16 November 2017

ACT records highest 'yes' vote nationally in same sex marriage survey

| Tim Benson
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Results of the national plebiscite on same sex marriage.

Results of the national plebiscite on same-sex marriage. Image courtesy Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Australians have voted ‘yes’ on same-sex marriage in the survey ‘Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?’ with a national tally of 61.6 percent voting Yes and 38.4% voting No. An overwhelming majority of the 79.5% of Australians responded to the same-sex marriage survey.

However, the great news for Canberrans is that 82.4% of our eligible population voted in the survey, the highest response rate in the nation. Of these respondents 74% voted ‘yes’ and 26% voted ‘no’. This is the highest ‘yes’ vote of any state or territory.

ACT statistics of the same sex marriage plebiscite.

ACT statistics of the same-sex marriage survey. Image courtesy Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Prominent Canberra businessman Jason Roses at Haig Park when the results were announced.

Prominent Canberra businessman Jason Roses at Haig Park when the results were announced.

237,513 (82.4%) eligible Australians in the ACT participated in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

An emotional moment as Chief Minister Andrew Barr is embraced at Haig Park after the results were announced. Image courtesy Jason Roses.

Females responded more than males. In the ACT, 84.6% (123,738) of eligible females and 80.1% (110,992) of eligible males responded to the survey.

In the ACT, those aged 70 to 74 were the most likely to respond to the survey with 90.9% of eligible Australians in this age group participating. The participation rate was lowest in those aged 20 to 24 at 77.5%.

Nationally:

Of the eligible Australians who expressed a view on this question, the majority indicated that the law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry, with 7,817,247 (61.6%) responding Yes and 4,873,987 (38.4%) responding No. Nearly 8 out of 10 eligible Australians (79.5%) expressed their view.

National results of the same sex marriage plebiscite.

National results of the same-sex marriage survey. Image courtesy Australian Bureau of Statistics.

All states and territories recorded a majority Yes response. 133 of the 150 Federal Electoral Divisions recorded a majority Yes response, and 17 of the 150 Federal Electoral Divisions recorded a majority No response.

12,727,920 (79.5%) eligible Australians participated in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

Females were more likely to participate than males. Nationally, 81.6% (6,644,192) of eligible females and 77.3% (5,980,168) of eligible males participated in the survey.

Those aged 70 to 74 were the most likely to respond to the survey, with 89.6% of eligible Australians in this age group participating. The participation rate was lowest in those aged 25 to 29 at 71.9%. The youngest age group of eligible Australians (those aged 18-19 years) were more likely (78.2%) to participate than any other age group under the age of 45 years.

For a full breakdown of the results, visit the Australian Bureau of Statistics website.

What are your thoughts on the Same-Sex marriage survey results? Let us know by commenting below.

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pink little birdie10:03 pm 18 Nov 17

EJA said :

When anyone signs a contract they first read the fine print to see whether this contract is what they want to sign to. For those of us who chose to sign a marriage contract prior to the 15 November 2017 we chose to sign under the clause that a male and a female join together in marriage and or holy matrimony. We did NOT sign a contract to marry someone of the same sex and if that was a clause at the time we would have had the choice to remain defacto!
I am not the only one who feels this way…. I has been written multiple times over the past months!
We who have already signed a contract many years ago are NOT given a choice. Our contracts should be allowed to be seen out until the new law is put in place Approximately 75 years in the future for those that have just got married!
And as far as the figures are concerned.
A maximum of 10% of the population is said to be currently LGBTIQ……..
28% of people do either NOT want to use the word marriage or have religious or cultural reasons for NOT wanting to have ss”marriage ”
Of the other approx 64% who voted “YES”……some could be married and not care if ss are included…..some could be defacto and happy to live with their current legal state……and a greater percentage would be single young people and the divorced.
This catetogory of the 64% of YES voters are irrelevant in the number crunching as the majority of them have not committed to a long term marriage!
28% of those wanting to hold onto the moral concept of marriage is still higher than the 10% of LGBTIQ.
Single voters had nothing to lose …..we did!

Clearly you haven’t been to a wedding recently. Most of the weddings I have been have had the celebrant say things like ‘ it is not the view of this couple and they hope their same sex couples can share in the commitment that is marriage soon’
Every celebrant has a standard spiel that they have in their info packs at wedding fairs and options are in wedding magazines.

I’m pretty sure there is absolutely no impact on my marriage other than we get to celebrate our gay friends weddings if they choose to invite us.

EJA said :

When anyone signs a contract they first read the fine print to see whether this contract is what they want to sign to.

Single voters had nothing to lose …..we did!

