rose for the year, and returned in February 2017, to a disastrous start for the government. A conservative Coalition Senator named Cory Bernardi announced on Parliament’s first day that he was leaving the Coalition to start his own party, called Australian Conservatives. Bernardi believed that the Coalition had become too left-wing. Later on in February, media reported that same-sex marriage supporters within the Coalition were pushing for its legalisation in a very short period of time. However, these reports quickly fizzled out as false hope.

In March, a number of controversies occurred over the issue. Firstly, beer brewer Coopers publicly facilitated a debate about marriage equality between two Liberal MPs, one for it and one against it. The whole point was to demonstrate that people could disagree respectfully, but they had partnered with the Bible Society of Australia in producing the video. For this reason and perhaps others, so many people were so furious by the debate that the company had to publicly apologise and announce their support for marriage equality.

Secondly, about 30 CEOs of different companies wrote an open letter to the government calling for marriage equality to be legalised, as it would be good for business. In response, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton launched a series of inexplicable attacks on the CEOs. Some of his comments had serious and genuinely troubling authoritarian overtones, such as his call for the CEOs to “be publicly shamed”. His response was heavily criticised by many commentators as an attempt at censorship.

Thirdly, and most importantly, something happened that at the time seemed very insignificant but would later become possibly the biggest factor in where we are today. Responding to Labor’s blocking of a bill to hold the plebiscite, Dutton publicly suggested that the government may try to find a mechanism to hold some kind of vote on the issue that could be conducted purely by the executive branch without Parliament’s approval. He reasoned that it would be preferable for the Coalition to control the likely inevitable legalisation of marriage equality rather than Labor, and suggested that such a vote could be done by a postal ballot.

Parliament rose at the end of March and returned in May for the budget. Oh, May. What a month that was. On the 9th, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was pied in the face over his support for marriage equality while speaking at a function in Perth. Significantly, in the aforementioned controversy in which Peter Dutton had attacked the pro-marriage equality CEOs, he had singled out Joyce in his criticism. This led some commentators to hold him partially responsible for the incident.

Then towards the end of the month, admittedly brilliant Australian tennis player turned pastor and all-round horrible person Margaret Court weighed into the issue publicly. She had previously caused significant controversy at the end of 2011 and the start of 2012 with some other extremely offensive comments. This time, she was criticising Joyce for his support for the Yes campaign, and pledged not to fly Qantas again as a result. Although this led to significant media coverage, her comments were not overtly offensive - yet. Then on May 29, she gave an interview to a Christian radio station in which she made some of the most vile comments imaginable. I’m very proud to point out that I was the first to report on it, and my report caused it to become the international controversy it became. This second controversy led to another cycle of intense media coverage and criticism of her. I was, and remain, most proud and happy of having significantly damaged the No campaign.

Then in June, things heated up significantly again. Admittedly, this had happened many times before and turned out to be nothing: February 2015 (first spill attempt), March 2015 (party room meeting speculation), August 2015 (party room meeting and plebiscite decision), September 2015 (Turnbull becomes Prime Minister), July 2016 (election), February 2017. So we had to keep our expectations low. But this time, it was genuinely very different. First: after Parliament rose for the winter break, Leader of the House Christopher Pyne privately bragged - but was recorded doing so - that it would be legal “sooner than you think”. Then just a few days later, conservative MP George Christensen revealed in a tweet that some Liberal MPs were indeed planning to cross the floor to legalise marriage equality. This led to considerable speculation over the winter break as to what would happen. Then, in late July and early August, the Liberal MPs - hereinafter the “rebels” - publicly confirmed their plans to cross the floor.

This posed an existential threat to the government. So reactionary are some MPs in the Coalition that they publicly threatened to remove Turnbull from the leadership of the Liberal Party - and thus as Prime Minister - if the rebels’ efforts were successful, even though Turnbull had nothing to do with them. Trying to head off the crisis, Turnbull called an emergency party room meeting on August 3 for August 7.

During the meeting, the rebels pushed for a free vote. The party room rejected their push. To try and resolve the issue, it ultimately agreed on Peter Dutton’s idea from March - a postal plebiscite. (Legally - and the legal terminology matters - it was a survey.) The rebels at this point abandoned their efforts to cross the floor. After one last failed effort to pass the plebiscite bill through the Senate, the government instructed the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in accordance with the Census and Statistics Act, to collect census-style data on Australians’ opinions of marriage equality.

Without Parliament needing to approve the survey, its opponents turned to the High Court of Australia to try and stop it. They relied on two arguments: one, that the funding for the survey was not authorised by the Parliament, and two, that the Australian Bureau of Statistics did not have the power to collect this type of data. A hearing was held in the High Court on September 5 and September 6 to determine if the executive was acting within its powers. On September 7, the High Court ruled unanimously that it was, rejecting both arguments about funding and about type of statistics. The vote was on.

The ABS began issuing ballots on September 12 to households around the country. Meanwhile, the Yes campaign was getting nervous. The No campaign had already started advertising in August. Their whole strategy was to scare enough people enough that they would vote cautiously, and therefore to maintain the status quo. They argued that marriage equality would adversely affect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and school curriculum relating to LGBTI issues. And polls were narrowing. A poll released on September 9 found 58.4% support for marriage equality, down 6 points from when that polling company polled previously. A poll from the firm Essential released on September 19 found just 55% support. And a No campaign internal poll released on September 17 claimed to have found that in the 10 days prior to the date it was conducted, the Yes campaign had lost over a million votes.

