Brexit, Scottish independence, same-sex marriage in Australia: What gets voters out of bed?“Australians care more about same-sex marriage than Americans do about who leads their country, according to a comparison of turnout figures from recent polls,” say political reporters Jackson Gothe-Snape and Dan Conifer on ABC News two days ago.
“But some recent votes around the world have drawn a response far greater than either.”Their chart showing percentages of people who voted in recent elections and referenda in the US, Ireland, the UK and Scotland is
here.
The same-sex marriage issue referred to was a national survey mailed last month to all enrolled voters in Australia.
It asked, simply, “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?”
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released its latest estimate of the number of returned survey forms.
#1.10.8 million Australians—67.5 per cent of those eligible to vote—have already filled out and mailed back their forms. More than nine million were returned prior to the end of September, and approximately 800,000 forms have been returned each week this month.
For its proposal to succeed it must win the majority of votes both nationally and in each of Australia’s six states and two territories.
The survey is not a plebiscite—a compulsory vote by citizens on a matter of national significance, and whose outome is merely advisory and does not affect the Australian constitution—but a referendum, a voluntary vote concerning a change to the constitution, and whose outcome will be legally binding in federal law.
#2.It concerns a change to the
Marriage Act 1961 and its subsequent amendments in the
Sex Discrimination Amendment Act 1991, which, among other things, set the age of marriage at eighteen for both sexes by raising the age of consent for women two years, and in the
Marriage Amendment Act 2004, which firstly defined marriage as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life;” and secondly stipulated that “a union solemnised in a foreign country between: (a) a man and another man; or (b) a woman and another woman, must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia.”
If the survey returns a majority “yes” verdict, the Government has announced it would facilitate a private member’s bill in the final sitting fortnight of the Parliamentary year which would legalise same-sex marriage.
#3.The
Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey (to use its correct title) ends on 7 November, with the results published on 15 November at
#1. The response has now exceeded the turnout for the 2015 UK general election, and is closing on participation in the Brexit vote.
#2. The difference between a plebiscite and a referendum doesn’t appear to be quite clear to some members of Parliament, nor to some members of the press, but that’s another story.
#3. Among the most notable of Australia’s successful private member’s bills was the
Commonwealth Electoral Bill 1924, which introduced compulsory voting for federal elections. Despite much public debate ever since on the issue of compulsory voting, the legislation has never been repealed.
Voting at federal, state and local council elections in Australia is now compulsory for all enrolled citizens aged 18 and over; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were granted full voting rights in state and federal elections in 1962, and made compulsory in 1984.