Today my wife and I are celebrating our 38th wedding anniversary. Neither of us ever saw that day in 1979 as the beginning of a contract, nor did we believe there was any fine print we needed to check. So I pity your wife if you see marriage as some form of business transaction. Nevertheless I respect that you have the right to attach your own perspective to your marriage.
What I find truly objectionable is your your delusional belief that you are speaking on behalf of all married heterosexual couples. You dismiss the overwhelming result in favour of SSM as being driven by those who are not currently married. The spurious argument you put forward may even befuddle Andrew Bolt.
Furthermore, you seem to believe that your marriage is now worthless (“Our contracts have been terminated …”). How so? What has changed for you?
On Wednesday night after the results of the poll were known, I went to sleep with my (female) wife next to me. Guess what? Firstly the sun still came up on Thursday morning. Also, when I awoke that same lady was still next to me – she hadn’t suddenly morphed into a guy. Nothing in our lives had changed.
Well that’s not true – a few of our friends and my wife’s dear cousin, had been “granted the right” to profess their love for their partners in exactly the same way as we had done 38 years ago.
In 1975 when South Australia decriminalised “sexual conduct between males” the (then) premier, Don Dunstan, tried to allay the fears of opponents, in a radio interview by declaring “… it is only being made legal NOT compulsory!”
So despite your conspiracy theory, the vote was simply a reflection of what most Australians want.

EJA said :

When anyone signs a contract they first read the fine print to see whether this contract is what they want to sign to. For those of us who chose to sign a marriage contract prior to the 15 November 2017 we chose to sign under the clause that a male and a female join together in marriage and or holy matrimony. We did NOT sign a contract to marry someone of the same sex and if that was a clause at the time we would have had the choice to remain defacto!
I am not the only one who feels this way…. I has been written multiple times over the past months!
We who have already signed a contract many years ago are NOT given a choice. Our contracts should be allowed to be seen out until the new law is put in place Approximately 75 years in the future for those that have just got married!
And as far as the figures are concerned.
A maximum of 10% of the population is said to be currently LGBTIQ……..
28% of people do either NOT want to use the word marriage or have religious or cultural reasons for NOT wanting to have ss”marriage ”
Of the other approx 64% who voted “YES”……some could be married and not care if ss are included…..some could be defacto and happy to live with their current legal state……and a greater percentage would be single young people and the divorced.
This catetogory of the 64% of YES voters are irrelevant in the number crunching as the majority of them have not committed to a long term marriage!
28% of those wanting to hold onto the moral concept of marriage is still higher than the 10% of LGBTIQ.
Single voters had nothing to lose …..we did!

Cracking rant this one… perfectly summarises much of the hypocrisy surrounding this issue from a segment of the population in one elongated post. This person wants to deny legal rights to one portion of the population for 75 years, on the basis that in some figment of their mind they consider providing that legal right in the future somehow impinges on their own legal rights – when that quite clearly is not the case.

The legislation to enable SSM will have absolutely no impact on the legislative basis for your marriage. That is the basis of the ‘rights’ provided by your marriage – not some higher order conceptualisation of what one thinks marriage represents. The legal definition of Marriage is a human construct (which is what we are talking about), not something universally defined as you suggest (I suspect such suggestion is made on the basis of a book purportedly containing the word of a purportedly higher being written purportedly more than 2000 years ago). Like any concept of a similar nature, the legal definition of marriage is open to change and interpretation.

I’d be interested in how precisely anyone else’s marriage contract impacts on your marriage contract? You would really hate me on this basis, given I married my wife overseas in a country where their marriage contracts also include provisions to allow same sex marriage, and have done for more than a few years now. Funnily enough, the world hasn’t fallen down as a result.

As for your efforts to somehow try and prove that the No vote won, you deserve a tick for creativity. Australia is a democracy, where everyone has their say.

In this case, everyone, irrespective of their martial/relationship status, was asked for their opinion on the matter. The result was a fairly emphatic view endorsing the SSM proposal. We have one person = one vote in this country – not one person + characteristic = x votes, as was common in a world long gone. That is the only way your bizarre framing of the results could ever make any sense.

EJA said :

Andrew Barr’s statement to paint a roundabout in Canberra Centre is just irresponsible “hey mummy look at the rainbow!” “Can we go and play on the rainbow roundabout”
The effect on young children by this campaign has been overlooked….. and the comment by Andrew Barr to paint a roundabout rainbow is just another example of the lack of consideration of others to benefit a minority!

If kids are asking to go play on a roundabout, surely their parents have a little more to worry about then if its painted rainbow or not. A classic Mrs Lovejoy of the Simpsons ‘think of the children’ moment….

