At present, the Family Law Act 1975 provides de facto same-sex couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples for parenting and property settlement issues without being married. Recently however there has been many attempts to legalise same-sex marriage including the recent Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

On November 15 2017, Australia said yes to gay marriage. 61.6 per cent of eligible voters, totalling seven million people voted to say yes, but this does not mean the law has officially changed.

Liberal Senator Dean Smith’s bill has been drafted and today has passed the Senate, but with a sitting week cancelled in the House of Representatives, MPs will not continue debate until next week. The bill passed with no amendments, with 43 senators voting yes and 12 voting no. Several senators have raised concerns about the religious protections of the bill, with some conservatives requesting that there should be two definitions of marriage. If the bill is amended by the House of Representatives it will need to return to the Senate to be considered again, but this is unlikely.

Ireland is the only country in the world to have legalised same-sex marriage through a public vote and that’s because it has a requirement to do so as unions are defined in their constitution. In Australia, it is up to a parliamentary vote which is what can be arguably delaying things.