Within minutes of last Wednesday’s historic yes vote for marriage equality, the narrative was about western Sydney.

Twelve electorates there recorded a majority no vote. Some, like Greenway, did so by a bare 53%, but others like Blaxland, held by Labor’s Jason Clare, hit 75% – the highest in the country. The finger was quickly pointed at the multicultural community, with these electorates having a higher-than-average, but by no means astronomical, proportion of residents from non-English speaking backgrounds.

The link between migrants and the no vote – which is fairly flimsy mathematically – has been handled as though it were gospel truth. The result has been pitched as some kind of crisis in progressive politics: a brewing clash between racial tolerance and LGBTI rights, where only one can win.



But this analysis ignores a pretty fundamental thing about statistics and about people. They change.

Poll western Sydney again in six months and opposition will be down. Poll Australia once it has lived under legalised marriage equality and opposition will be down. I’ll bet my bottom dollar.



The no campaign spoke the language of hypotheticals and nightmares. They targeted migrant communities and said same-sex unions would ruin existing marriages. That small business owners would be prosecuted by litigious gay couples demanding cakes. That you simply could not know what would happen.

Once people realise same-sex marriage hasn’t ruined their lives, once they see the joy it brings to friends and family with no detriment to others, opposition will naturally drop. I don’t expect a backlash, I expect acceptance.

This isn’t blue-sky, optimistic thinking – it’s a process that happens to any law or policy.

We seem to have forgotten how opinion polls work. If you survey the nation in November about an unenacted law, then ask again once people have lived under it, minds will have changed.

Across Australia – among the multicultural communities, the religious, and those who voted no but had the good fortune to be Anglo-Saxon or middle-class enough to not be immediately made the talking point – acceptance of marriage equality will come sooner than we think.

The idea that these 12 electorates were the sole stronghold of the no vote is obviously artificial, and just bad maths.

The opposition to marriage equality was high on the government benches. The opposition among One Nation candidates is well above the 75% in Blaxland. So why are we picking on the multicultural community?

Statistics show that the factor most correlated with voting no was religion, not overseas birth. People have conveniently ignored that some of Australia’s most multicultural electorates, such as Wills in Victoria, Moreton in Brisbane, and Sydney’s Grayndler, Kingsford Smith and Bradfield all registered yes votes over 60%.

It’s also demographically wrong to treat western Sydney as though it is purely non-white. Put bluntly, Anglo-Australians voted no too. The Anglican church gave the no campaign $1m.

Homophobia in migrant communities is of course an important, worthwhile and entrenched issue – but it is much too complex for this blunt instrument of a survey. A discussion should be had, but not one based on a six-week poll pushed through the post and buffeted by a campaign of deliberate uncertainty.

Some say the yes campaign should have worked harder in western Sydney. That may be true, but it shouldn’t be seen as some great moral failing, nor should it affect the legitimacy of the yes win.

When Malcolm Turnbull won the 2016 election on a one-seat majority, no one pointed to the 74 electorates that registered a majority no vote against him.

But if yes were a political party, it would have won 133 seats out of 150. There are millions and millions of multicultural Australians who voted yes – my queer friends, myself, my mum, my grandmother.

It speaks of an insane double standard we push onto marginalised communities – not only do they have to win, they have to win a majority in every seat and in every mind. It’s not enough that the multicultural community voted, with the rest of Australia, overwhelmingly for marriage equality, if a few supposedly “ethnic” electorates did not.

Those who push this multiculturalism against LGBTI rights angle are creating an exaggerated conflict between tolerances and are rarely on the side of either.

Ethnic Australians are not a static, unthinking monolith. They are humans who listen to their children and grandchildren. Who can recognise joy and love when they see it. Who can change their minds.

Some won’t – but that happens everywhere, not just in western Sydney.

Opinion polls and elections divide communities. It’s what they are designed to do. But the one constant across history is that tolerance is a fairly universal language –maybe the message got lost this time, or maybe the case wasn’t made properly. Maybe it wasn’t listened to. But it will be.