Late in September, the vote took an ugly turn. A wave of extreme homophobic violence was committed across one weekend, and when asked to condemn it, the No campaign refused. That same weekend, a text message sent by the Yes campaign to randomly generated mobile phone numbers received intense scrutiny and criticism. This led me and others to think that while the No campaign was allowed to get away with literally anything, the Yes campaign couldn’t even send a text message. Then, on September 24, the highly valued Newspoll found 57% support for marriage equality, down 6 points over the last month. Faced with these realities, I became more angry than I have ever been before.

But the following week brought brighter news for the Yes campaign. An Essential poll released on September 26 found that support for marriage equality had rebounded to 58%, and that of ballots already cast, 72% were Yes votes. Later in the week, we learned that rapper Macklemore would be performing the pre-match entertainment at a significant Australian sporting event - the NRL Grand Final, which is the championship match of the biggest rugby league competition in the southern hemisphere. Most importantly, he would be performing his hit “Same Love”, which reached no. 1 in Australia when it was released. Conservative politicians and commentators reacted terribly to news of his performance, calling for it to be cancelled. But on October 1, it went ahead, and it captured the heart of the nation. Everyone loved it, including many opponents of marriage equality. In this episode, conservatives revealed themselves as as guilty of political correctness as those they accuse, trying to ban a song they don’t like because it makes them, in the words of one activist, “uncomfortable”. Their activism on this front is widely considered to have been an own goal.

Over the next month, things were all positive for the Yes campaign. Poll after poll after poll revealed that support for marriage equality was holding firm at above 60%. Furthermore, the ABS was providing a percentage turnout figure for the survey every Tuesday, which greatly exceeded expectations. Higher turnout was widely considered to favour the Yes campaign. And important deadlines were elapsing, too. The No campaign was running out of time. On October 20, you were no longer able to request a replacement ballot from the ABS. The No campaign had been encouraging people who had changed their minds from Yes to No to do so. On October 27, it was no longer guaranteed that your posted ballot would be returned to the ABS in time to be counted. And on November 1, a Newspoll revealed that of 76% of all votes cast, 62% were Yes votes. If this poll was right, it was all over.

But the next day, things turned again. Two “academics” from Griffith University published an article in which they reviewed an analysis of hundreds of thousands of tweets sent during October from Australia on the issue. Claiming that their methodology had predicted the election of Donald Trump (this assertion is highly questionable), they predicted a narrow win to the No campaign. Naturally, many flaws were quickly revealed in their analysis, and the final result would later prove it to be bullshit. But it caused significant trepidation in the LGBTI community.

The last two weeks - between the 1st of November and the 15th of November, when the result would be announced - were extremely promising to the Yes campaign. On the 5th, a newspaper column by Miranda Devine, a strong opponent of marriage equality, included some polling data from the No campaign. However, it did not include how many voters had voted Yes and No. This could only be for one reason - their own poll was giving them results they didn’t like.

On the 7th, the survey closed. In the few days leading up to the 7th, it was too late to return the ballot by post, as it would not get to the ABS in time. At this point, it was only possible to have your vote counted if you returned it in person to an ABS office. After the 7th, it was too late to return it at all.

On the 9th, a poll was released finding 60% support for marriage equality, 32% opposition, and 8% undecided, meaning that the level of support would be slightly higher than 60%. It also found that very few people had changed their minds during the campaign. On the 10th, another poll was released finding 65% support for marriage equality. Furthermore, it provided strong evidence that one of the hopes of the No campaign - that No voters afraid to give their opinions to pollsters had artificially inflated the Yes response in polls - was not happening. It instead found that more Yes voters had misled others about their vote than No voters.

On the 13th, a pro-marriage equality Liberal Senator, James Paterson, released an absolutely awful bill that purported to protected religious freedom. The bill was a response to the bill by pro-marriage equality Liberal Senator Dean Smith which had considerably narrower permission of discrimination (Smith’s bill will be proceeding through the Parliament). Paterson’s bill would have subjected same-sex couples - and only same-sex couples - to all kinds of other discrimination.

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017, the results were announced. After a 5 minute introductory speech explaining the context of the results (e.g. participation rate), Chief Statistician David Kalisch told the nation that 61.6% of Australians had voted Yes.

The reaction was a national mood that I have never experienced before. Although a significant minority voted No, this played no part in the national reaction as a whole. That couldn’t have been more relieved, celebratory and jubilant. The overwhelming majority voted Yes. Had the vote been the vote at a federal election, and the campaigns political parties, the Yes party would have won 133 of our 150 lower house seats. This is probably the most unambiguous display of Australia’s decency since May 27, 1967, when the Constitution was amended to grant equal rights to indigenous Australians.

The unequivocal statement by the people finally emboldened Malcolm Turnbull to take a stand. In a speech immediately following the announcement of the result, he demanded that the Parliament legislate for marriage equality immediately. The writing is on the wall, and conservatives have seen it. Prior to the announcement, Tony Abbott said that if the No vote reached 40%, this would be a “moral victory”. But they couldn’t even get that (getting 38.4%). Many conservative MPs who previously would have died on the hill trying to stop it have now conceded that they can’t stand in the way of its legalisation. The bill released by James Paterson has been withdrawn, getting very little support among the Coalition. And a push by some Nationals MPs to delay the introduction of Dean Smith’s bill has already been abandoned. It was introduced into the Senate later on the same day of the announcement, and debated the very next day.

The debate will continue all throughout the last two weeks of Parliament’s planned sitting dates, and these will likely be extended if necessary, such that same-sex couples can marry by Christmas. The debate will almost exclusively focus on the appropriate degree of protections of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

After an embarrassing couple of years, with countless instances of shattered hope, marriage equality in Australia is now absolutely inevitable, and will be a reality within a couple of months.