Same-sex marriage: western Sydney shouts no

In ethnically diverse western Sydney it was a landslide. Has the gay marriage vote exposed an integration problem?

Blaxland MP Jason Clare in his electorate.

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.

Never mind that NSW has Australia’s most flamboyant ­capital, Sydney, with its rainbow-striped pedestrian crossings; never mind that it regards itself as ­fabulously tolerant and diverse; ­discount even the fact Sydney has the world famous, four-decade-old Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras — ­because the truth is NSW had the lowest Yes vote in the nation, and what dragged its vote down?

Western Sydney.

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.

What is going on? The ABC’s respected analyst Antony Green made this observation on Twitter: “Pattern on No vote in western Sydney correlates to electorate with large populations born in non-English-speaking countries.”

Again, let’s use Blaxland as the example: the nation’s top No voting seat is held by Labor’s Jason Clare, who is himself married to the daughter of a Vietnamese refugee who arrived by boat.

As electorates go, it is fantastically diverse: a touch over 29 per cent of constituents are Muslim. That’s not twice, or even three times, but 10 times the national average. On the question of background, 14.1 per cent of the population say they have Lebanese ancestry, followed by the 11.3 per cent who are of Chinese ancestry.

Now let’s look at Watson, held by Labor’s Tony Burke. It has a Muslim population of 23.4 per cent, which is again more than 10 times the national average. Also in Watson, 71 per cent of people — two out of three — speak a language other than English at home. These include Arabic (17.7 per cent), Mandarin and Cantonese (6 per cent and 4 per cent respectively) and Greek (5.1 per cent.)

In Werriwa, where the No vote was 63.7 per cent, Arabic is the second most spoken language, after ­English.

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. Yet the backlash to Green’s tweet was ­immediate. One Twitter user said: “I don’t think this is the day to make ­divisive demographical ­observations Antony. You can have a beer and gripe with Pauline [Hanson] tomorrow.”

Green seemed perplexed, replying: “You mean I should ignore the most statistically interesting aspect of the seat by seat results?” Apparently yes, because the ­criticism kept coming: “I don’t think this stat and ­commentary is necessary … The tone suggests race was a factor. As a community we should be working hard to stamp out this type of ‘branding’.”

Another said: “This is far from helpful in this current climate when everyone is jumping on the Muslim-bashing ride.”

And: ­“Antony I am disappointed. This is exactly the kind of stat that bigots already misuse.”

But others weren’t so shy: “Wake up Lefties. The very people you want to flood Australia don’t accept (same-sex marriage.)”

There was also this: “Muslims voted no.” And even: “When they take over, there will be no gays.”

Is it really so simple? Can this result be taken to mean that western Sydney is a hotbed of intolerance, maybe even homophobia, and that immigrants are to blame? And if western Sydney is different on the subject of same-sex ­marriage, what else is it different about? Does western Sydney’s stance on gay relationships extend to other social issues, such as the role of women in marriage?

Also, given the result, what would western Sydney, if surveyed, say about contraception? Abortion? Euthanasia?

Senator David Leyonhjelm was among those who joined the ­debate this week, telling Inquirer “a lot of people suddenly seem interested in whether or not our immigrants are assimilating because now we see that some of them are not integrating very well.

“It’s not Muslims, per se. That would be wrong because the Bosnian Muslims and the Turks have integrated very well. And it’s not only Muslims because other groups — the Chinese Christians, for example — are also strongly anti-same-sex marriage. But the result shows us, for the first time, very clearly, that some immigrants hold very different views from mainstream Australia, and I do think there are some other values you could extrapolate it to: and the role of women, and attitude to women working, and at the extreme end of it, even female genital mutilation, because the reality is we have a sizeable group of people who have changed countries yet who continue to live more or less as they lived in the old country.”

There is some evidence for this proposition: the notorious radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir makes its home in western Sydney and, indeed, last year hosted a now-notorious public forum in the west at which veiled women discussed the circumstances under which Muslim men should be allowed to hit their wives (not with fists, they said; only with short sticks and pieces of fabric.) Western Sydney is also home to Rissalah College, and several other Islamic schools, where girls as young as five wear veils and can’t wear shorts even for sport; and it is the home of al-Faisal, the Islamic college, which — depressingly for gay kids in the community — proudly announced last year that it had never had a gay student.

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.

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. Some of them are religious and, let’s face it, the religious leaders for the Russians, the Greeks, the Jews, the Muslims, they were fierce on this from the pulpits. Religious leaders haven’t had a bonanza like this for a century. This was a day for asserting their authority when it’s been gradually eroding. They never get asked about anything any more, and now suddenly everyone wanted to know what they thought, and if they were confused about which way to go, they took their lead from the strong, often-religious communities in which they live.

“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. Marrying your boyfriend would make no sense, and the idea that they were being asked to approve it would have confused them. Although different people will have different responses. I like to do the classic taxi driver thing, and one taxi driver will tell me: the imam at the mosque won’t stop banging on about it. Who gives a shit what people do? And others will say, of course they can’t get married. Marriage is for children.”

Andy Marks, assistant vice-chancellor at the Western Sydney University, says the last thing he wants is “for the result to become a narrative about the bigotry, the homophobia, in western Sydney. It’s not about that at all.”

“You can analyse the statistics, but those factors — race, religion — are background noise,” Marks says. “In western Sydney, you have hundreds of thousands of people all dealing with the same issues. Their manufacturing jobs are disappearing. You have people stuck in traffic, paying huge tolls, or jammed like sardines into train carriages. You have wage stagnation, and crowded schools and soaring electricity prices. You have childcare fees. Then the political class comes along and says, ‘Excuse us, what do you think about this issue, gay marriage?’ And western Sydney says: ‘Are you kidding me? With all the challenges we face, this is your question?’

“They would consider this a fringe issue at best, a 10th or 12th order issue. The idea that it’s rampant homophobia is wrong. Their level of education is comparable to anyone; they are more worldly and travelled than most, and we’re fortunate to have them, and characterising them as bigoted or homophobic is wrong because you didn’t have people out rallying against same-sex marriage.” He agrees that cultural factors and ­religious teachings were key “but not for the reasons people think. Even in the very strict religious homes, they know this (same-sex relationships) happens, but it’s ­behind closed doors, and it’s the public airing of the question they found uncomfortable. Many of them would see it as an intensely private matter, and why would they be asked about it?”

The other interesting factor in the result was how it turned traditional thinking about political tribes on its head: forever it has been the Liberal Party that has been lashed for being old-fashioned and stuck behind the white-picket fence, but most of the No vote seats out west were Labor seats, with Jakubowicz saying: “traditional Labor voters again prove that they have strong conservative values, and I wouldn’t be at all ­surprised to see some of the smaller parties like Family First getting in there at the next election to scoop some of them up”.

Marks agrees, although he doubts there will be “a major swing away from Labor. They will stick with Labor, but they are saying we don’t want these issues to be occupying the narrative. How about we talk about transport, cost of living? What I’m hoping is this really could be the emergence of western Sydney as a place that says: ‘we’re tired of these fringe problems. We’ve got problems of our own. How about you listen to them?’ ”