Interpreting the Yes Result
After years of debate and opinion polls it was finally revealed today what the Australian people’s view on same sex marriage is via a confidential postal vote. 61.6% (7,817,247) of Australians voted Yes and 38.4% (4,873,987) voted No with a 79.5% voter turnout. In electoral terms it is a landslide victory for the Yes side and in the end was consistent with the various opinion polls. Same sex marriage will become legal by the end of year it is now a question of what form the legislation will take and how much freedom of conscience and speech will be permitted by our politicians.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics also provided a breakdown of results via state and federal electorate division. This is where the results are more interesting because it shatters some perceptions about the Australian community held by the left. The state of New South Wales returned the lowest yes vote 57.8% and was the only state where the yes vote was below 50%. This was due to 12 electorates is Western Sydney 9 of which are held by Labor that a majority voted overwhelming low.
Many of these Labor seats are held by high profile Labor MPs such as Chris Bowen in McMahon, Tony Burke in Watson, Jason Clare in Blaxland and Ed Husic in Chifley. All of these MPs have already stated their support for same sex marriage which means when the vote becomes before parliament it may become a bit awkward for them.
Many commentators were quick to point that those areas have a high migrant and ethnic population many of whom had been quite active in the no campaign. The Labor seats of Bruce and Calwell who voted no in Melbourne also had a high migrant population. This represents a shattering of the left’s utopia that the twin goals of multiculturalism and LGBT rights can exist cohesively in a western country. If they left were able to open up our borders completely during the past decade they might have lost this vote. Who they should be thanking for this yes result is the actually the people they have demonized the most, straight white people.
Although the ABS did not release voting results by demographic the electorates with more white people in them voted overwhelming yes. This included regional and rural electorates (with the exception of three in Queensland) which also shatters the perception that rural folk are redneck gay haters worthy of constant mockery. Does the result now provide evidence that white people are some of the most tolerant and accepting people in the nation, would the left dare conclude that?
The left is probably too busy celebrating today’s result to pay any attention to these facts, but they will probably go back tomorrow to being outside the immigration office demanding our government bring the men on Manus Island to the mainland of Australia, one can guess how those men would have voted. Maybe the left should now agree that stopping the boats is vital to maintain community cohesion.
Of course anybody of any ethnic background has the right to vote yes or no as an Australian, but some political myths have been shattered today which no person following the result closely should ignore. The left if they still want to achieve their goal of a happy harmonious multicultural nation should maybe stop picking at alleged evil white people and maybe instead target their energy at helping migrant communities adopt to Australian values?
