Five years ago the results of the marriage equality postal survey were announced in a joyous turning point for those who had campaigned for Australia to recognise that all loving relationships should be treated equally by our laws.
Within a month the Australian parliament had done what it always should have been prepared to do and backed Senator Dean Smith’s private member’s bill to legalise same-sex marriages.
While there are few certainties in politics, if this issue hadn’t been resolved by the Turnbull government in 2017 it may have languished during the remainder of that term and during the Morrison government that followed. It’s hard to fathom today but debate on legislation might be happening right now as an early order of business for the Albanese government.
I often think of what that might have meant. I wonder, for example, if we would have landed hosting rights for WorldPride in 2023 without marriage equality. This will be such an important event for our place in the world.
But, far more importantly, given the more than 24,000 same-sex marriages in the period since, so many Australians would have been denied the chance to legally declare their enduring love and partnerships.
The first same-sex marriage I attended in Australia was of a 98-year-old constituent, Neville Wills, who wanted to marry his partner of 39 years. His story was one of my inspirations during the marriage equality debate.
Neville is no longer with us but he achieved his goal and married the man he loved, witnessed by family and friends and his local federal MP.
The fact that marriage equality was enacted in 2017 came down to the incredible work of so many campaigners who had worked to change attitudes within the parliament and the broader community.
Fundamentally, as the postal survey showed, they tapped into the deep sense of fairness of the majority of Australians.
Within the parliament a quantum shift had also occurred. The Labor party had changed its approach from its previous official opposition to marriage equality and, within the Liberal party, key figures including Malcolm Turnbull and his attorney general, George Brandis, were supporters.
The Liberal party then had four openly gay members, Smith and myself, joined by Tim Wilson and Trevor Evans at the 2016 election. And then there was that unlikely champion, the crocodile farmer from far north Queensland, Warren Enstch, who had so doggedly argued the case for years – often as a lonely voice.
We became known as the “rainbow rebels” because we were determined to make marriage equality happen during that term of parliament.
It was a year of brinkmanship. With the Coalition committed to a full plebiscite, one that had been rejected by the Senate, debate was at an impasse. Those in the Coalition most vehemently opposed to marriage equality were determined to see progress end then and there.
Yet the efforts of the marriage equality campaigners ensured the issue was not going away. For the five of us on the backbench who most wanted change, our goal was to see the Coalition support a free vote in the parliament.
It was frankly ridiculous and offensive that it wasn’t, when you look at the history of free votes.
Our calls fell on deaf ears but we maintained the prospect of the rainbow rebels pursuing our own action in parliament. Smith led the preparation of a bill which we circulated. We kept our colleagues guessing.
In reality, it was a tough call – there was the likelihood that even if we had crossed the floor a bill would fail in the Senate if it scraped through the House of Representatives.
Menacingly, some in the parliamentary party made clear that action by us would lead to a challenge to Turnbull’s prime ministership. I felt this pressure considerably, with some of my moderate cabinet colleagues warning that if we took unilateral action Turnbull would face the consequences, even if done without his concurrence.
All these forces led to the decision of the Turnbull government to hold the postal survey.
It’s not an approach I supported, primarily because I believed that as parliamentarians, we had been elected to make such decisions. Yet, for all its failings, having that affirmation from the Australian people not only ensured marriage equality but had a more profound effect.
As a gay man, the support from my fellow Australians – 72% in my own electorate – is something I feel deeply to this day.
Australians will soon face another vote on a major issue for our nation when we considered constitutional amendments to create the Indigenous voice to parliament.
There are lessons to be learned from the marriage equality campaign and the skilful way in which it was led by the yes campaign. In short, part of its success was the way the campaign established a respectful conversation at the grassroots: sons and daughters talking to their parents and grandparents, conversations in the workplace, and door-to-door campaigning.
With enormous discipline, the equality campaign leadership avoided responding to the grenades thrown by opponents.
Instead, an environment was encouraged in which hesitant voters could ask the difficult questions without feeling as though they might be condemned or ridiculed. And, finally, it helped that there was a proposition on the table – in this case Smith’s bill which had been crafted to accommodate different perspectives and was widely endorsed. Australians therefore knew the likely shape of what marriage equality would look like.
Five years on, the journey of the LGBTIQ+ community continues. Marriage equality was a major step but not the end, as the debate on the religious discrimination bill highlighted.
Yet thanks to those events of 2017 there can be no doubt most Australians want fairness and equality to be at the heart of how we move forward as a nation.
Trent Zimmerman is the former federal member for North Sydney
