One man’s view of ‘Sydney Today’, a Chinese-language news website

The following interview with a Chinese-born Australian was made on 30 November 2017. I got it transcribed in October last year and am publishing it today. The subject of the interview is ‘Sydney Today’, a Chinese-language news website delivering news to the community in Australia and, presumably, wherever people who can read Chinese are based. I have changed the name of my interlocutor. 

Editing this for publication it struck me how often, when I had paraphrased what I had been told, I was faced with a “No”. But this dynamic seems to me to be par for the course in the public sphere. We seem to have an urge to say “No” hard-coded into our DNA.

MdS: So, do you work in Australia, are you a student? How did you get to be in Australia?

Mark: I am an Australian citizen now. But 10 years ago, I came here to study and, after fulfilling the criteria of the residency, I applied for the visa and also, I got the Australian citizenship a few years ago.

MdS: Sydney Today is one of the most popular media outlets in Australia. It’s a website only, right, they don’t publish a printed version?

Mark: That’s right. Because Sydney Today has their own website and also Sydney Today has their own official account with WeChat and WeChat is the most popular socialising network-type one just like a popular Facebook, is for Australians. For the Chinese people who live in Australia, and if they want to read the news in their own language, normally they just get on the WeChat and just read the articles from Sydney Today.

MdS: So, Sydney Today is more popular than, for example, New Express Daily or Sing Tao?

Mark: So, we have Sydney Today, we also have Australian Chinese Daily and we also have, I think it’s called, Australia Mailer or Australia Chinese Mailer. So, they are about the three of our major media companies in Sydney. The Australian Chinese News Daily, that used to be one of the most popular media companies because that newspaper it was, well, popular but nowadays everybody is reading the news from smartphones. Nobody really purchases the paper-based news anymore so, the Australian Chinese Daily, that company is getting less popular [compared to] Sydney Today.

MdS: Right. Do you think that especially young people rely on Sydney Today, or is it old people as well?

Mark: Actually, it’s a mixture of young and old. For the older people, they can only read the news in Chinese, for the older people who don’t speak English, and then the Sydney Today has many, many interesting articles. For the young people in Australia, they have a good education, they have a good English knowledge and they are able to read the news in both language but, somehow, the news from [unclear] always quite interesting so, it trigger people’s interest to read it.

MdS: Hm. Do you know how long Sydney Today has been operating in Australia?

Mark: I am not sure because I use Facebook more often than WeChat, but normally the Sydney Today spend their major energy on their WeChat official account. But I think it should be six years? That’s just my random guessing. It’s getting so popular now.

MdS: I understand, because of the conversations that I used to have with [my friend], I understand that the Chinese government is always monitoring the activities of Chinese language publications in Australia. Is the same true of Sydney Today?

Mark: No, because Sydney Today is based in Sydney. According to my understanding, as long as the articles [unclear]

MdS: Sorry, I can’t hear you.

Mark: I am saying, my understanding is, because Sydney Today is a Sydney-based media company, so I don’t think there is anything to do with the Chinese government.

MdS: Right, okay. How would you describe Sydney Today’s attitude towards politics? What sort of approach does it take? Is it more favouring the Labour Party or the Liberal Party or is it both, or it doesn’t matter?

Mark: Actually, I think it doesn’t matter because Sydney Today, I read a couple of articles from Sydney Today, what they do is, when there is news from the major Australian media platforms, they just translate it into Chinese, and publish into their platform. So, they don’t have a clear obvious stance of a preferred opinion, they just translate news from the local Australian media company. Translate the news to Chinese and repost on the Sydney Today media platform. So, normally, they don’t write their own news, they normally just translate it.

MdS: Yeah, but they change the – they don’t just publish exact translations, they change the story, especially at the beginning of the story, to make it more interesting for a Chinese reader, right?

Mark: That is right, and that is what I am really concerning about.

MdS: Okay. For example?

Mark: We are only talking about Sydney Today, this media company, right? We are not talking about Chinese language-based media in general, so, you only want to talk about this specific company, Sydney Today, right?

MdS: [Yes].

