Tag Archives: Oz Politics

We got our equal marriage survey forms in the mail yesterday, and posted them back today. From what I’ve seen, about half the forms were delivered last week and nearly all will be done by Friday. And I imagine, most people will either respond straight away or not at all. So, it was kind of strange to see the official campaigns being launched at the weekend, rather as if an ordinary election campaign started at lunchtime on election day*. On the other hand, the results won’t be announced...

Somewhat lost in the noise surrounding yesterday’s High Court decision on the equal marriage survey was Bill Shorten’s statement that privatisation of the electricity industry in the 1990s was a major contributor to the current disaster. He’s essentially correct, though ‘privatisation’ has to be taken as shorthand for ‘the process of disaggregation and market reform of which privatisation was a central part’. I’ve been over this ground many times, including here and here, and have...

A few thoughts on the equal marriage survey, now that it’s going ahead. First up, there’s virtually no time left for campaigning. Supposedly, the papers will start arriving on Tuesday. Unless the ABS is deliberately taking its time, most voters will presumably have them by the end of next week. Perhaps some people will want to wait and hear all the arguments, but I’d guess the vast majority will either return the survey papers quickly or bin them and forget about the whole thing. So,...

I’ve seen quite a number of church leaders making statements in support of a No response to the Turnbull government’s ABS survey on equal marriage. In nearly every case, there isn’t much of an argument on the merits of why the state should enforce their views about marriage. Rather, they express concerns that, if equal marriage is allowed, they will be forced to conduct marriages, or to employ members of same-sex married couples. This seems like a nonsense to me. If that is the real...