EJA said :

When anyone signs a contract they first read the fine print to see whether this contract is what they want to sign to. For those of us who chose to sign a marriage contract prior to the 15 November 2017 we chose to sign under the clause that a male and a female join together in marriage and or holy matrimony. We did NOT sign a contract to marry someone of the same sex and if that was a clause at the time we would have had the choice to remain defacto!
I am not the only one who feels this way…. I has been written multiple times over the past months!
We who have already signed a contract many years ago are NOT given a choice. Our contracts should be allowed to be seen out until the new law is put in place Approximately 75 years in the future for those that have just got married!
And as far as the figures are concerned.
A maximum of 10% of the population is said to be currently LGBTIQ……..
28% of people do either NOT want to use the word marriage or have religious or cultural reasons for NOT wanting to have ss”marriage ”
Of the other approx 64% who voted “YES”……some could be married and not care if ss are included…..some could be defacto and happy to live with their current legal state……and a greater percentage would be single young people and the divorced.
This catetogory of the 64% of YES voters are irrelevant in the number crunching as the majority of them have not committed to a long term marriage!
28% of those wanting to hold onto the moral concept of marriage is still higher than the 10% of LGBTIQ.
Single voters had nothing to lose …..we did!

Fine. You signed a contract between a man and a woman, so that’s the case for you; that’s your contract, so relax. It won’t change for you.

EJA said :

Andrew Barr’s statement to paint a roundabout in Canberra Centre is just irresponsible “hey mummy look at the rainbow!” “Can we go and play on the rainbow roundabout”
The effect on young children by this campaign has been overlooked….. and the comment by Andrew Barr to paint a roundabout rainbow is just another example of the lack of consideration of others to benefit a minority!

The effect on children? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever read! ?
Do you have children? Have they expressed concern over the same survey result?

No_Nose said :

I’ve typed a dozen replies here and then gone back and deleted each one before submitting.

There really is nothing that can be said to someone who actually believes this.

Totally agree with you. Not much point in wasting time trying to counter such ideas.
I would like to give my experience of SSM in another country. I visit Belgium annually to visit my partner’s family and last year I attended a SSM of a friend of mine, a Belgian jazz musician. The mayor of the Gent officiated and the ceremony was a very nice, simple but moving occasion. Belgium, even though it is a very Catholic country, has had SSM for years. The sky hasn’t fallen in and everybody just goes on with their daily business. It is not a big deal over there. The same will happen here eventually.

EJA said :

NOT HAPPY AT ALL ……. marriage is heterosexual….. Male and Female. Our contracts have now been terminated due to a minority!

“Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest” – Paul Simon, 1969.

When anyone signs a contract they first read the fine print to see whether this contract is what they want to sign to. For those of us who chose to sign a marriage contract prior to the 15 November 2017 we chose to sign under the clause that a male and a female join together in marriage and or holy matrimony. We did NOT sign a contract to marry someone of the same sex and if that was a clause at the time we would have had the choice to remain defacto!
I am not the only one who feels this way…. I has been written multiple times over the past months!
We who have already signed a contract many years ago are NOT given a choice. Our contracts should be allowed to be seen out until the new law is put in place Approximately 75 years in the future for those that have just got married!
And as far as the figures are concerned.
A maximum of 10% of the population is said to be currently LGBTIQ……..
28% of people do either NOT want to use the word marriage or have religious or cultural reasons for NOT wanting to have ss”marriage ”
Of the other approx 64% who voted “YES”……some could be married and not care if ss are included…..some could be defacto and happy to live with their current legal state……and a greater percentage would be single young people and the divorced.
This catetogory of the 64% of YES voters are irrelevant in the number crunching as the majority of them have not committed to a long term marriage!
28% of those wanting to hold onto the moral concept of marriage is still higher than the 10% of LGBTIQ.
Single voters had nothing to lose …..we did!

EJA said :

NOT HAPPY AT ALL ……. marriage is heterosexual….. Male and Female. Our contracts have now been terminated due to a minority!

And 26% of people agree with you. 74% don’t.

EJA said :

NOT HAPPY AT ALL ……. marriage is heterosexual….. Male and Female. Our contracts have now been terminated due to a minority!

I’ve typed a dozen replies here and then gone back and deleted each one before submitting.

There really is nothing that can be said to someone who actually believes this.

EJA said :

NOT HAPPY AT ALL ……. marriage is heterosexual….. Male and Female. Our contracts have now been terminated due to a minority!

Your marriage contract will be exactly the same after the legislation is amended. The only difference is that a broader range of people will be able to formalise their relationships and more easily access the same legal rights and responsibilities currently available to hetero couples. If you decide to be unhappy about the result and feel your marriage has been devalued, that is your choice.

Your comments have illustrated a concept called the tyranny of the majority and demonstrate why the rights of a minority should not be subject to a mass vote, but determined by parliament. Thankfully a strong majority of Australians and a very strong majority of Canberrans did not subscribe to the NO fear campaign.

Andrew Barr’s statement to paint a roundabout in Canberra Centre is just irresponsible “hey mummy look at the rainbow!” “Can we go and play on the rainbow roundabout”
The effect on young children by this campaign has been overlooked….. and the comment by Andrew Barr to paint a roundabout rainbow is just another example of the lack of consideration of others to benefit a minority!

NOT HAPPY AT ALL ……. marriage is heterosexual….. Male and Female. Our contracts have now been terminated due to a minority!

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