The Daily Telegraph‘s front page has been widely criticised online for managing to suck the joy out of a moment that most of the media have celebrated. But its greatest crime is using a dated ’90s sitcom reference that would surely be lost on most people, and a dad joke about how miserable marriage is. The grainy still of Al Bundy from Married with Children isn’t one of the Tele‘s most creative or interesting front pages by a long shot, but it at least provides a counter-point to the largely similar front pages of other newspapers around the country today. The Sydney tabloid editorialised in favour of a Yes vote during the campaign, but part of its modus operandi is to be talked about and position itself in opposition to the left elites, and that’s what it’s done with today’s front page.
Equally unique, Hobart’s Mercury‘s moving front page marked Tasmania’s vote for changing the law — above the national average — with reference to the state’s “shamefully late” move to decriminalise homosexuality just 20 years ago — the last state to do so.
For a niche take on the vote, the Australian Financial Review interviewed Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott, who had a professional and personal stake in the vote.
But by far the most popular way to mark the historic day was with rainbow colours and a “yes” on the front page.
The commentators have reacted today largely as expected. Andrew Bolt has taken the opportunity to have a go at the Yes campaign:
The Yes vote would have been even higher, I suspect, if there hadn’t been so much abuse and bullying by Yes supporters, with Christians picketed, preachers sued, no-campaign ads censored and the Australian Christian Lobby threatened.
Miranda Devine says Australian would accept the vote with “good grace” (but):
Those of us who opposed this change to our foundational social institution accept with good grace the verdict of 61.6 per cent of our fellow Australians who voted Yes. But don’t forget that leaves a significant minority of Australians who voted No. Almost 4-in-10 Australians did not want to want to change the definition of marriage — and their view deserves respect. More than two-thirds of the electorates which voted No are in Labor’s heartland of western Sydney.
One of the most moving pieces to come out of the vote was from the ABC’s Jason Om, who wrote of his relationship with his Cambodian father and family:
My dad came to Australia from Cambodia in the early 1960s as an international student and was spared the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. My Buddhist Cambodian family have struggled with my identity.
Cambodian relatives are desperate to ask, “When you get married?”
My answer of “when it is legal” is usually met with dumbfounded expressions.
The Tele’s front page might run counter to the joy the majority of Australians felt at the vote’s result, but it doesn’t detract from pieces like Om’s and David Marr’s for Guardian Australia yesterday. And at least it stands out from the rainbow crowd of other front pages.
“Foundational Social Traditions”-Miranda is so full of s**te. As is Bolt.
Is the ‘bullying’ claim fake news? I suspect so.
Hilarious that the same types of people who wanted to deny a minority their equal rights are now the same types of people who demand that we respect their rights. Hypocrites.
That’s the no campaign in a nutshell.
“We’ve been denying you equal rights for generations, how dare you deny us the right to keep denying you rights?”
Not freedom of religion- a right to force their religious beliefs on how the entire population uses a civil institution. A right to give a couple of particularly intolerant religious faiths primacy over civil law and secular principles. If you believe in intolerance because of a deity, and I believe in tolerance because of logic, your belief should be protected and mine should not, apparently.
Even the more intelligent clergy can see that there is no practical way to demand the sort of “freedom of religion” the no troglodytes want without allowing every Tom, Dick and L Ron Hubbard to say “my religion says I don’t pay taxes, my religion says women must bow down to me, my religion says council planning height restrictions are the work of the devil”.
I didn’t get the Tele’s front page (maybe I just didn’t look close enough), so thanks for explaining it. The Tele did have an interesting take inside (shared by the Herald – the only two papers Ive glanced at today) about the social divide the vote sharply revealed.
Western Sydney used to be portrayed as boringly “mainstream” and white bread – the place for bland people to live vanilla “normal” lives… But the vote shows something else – anywhere our recent (and not-so-recent) migrants live isn’t like the rest of Australia at all. It fact its strikingly different place, where opinions which we can name accurately call “minority” , ones NOT shared by the rest of Australia, are the norm. Even conservative rural areas, as well as the more Anglo section of Sydney’s outer west voted overwhelming YES.
I’m not sure what all this may mean… maybe we are heading for the sort of divisions that exists in the Netherlands? So how long now before “progressive” opinion joins Hanson’s anti-migration push? It already has on population in general –where readers comments indicate most Crikey readers support and echoing Dick Smiths reactionary position… Hmmm watch this space.
The migrant populations…and their descendants…in western Sydney, and elsewhere, seem to have brought their ‘cultural and religious’ views with them, which look likely to continue through the generations. I thought they wanted to escape the repression of progressive views in their own countries.
Makes you wonder what they wanted to come here for in the first place!!
By definition, anyone leaving their home country to live, permanently elsewhere is declaring that there is something lacking about the old ways.
Yet, so often when they get a foothold here, impossible whence they came, they get a hankering for those old ways coz they are now in the driving seat, of however small a vehicle.
Much as “we” did, back in 1788 – maybe not voluntarily, on the whole, but we did bring our own baggage.
Waleed Aly wrote a good piece perhaps a year ago, enunciating a point I’ve seen several people make (myself included), which is that if political parties started up in Australia today you would not get either the ALP or the Liberal Party. Both major parties have to satisfy increasingly divided support groups.
Labor’s socially progressive causes to some extent alienate some working class voters who would otherwise back Labor on economic grounds, and the Liberals’ socially conservative causes increasingly alienate some middle class voters who would otherwise back them on economic grounds.
This is why One Nation legitimately draws from both majors and it damages them every time Hanson acts like they’re the Liberal Party’s reserves and preference farmers. You have people who are natural Labor voters economically but aren’t socially progressive, and people who are natural Liberal voters socially but hate big business and the banks.
Nah, I think I’ll continue to blame the DT mob for being nasty right wing elitists again.
I glanced at the Daily Telegraph and thought they were showing Senator Cory. Very puzzling.
Ha ha, me too. Although his shoes looked too dirty to fit the bill.