Celebations on Oxford Street , Sydney after the verdict of the postal vote on same-sex marriage vote. Credit:Louise Kennerley South Australia's was the first legislature in the world to allow women to stand for parliament. Australia pioneered in creating the eight-hour work day and the secret ballot. It invented the concept of a legal minimum living wage. No longer a leader, on some measures Australia has become a laggard. As the nation became more settled and more satisfied, it became more cautious. Australia is now poised to become the 26th country to allow same-sex marriage. Or the 27th if you recognise Mexico, where it's legal in some jurisdictions. The rights revolution that began around the time of the Age of Reason and the European Enlightenment has rarely proceeded in a simple linear movement but has met obstacles and reversals.

An emotional Senator Penny Wong with Senator Sam Dastyari after the result is revealed in the same-sex marriage survey. Credit:Andrew Meares Eventually, however, the rocks in the river prove helpless against the flow of changing social attitudes. In contemporary Australia's case, John Howard and Tony Abbott have been the leading rocks. The second lesson is that a new demonstration effect has been established. The last one cast a taboo, a political and psychological blockage that Howard's conservative politics put in place against progressive causes 18 years ago. Sydneysiders were out in force for the announcement on Wednesday. Credit:Jessica Hromas "The assumption by the hard right in Australian politics since the 1999 republic referendum has been overturned by this result," says the strategist for the Yes campaign, former Labor national secretary Tim Gartrell.

That assumption? "That they had a blocking silent majority of the Australian people, and all they had to do to stop progress was to hold a plebiscite or a referendum." The survey result has been wielded by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as an instrument of progress. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It worked against the referendum campaign but has now failed. "I hope," says Gartrell, "It encourages people to have a rethink about further steps to modernise Australian society like Indigenous recognition, a republic and other causes." Just as the failure of the republic referendum discouraged the ambition of Australian progressives, the success of this one is likely to energise them. The third lesson is that scare campaigns, which have often been devastatingly effective in Australian politics, do not necessarily work.

The "No" campaign claims to have transformed a million yes votes into no votes. The evidence does not support this. The first Newspoll published after the start of the campaign showed 57 per cent support for same-sex marriage and 34 per cent against, with 9 per cent undecided. Assuming that the undecided vote split down the middle, this represented 61.5 per cent to 38.5 per cent. Meaning? The final results were almost exactly unchanged from the first poll. The "no" campaign was based on fear - fear that religious rights would be assaulted and fear that children would be forced into radical sex education. Why did this scare campaign fail where many others have succeeded? Perhaps it's simply that Australia's mind was made up. Or perhaps the "no" campaign's fears were just an expression of the fears of its own base and failed to resonate with the broader public.

The conclusion seems to be that a scare campaign has to be credible with the general public in order to work, and this one was not. The fourth lesson is that immigration, and especially geographic concentrations of immigrant groups, can challenge a nation's values and change its politics. The early evidence is that the "no" vote was heavily concentrated in electorates where Muslim and Chinese and other ethnic communities are most intensely clustered. Because this was a national survey and not an election based on electorates, this did not materially change the outcome. But it starkly illuminates the potential power of these communities for future elections. The marginal federal electorates of Western Sydney have become the crucibles for national election campaigns, and this is exactly where these communities are at their strongest.

Future campaigns will be even more deliberately designed to engage their values and excite their interests. Yet we saw in the same-sex marriage survey that they are unrepresentative of the rest of the country. There is a tension here. New immigrants of all creeds and colours are welcomed into Australia without discrimination, yet some of these immigrants are not prepared to extend the same acceptance to others in their adopted country. Finally, the survey result shows afresh the divisions that run through the constituencies of both the major political parties. Labor holds nine of the 10 seats most hostile to same-sex marriage, yet its leaders are exultantly in favour. In the Coalition's case, the plebiscite, invented by Abbott as an obstacle to progress, has been wielded by Malcolm Turnbull as an instrument of progress. The most vocal of the Coalition's "no" advocates will now make a great show of campaigning for protections for religious observance. Turnbull and his senior ministers will need to manage this carefully so that they have their say and achieve useful measures yet do not use procedural tricks to sabotage the entire project.

Loading The "no" conservatives will not surrender, of course. Tony Abbott is already manoeuvring to make himself their champion. He's less interested in the 75 per cent "yes" vote in his electorate of Warringah than in the 4.8 million people who voted no. He sees these as the core of the religious and traditionalist movement he will now seek to lead, the reaction against the revolution, all the way to his second coming.