Yes, the Right’s been isolated
THE triumph of the Yes campaign in the same-sex marriage survey has exposed the vast gap between the opinions of the rump, which claims to speak on behalf of Liberals and the party’s actual voters.
For years we have endured the lectures of so-called conservatives angry at the party’s alleged betrayal of Liberal values.
On Monday Cory Bernardi, the South Australian turncoat who squats in a Senate seat that belongs to the Liberals, was at it again on the ABC, complaining the Liberal Party had left him and that political correctness has become a tyranny.
“Around the dinner party, everyone goes, ‘Oh, of course, you know, I believe in changing the Marriage Act and things’,” he told Four Corners.
People, he said, were trapped in the whisper zone where they can’t speak up loudly and proudly about the things that they believe.
The same-sex marriage survey, like Tony Abbott’s earlier plan for a compulsory plebiscite, was designed to allow this persecuted majority to have its say.
To that end, the anti same-sex marriage brigade in the Liberal and National parties forced this vote on us over the objections of Labor, Greens, and a large slice of the Liberal backbench.
But instead of allowing the silent majority to triumph, the outcome of the vote has been to endorse a social change conservatives hate and to give it a legitimacy its supporters could never have imagined was possible.
What is more, it seems gay marriage is most popular among Liberal voters.
Have a look at the numbers in the blue riband Liberal heartland Melbourne seats: Higgins was 78.3 per cent Yes, Goldstein 76.3 per cent, and Kooyong 73.7 per cent.
The next tier of Liberal suburban seats all voted Yes too: Aston was 62 per cent in favour, Casey 68.1 per cent, and Deakin, which is held by leading No campaigner Michael Sukkar, 65.7 per cent.
Even in Menzies, the seat of the old Catholic warrior Kevin Andrews, the Yes vote got 57 per cent.
Oh and every Victorian seat outside Melbourne also voted Yes.
Those results ought to make uncomfortable reading for anyone trying to argue the way into the broad sunlit uplands for the Liberal Party is to become more conservative.
The only bright side for the conservative warriors is their message on gay marriage found an audience in the seats of Calwell and Bruce.
I suspect that is unlikely to be much consolation however because those two electorates — the only ones to vote No in Victoria — are held by the ALP.
The results in Sydney were even more marked, with the highest No votes in the country coming from the migrant enclaves of Western Sydney, results way higher than any result in Melbourne.
Having got the result on the vote wrong, conservative Liberals are now in danger of compounding their error by trying to pass a version of samesex marriage which will allow the discrimination against gay people which is currently unlawful.
Eric Abetz was quick out of the box, yesterday claiming “the voices of the millions of No voters deserve to be recognised in the framing of any legislation” and warning a “hubristic winner-takes-all approach in this matter would ignore the will of millions of Australians who have concerns about changing marriage”.
Putting the best shine on a losing score, he said the 38.4 per cent that No achieved was higher than the Coalition current primary vote and Labor’s primary vote at the last election as well as the combined support of the Greens and One Nation.
Abetz will no doubt be arguing for the sort of discrimination allowed against gay people in the now aborted alternative legislation proposed by Victorian Senator James Paterson, which would have permitted private businesses to refuse goods and services for gay weddings if they had a conscientious objection.
From the way he was talking Tuesday, Malcolm Turnbull is in no mood to give in to his party’s conservatives, for reasons best summed up by George Brandis earlier this week when he said: “If it’s legally and morally wrong to discriminate against one gay person, I don’t know how it becomes right to discriminate against two.”