Member for Riverina Michael McCormack has pledged to “uphold the will of the people” and support the impending same-sex marriage bill in federal parliament following Wednesday’s historic result.
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It comes after 54.6 per cent of voters within the Riverina electorate returned a ‘yes’ response to the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.
A total of 47,333 ‘yes’ responses were registered in the Riverina, outweighing the 39,308 ‘no’ responses.
The Riverina’s 54.6 per cent ‘yes’ result was also lower than both the national average (61.6%) and state average (58%) however Mr McCormack said he would be upholding the Riverina’s majority vote.
“Wednesday’s result was democracy at work,” he said.
“As the Member of Parliament representing the people within the electorate of Riverina, I will be respecting and voting in support of this result.”
Mr McCormack dismissed suggestions his voting intentions were unclear and wished the LGBTQI community luck for the times ahead.
“I’ve always said that it would be parliament’s obligation and duty to uphold will of the people of our nation and that I would uphold the people’s vote,” he said.
However not everyone is happy with the drawn-out political process and Wagga entertainer Jamie Way remains skeptical.
“I’m absolutely stoked and very happy that we got the result we should have got years ago but it’s disgraceful we went down this road in the first place,” he said.
“The politicians should have made this decision ages ago.”