Not being roo-ed, but Oz still has a long way to go

I’m Australian. Kind of. My mum is. As kids, we spent holidays watching cricket from the old stands of the Adelaide Oval and braving the sharky waters off Glenelg Beach.

Sometimes, we’d visit my great uncle’s farm up near Port Arthur. I remember riding around dusty paddocks in the tray of his ute, games of knucklebones with real knucklebones, and a story about a kangaroo getting stuck in a barbed wire fence.

These days, I’d be lying if I said I identify particularly strongly with my Aussieness.

I’m happier with my transtasman blend than Barnaby Joyce is, but I don’t feel any more Australian than I do British (My Dad is originally from the UK). Crank the Fat Freddies and get Piri on the field because I’m Kiwi-as, bro.

Nonetheless, I think many of us felt an especially keen sense of hope and attachment as Australia excruciatingly drew out its same-sex marriage debate.

I was personally very proud of my Grandma. Ninety years old and still tearing around Adelaide, she voted YES in the plebiscite.

A few days later, though, at lunch with a friend, the conversation turned to politics and my Granny’s friend revealed she’d just cast a paper for the NO campaign.

She didn’t feel particularly strongly about it, apparently, and my Granny used their lunch date to make the case for lovemeans-love.

Her mate was convinced, and together they went and hit up the retirement home’s mailroom, where Granny’s friend dug out the as-yet undelivered NO ballot and changed it to a YES.

I’d like to think both of them are on the right side of history.

And if the plebiscite has given them a taste for decent causes, they don’t have to look far for their next campaign.

Indigenous rights, Manus Island, coal: sometimes the Aussies lag a long way behind the times.

And I have to be honest, that’s still what struck me when the plebiscite results came through.

It’s fantastic a majority of Australians support same-sex marriage and I don’t want to take anything from a clear majority. But I’m still alarmed at the number of Aussies who voted NO.

In 2017, the equivalent of the entire population of New Zealand, 4.7 million people, voted in Australia to oppose samesex marriage.

We might be geographically close but from a values perspective, we’re really not that similar.

And as the world celebrates Australia getting with the times, I’d argue my countrymen (kind of) still have a way to go.