Mark: Hm, let me think. I think it … For example, I’m not sure if that article is translated – it's from Sydney Today, but I’m quite sure it is from a Chinese-based company and this is very common behaviour among the Chinese language-based media company. So, when they translate a Australian news into Chinese language, they do not really change the content quite a lot, however, they change the title of news quite a lot to attract the readers.

MdS: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: So, for example, I think before the – April there was a long weekend, right? I mean, there was a public holiday in April. So, the local news says, the police are targeting the drivers who are speeding, targeting the drivers who drive with negligence. Then there was a Chinese platform – I think maybe from Sydney Today, or maybe it’s from Australian Chinese Mailer, another Chinese language-based media company. So, they put a title like – I think the title was something like this: the traffic authority want you to cry over the weekend, or something. I’m sorry, I can’t really recall how they – the exact title.

Basically, they are writing something really, really bizarre to get your attention and so the reader will think, oh, what’s going on? Then when they read the news, actually it is very standard news.

MdS: Yeah. So, would you – I mean, the word I’m thinking of is, sensationalism. Is that an accurate word?

Mark: Actually no, I think I would say the title they make for the reader is very stimulating or something, so, they want to stimulate your interest, get your interest. After you read the entire article and realise, oh, see the title is saying something very, very shocking, but after you read the entire content of the news, you realise it’s nothing extraordinary.

MdS: Right. So, you think that they’re not honest about the use of headlines?

Mark: The use of what?

MdS: Headlines, the titles.

Mark: That’s right. Yes, you are quite right and it is quite common among the official account in WeChat. So, they want to attract the readers as much as possible and once they attract a large amount of readers, and they have a very good advantage to dealing with – they’re advertisements for a company. Because they get paid by how many readers could follow their official account.

MdS: Yeah. We call this type of story, clickbait. Have you heard that term before?

Mark: Yeah, I think so, click view.

MdS: Clickbait. We call it clickbait.

Mark: Oh, I see.

MdS: So, it’s a bait – it’s like when you go fishing and you put bait on your hook, and you want someone – you want a fish to get your hook, so you have to put bait on the hook. So, it’s called clickbait, to get people to click.

Mark: Oh, yeah, that’s right.

MdS: Yeah. So, do you think that this is different from other Chinese language media in Australia?

Mark: It really depends. I think for a large Chinese language–based media company, they use this kind of trick way too often, way too often. Yeah, so, what they do is, they write a really shocking – they write a headline to draw your attention and then the content of the article is quite – it’s less extraordinary. That is very common among Chinese language–based media company.

MdS: So, not just Sydney Today but other companies as well?

Mark: Oh, of course, of course. I think Sydney Today use this kind of trick quite moderately, but there are some other Chinese language–based media company, they overly use this kind of trick and it’s getting really, really annoying nowadays.

MdS: Hm. Yeah. But people continue to click, I guess people – even though they think that the media organisation has a bad reputation, they still continue to click, right?

Mark: That’s right, and the reason why the media company with the bad reputation could still get enough reader because, in Sydney, we only have three or four major Chinese language–based media company. So, of course, from these three or four companies, we don’t really have other choice.

MdS: So, there’s a big appetite for Chinese language–based media in Australia, is that right?

Mark: Sorry, would you ask that again? You say there is a big advertisement, right?

MdS: Big appetite. There’s a lot of demand for Chinese language media in Australia.

Mark: Yes. Also, because the Chinese language is different from the English language, culturally and linguistically. If some Chinese editor could have played with the word a little bit, for the article to translate into Chinese could be 100 times more interesting. If you’re going to change the content a lot, if you play with language, it could enhance the flavour, the attraction of the article.

MdS: So, what is your main complaint about Sydney Today? What is it mainly that you don’t like about it?

Mark: Let me see. The reason why I don’t like about it is about the contradiction, because you see the Sydney Today reports the article from an Australasian for families [of the] Asian. That article is talking about the link between the same-sex marriage and the Safe School Program. So, this article is promoting and calling for all the Chinese people to vote ‘No’ against the same-sex marriage, claiming that if we allow the same-sex marriage to be legalised, our children will – the future of our children will be jeopardised because the school will be forced to carry out the content of the same-sex material in the school curriculum.

