Rainbow rights in Australia face populist backlash

Australia's 13-year struggle for marriage equality, and the experiences of the rainbow communities before and after the 2017 landmark reform, is the focus of a new book by University of Auckland honorary academic (Humanities) James Bennett and David Betts.

Marriage Equality and Resurgent Prejudice in Australia (Generis Publishing, 2026) comes as New Zealand debates legislation aiming to define ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in law, a good example of this backlash spreading around the world on a wave of right-wing populism, says Bennett.

"This New Zealand legislation is really a discriminatory reaction against a minority community, and it leads to actions and behaviours against them."

In Australia, the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act extended the right of all Australians to marry, irrespective of sex or gender, and Australia was the last major English-speaking country to pass it into law.

Bennett says it took 23 bills in the Australian Federal Parliament to get there, and the principles of equality underpinning the new legislation have faced ever more intense attacks from conservative groups and politicians in areas like ‘religious freedom’ (religious communities who reserve the ‘freedom’ to discriminate).

"There's a gap between legislation and the lived experience, the sort of social world, of these minorities, and how they experience prejudice, and also the ongoing and probably never-ending threat of resurgent prejudice."

The fact that global anti-gender movements are gaining wide traction has been well documented, he says.

The seeds of the book began with an exhibition called Waiting for Equality, which examined the progress of rainbow rights in the Newcastle and Hunter Region of New South Wales.

The exhibition was notable for its focus on a regional city, rather than main centres like Sydney or Melbourne, says Bennett.

“And what was also surprising was the strength of support for marriage equality in Newcastle, which recorded a 75 percent ‘Yes’ vote in Australia's 2017 Marriage Law Postal Survey, the highest result of any city outside large metropolitan areas.”

This was in part about Newcastle’s long tradition of protest and working-class organisation, within which queer identity was sort of concealed and became a human rights issue, he says.

“On the other hand, you had areas of Western Sydney that voted down marriage equality, and New South Wales overall recorded the lowest vote in favour of it of all the states.”

He says that generally, marriage equality in Australia was far more contested than it was in New Zealand.

New Zealand put the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act into legal effect in August 2013 after only one previous attempt in 2005 failed at its first reading.

However, the introduction of a postal survey on the issue in Australia effectively turned minority rights into a public referendum, says Bennett.

"It became a platform for hate, because it allowed those who opposed it to come out and say whatever they wanted, and not only that, to spread a lot of disinformation about what the bill actually meant."

One of the book's central findings is that marriage equality ultimately became about equal citizenship rather than marriage itself, he says.

"If you have a cornerstone institution of society, like marriage, that's not available to a section of the community, you're effectively calling them second-class citizens."

The authors found many rainbow Australians were initially indifferent to the prospect of marriage because Australia had already introduced significant legal protections for de facto couples.

However, the exclusion from marriage itself came to symbolise unequal treatment under the law.

"So it was about having that choice," Bennett says.

Their interviews with members of the rainbow community, including transgender and gender-diverse participants, also found people were concerned these political and cultural debates were creating new forms of vulnerability for them beyond marriage equality, and that their civil rights were under attack.

With Australia now facing the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, and attitudes hardening globally against many groups, including refugees and migrants, the book calls for more research into how prejudice affects minority communities and how political movements can mobilise fear around the most vulnerable.

Bennett believes the passing of the 2017 Marriage Amendment Act remains a significant victory for rainbow rights and worth preserving.

"The important thing was being able to have access to something that other people had just taken for granted and had always been able to experience."

Marriage Equality and Resurgent Prejudice in Australia (Generis Publishing, 2026) is now available in print and online.