Quote:Do we need to talk about western Sydney?
Specifically, do we need to talk about why, when the rest of Australia voted emphatically for same-sex marriage, western Sydney said no?
Because it wasn’t just a no. It was a landslide for no. A complete and total rejection of the issue that had the rest of the country doing the Locomotion.
Quote:Let’s take a deep dive into some numbers: the seat of Blaxland, once held by former prime minister Paul Keating, had the highest No vote in the country: 73.9 per cent, compared with, say, the 80.8 per cent of voters in Malcolm Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth who voted in favour of same-sex marriage. It was the same in the seat of Watson. It had the second highest No vote in the nation, with 69.9 per cent rejecting same-sex marriage, and it’s adjacent to Blaxland, in western Sydney. And on it goes: of 133 electorates nationwide, just 17 voted No, and 12 of those were in western Sydney.
Quote:The more diverse the community, in terms of race and religion, the likelier they were to say no — emphatically no, in many cases — to same-sex marriage.
Quote:But it wasn’t just immigrants who voted no in western Sydney. In some seats, it was three out of every four voters, meaning maybe western Sydney hasn’t changed that much at all: Keating himself was conservative on some social issues. (Remember his famous comment, about how two blokes and a cocker spaniel don’t make a family?) Working-class Catholics still live in Sydney’s west in large numbers, and still work in what remain of the old working-class manufacturing jobs. It’s no secret that Catholic priests preached for No, as did the Sydney Anglicans, who put $1 million into the No campaign.
Quote:Andrew Jakubowicz, professor of sociology at the University of Technology Sydney, says the factors were cultural, religious, traditional and historical.
“I wrote before the survey was even held that Sydney’s ethno-religious community would deliver a strong No,” he says. “People doubted me, but if anything I understated it. These communities are socially conservative and very family focused.
Quote:“But it wasn’t just religion. Look at the Chinese community. The vast majority are irreligious. There has been some conversion to Christianity, but many have no religion. But they are very family focused and they were hugely concerned about (the sex education program) Safe Schools. In the last federal election, in seats like Chisholm and Banks, you had Chinese communities on WeChat (the Chinese-language social network) saying if you vote Labor, your children will become homosexuals and your family name will die out in a generation, and they voted for anyone who was against Safe Schools, and that is how Family First got a foothold there.”
Jakubowicz says the ethnic community in Sydney’s west was likely affronted by the question on gay marriage, too. “Look, gay relations are well known in all countries,” he says. “But it’s not marriage. It’s the kind of thing people turn a blind eye to, and always have. I think there would have been people saying: ‘But why would you marry somebody of the same sex?’ Marriage is about potency. It’s about family. It’s about handing down property. It’s about unions between families.
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