Which is a very, very – I mean, the way how they present the fact, is very distorted and very misleading. That’s why, I think – so such a very unreliable article. Sydney Today should use its discretion: should I report it or not. Because that article itself is very clearly unreliable.

MdS: Yeah, that’s right. Even if the readership knows that it’s unreliable, they continue to click. I think that Sydney Today knows that people have a big appetite for sensational headlines and so they are giving people what they want.

Mark: Yes, because the title of that article is attractive enough to let the Chinese reader to click their fingers, to click that article, to read the entire article.

MdS: Yeah, but it’s not the only problem you have with Sydney Today, is it? Same-sex marriage is not the only thing that you don’t like about Sydney Today. Is that right?

Mark: Yes, and also, I do not exactly like the way how Sydney Today write the advertisements for their clients. For example, I’m not sure if it’s because I have never dealt with Sydney Today as a client, but my understanding is if you are – for example, if you are a restaurant owner, and if you want your restaurant name to appear on the Sydney Today website, you can pay them the fee for the listing, so they could put your restaurant name on the website and write a story about the restaurant, as a promotion. There was an article, it’s also – it’s not written by Sydney Today, but it is reposted by Sydney Today, word by word.

MdS: Right.

Mark: So, I think it's a very small worry - I believe it’s a worry. So, there was an article about this restaurant. The article claim that the owner of the restaurant travels thousands of kilometres across half of the entire China, to look for some good ingredients for the hot pot – you know what is hot pot?

MdS: Yeah.

Mark: It’s kind of the Chinese cuisine, right, it’s more spicy, puts different foods into the boiling water with some really good ingredients. Basically, this article write a very sensational story about how this restaurant owner travels half of China – you understand that China’s a very huge – travelled half of China, so it’s a very big thing, to look for very special ingredients to make their very special cuisine and once you go to the restaurant, and eat, you will be so satisfied, after you eat a meal, you also want to lick the remaining food on your bowl or something.

So, basically, this article is really, really sensational and if we use our common sense, this article itself is a lie. Because if you want to study how to make the cuisine in a professional way, you should go to the local school or you look for the master chef from local. You do not travel that much just to study the art of food, because if you travel to different regions, and they have the different idea about how food could be prepared, it will never work in that way. But, anyway, that article is really sensational, really stimulating. And Sydney Today repost this article on its website.

MdS: Hm. Right.

Mark: So, basically, I believe it’s a very normal restaurant with a very normal owner. However, somehow, they write a entire large story about it and, if we use our common sense, and it looks like the story itself wouldn’t be that true.

MdS: Yeah, but it seems like they’re not honest, Sydney Today. The way that they treat information, everything is designed to get profit, I think that’s the main aim. Is that right, would you agree with that?

Mark: Yes, yes. Because on one hand, the media company, like Sydney Today, are using a very intriguing, stimulating headline to get the attention from the reader, so reader will be intrigued to read the entire article. On the other hand, I think that the reader has something themselves to be blamed, because nowadays, the reader has a very little interest in reading good quality articles, so they are only interested into reading some interesting, intriguing, stimulating article. I think both parties, the reader and the media company, both of the parties need to be blamed somehow.

MdS: Right, yeah, I understand what you’re saying. So, there’s responsibility on both sides.

Mark: Yes. Actually, [our friend] forwarded me her website, so she also has a website, and her website also do some advertisement for restaurants, and I really like the [unclear] on the website. The way how she does the advertisements. So, she wrote a very beautiful story about a restaurant, it’s nothing extraordinary, nothing unreliable, it’s just very comfortable to read. There is nothing beyond the truth. But, unfortunately, nowadays, few readers are willing to be patient – sit and enjoy reading the good quality articles, and nowadays, I would say, the readers’ tastes are getting very different.

MdS: Right, yeah. I understand what you’re saying. I think that it’s difficult for all media companies to make a profit and I think that – especially with .. the value that you can capture from online advertising is going down because the number of potential stories that you can advertise on is increasing. So, the pay-per-view, when the reader views the ad, that’s one view, so the amount of money that the advertiser can get for each view is going down, so they have to get more views.

