But why?
Antony Green explained it on ABC this morning - the seats where the Yes vote was lowest had the highest proportion of non-English speaking migrants.
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Large Muslim population in Lakemba. Attitudes of those communities haven’t caught up. Same in Bennelong, which voted no because of its large Chinese population.
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I can understand those electorates but why Blaxland in the Blue Mountains?
The Blaxland electorate covers areas around Auburn and Bankstown - western suburban Sydney.
OK, thanks. That makes sense then.
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Lakemba is in the electorate of Watson, which incidentally is another safe Labor seat with particularly high “No” vote in the marriage postal survey: 70%
The Blaxland electorate isn’t in the Blue Mountains, it’s in the South Western suburbs of Sydney. As Wikipedia points out…
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As @Tejas57 said on Reddit, Queensland opposition leader Tim Nicholls believes that bakeries should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
Replace gay with jewish and you’ve got a real problem. Pretty disgusting.
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OK. Chillax. I already said I understand now. 
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I don’t see the connection though
That area is a high immigrant (41% born overseas), high Muslim population area, at around 30% Islamic.
There is a trend in the Middle East for moderately developed Muslim countries (Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia) to be controlled by socialist parties.
That’s why it’s a Labor stronghold, but there was such an incredibly high No vote there.
The exceptionally rich Middle Eastern countries which have heaps of oil (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE) are not socialist, but their governments use their shitloads of money to subsidise the fuck out of their country’s citizens with welfare. Plus because they’re rich and not war-torn, not as many of their former citizens choose to immigrate here.
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While it’s good that the Yes vote won in the end, I still don’t think the final result is entirely representative of how Australia perceives same-sex marriage equality. In the grand scheme of things, 61.6 % isn’t exactly a resounding victory, despite the media outlets suggesting otherwise. I personally think that a referendum should have been held, rather than a postal plebiscite. Close to a quarter (21%) of the voting slips were never returned. That’s a significant proportion of the public who did not voice their say on the matter.
In polling that’s massive. 55-45 two party preferred is considered a landslide. 61-39 has never happened in a general election before.
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A referendum can and is only held to change the constitution so as marriage isn’t affected by the constitution the Coalition decided upon a plebiscite. Labor and the minor parties disagreed so we ended up with the voluntary survey as it didn’t need an act of parliament to establish it.
The turnout for the last federal election was only 91%, so I think making it compulsory is a moot point as there will never be 100% voter turnout.
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Are you for real? Almost 80% of eligible Australian’s voted. That is a far greater percentage than the US election and many other international polls. You can win Government in Australia with only 30-40% of the primary vote. Even on a two party preferred basis a result is never that significant. The yes vote got over 61.6%.
Even if it was compulsory you would have got a couple million more votes max (based on election voting numbers) and the Yes vote would have still won. Not to mention in any survey anymore than 10% of a return rate is considered as statistically significant. Every poll in the lead up to this indicated between 60-70% of a Yes response. It was always going to go this way and the results showed that too. If you don’t think this is indicative of the Australian public then you are only kidding yourself.
At the end of the day if people didn’t care enough to return their voting slips then they shouldn’t have. It was ridiculous in the first place that straight couples who are able to get married and have legal rights as couples voted to decide if I could have the same Legal rights. Irrespective of that it’s fantastic to see that that almost two thirds of people agree with this.
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It was a survey. The vote will happen in the parliament.
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Look up the definition for Plebiscite. I see the word vote in the description. Who cares though, no need for political correctness. We had our say then the politicians will have theirs. It’s all the same thing.
I can’t remember who said it first, but Magda repeated that had this result occurred at a Federal election, it would have delivered a 100-seat majority.
Antony Green said this morning that of those who didn’t return a survey a poll found that 40% didn’t have an opinion (did not know). He said they would be in a category of people who don’t follow and are not interested in politics.
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As it stands, s.51 of the constitution currently only recognises marriage between heterosexual couples. Marriage is affected by the constitution, as it states that only a man and a woman can legally marry. A referendum would have been much more accurate and the participation levels would have been higher. While I understand that it will never be 100% voter turnout, regardless of the process, at least a referendum would have been a much more accurate process in gathering the views of the Australian public over same-sex marriage.
Based on the stats and 80% response even if it was compulsory we still would have got a Yes result though regardless. So I’m not sure why you keep banging on about this supposedly not being indicative of Australia. It most definitely is. There are far bigger things happening in the world based on far lower % of people having their say.