Five years ago today, Perth’s LGBTIQA+ community, friends and family gathered in the Northbridge Piazza to hear the results of the marriage postal survey.
The polls suggested that the results would fall in favour of changing Australia’s marriage laws, but people couldn’t be certain until the results were read out. Due to the time difference between Canberra and Perth the results were announced early in the morning.
The night before the WA Police had been asking the leaders of WA’s campaign for the Yes vote, community leaders and journalists from OUTinPerth if anyone had any idea how many people would turn up for the announcement which would arrive at 7.30am.
While people in Sydney filled Centenary Park, many wondered if people on the west coast would just stay home to watch the result while still in their pajamas.
By 7am though the Northbridge Piazza was filled with people, all eagerly awaiting the result. Many of them had campaigned for the change to the nation’s marriage laws for years. When the news came through it was a clear win for the Yes campaign with 61.6% Australian voters saying yes.
The announcement followed more than a decade of campaigning for the laws to be changed. Countless rallies had been held through the streets of Perth; thousands of letters had been written to politicians; and the issues had been debated on radio and television endlessly.
In the five years since the legislation was changed nearly 18,000 same-sex couples have wed.
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which cover the period of 2018 – 2021 show that while 6,538 couples tied the knot in 2018, each subsequent year has seen a decrease in the number of same-sex marriages.
In 2019 5,507 couples wed but following the Covid-19 pandemic there was a significant drop with just 2,902 couples marrying in 2020, and 2,842 in 2021.
Not all marriages work out though, and in 2021 there were 473 same-sex divorces, combining 306 female couples and 167 male couples. 2021 is the first year specific information on same-sex divorces has been available.
OIP Staff
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