If same-sex couples can't persuade politicians to let them marry, maybe their money will.



Instead of splashing out on celebrations in their own backyard, rising numbers of gay Australians are taking a three-hour flight across the ditch to get hitched. Weddings of foreign same-sex couples in New Zealand last year overtook those of local gay marriages, with 58 per cent of them travelling from Australia.



Australia's failure to adopt same-sex marriage prompted more than 270 couples to marry in New Zealand last year, where gay weddings have been allowed since 2013. It's our loss, economists say: Such ceremonies could add $550 million to the economy within a year of legislation, ANZ Bank estimated in a 2015 report.



``There is no doubt that Australia is missing out on the business that would be generated by same-sex weddings if we had marriage equality legislation", said Cherelle Murphy, a senior economist at ANZ who co-authored the report. ``We're probably also losing wedding-related consumption to overseas destinations.''

No regrets: New Zealand passed a bill to legalise same-sex marriage in 2013. Credit:Getty Images

Same-sex weddings have spawned a new global industry, with many of the major economies including the US, the UK, Canada and France legalising the unions since the turn of the century in a domino effect.