Mark: That’s right. I am interested in a matter of conversation, there was a idea just flashed into my head. You know, because nowadays, we have smartphones and we have the laptop, and it’s so handy to get the news from anywhere, from our Facebook, and our WeChat, our online platform is flooded with different news and the people – but the news stories, articles, I think a lot of these are coming [I say] more [then] before, right, but we still have 24 hours a day. So, we only have the same amount of time as before but now we are dealing with 10 times, or even 100 times, more information from the internet.

So, nowadays, I would say that readers are very, very impatient. So, they are going to read the news, if they don’t get interested into the first 10 seconds, then they are going to move on to the next article until they find something could get their interest up after 15 seconds of reading. That’s why they have to – I think the media companies are forced to make their headlines very eyeball-grabbing, very attractive.

MdS: Yeah, it’s an attention economy. The media is working within the attention economy so you have to get people’s attention, otherwise you can’t do anything. You’ve got to get people to read your stories.

Mark: Yeah, that’s why and not only they have to get the attention of the readers, but also, they have to get the attention of the readers within the first 10 or 15 seconds of reading, because nowadays, readers are getting impatient if they do not get interested in the first 10 seconds, then they move on. You see, in the past, we are only dealing with very limited number of the information, but we have the patience of reading the entire article, digest and then make the judgment of how good or bad it is. But nowadays, these readers don’t really read through or think a lot about the articles. They just want to [unclear] articles in a shallow way and they want to read anything that could interest them in the first few seconds.

MdS: Yeah. On the issue of the same-sex marriage survey that the government ran, the seat of Bennelong, which is where a lot of Chinese people live, actually voted …

Mark: Seat of Bennelong, which suburb is it close to?

MdS: Epping.

Mark: Oh, I see.

MdS: Yeah, so, Bennelong is a seat where a lot of Chinese people live and Bennelong actually voted, ‘No’. I think it was 50.2 per cent voted against the same-sex marriage plebiscite.

Mark: Yeah, that is very disappointing but that is very predictable because Chinese people don’t really have a strong voice against the gay and the lesbian. However, they believe that if we have a large population of gay and lesbians, their children could be influenced on their sexuality. Which is so far from the truth because, actually, the people’s sexuality is with our genes, right, it’s not something that could be influenced.

But there are many, many Chinese residents here, they believe if their children are spending too much time with gays and the lesbian people or if the Safe School program runs in their children’s schools, then their children will be taught to be gay and lesbian, will be induced to [unclear] the sexuality, which is very, very far from the truth. Because, actually, I believe the Safe Schools Program is not promoting the gay and lesbian behaviour, it’s only promoting the equality, the way how we respect the gays and the lesbians, not the gay and the lesbian behaviour. So, we are promoting equality and respect, mutual respect, not the sexuality and the sex itself.

However, some Chinese media companies, they just change the word, play with the word, and twist meaning of the fact and then they induce the Chinese readers to believe that if we have the same-sex marriage, the Safe School Program will be pushed through our schools in Australia, and then their children is going to have – spend a lot of time to discuss gay and lesbian issues in their school, and then their sexuality might be influenced. So, this is a idea that the Chinese media companies try to deliver which is very misleading.

MdS: Yeah. Okay.

Mark: Okay. Do you have any other questions?

MdS: Not really. I think we’ve covered everything, but I think that the main – that was the main thing that you were worried about, is that particular issue, but it’s not just that issue, it’s other things too. Sydney Today is twisting the truth, especially in the headlines, in order to get attention in the media space.

Mark: Yes, but to be honest, because yesterday, we were asked about how we inform conversation today, that’s why I spent some time to go through the Sydney Today’s website, so I was trying to find some good examples for you, for you to write the article. But actually, I did not find a lot of the very typical examples to have, because most of the reader read that article, actually it’s not written by Sydney Today but it has been reposted by Sydney Today. So, the writer is from other Chinese language–based media company.

But, anyway, once Sydney Today reposts it, I believe, they should have the responsibility of checking whether or not they should repost it or not. So, that’s why I no longer spend enough time to read the articles from these Chinese language–based websites and also, sometimes if I see very interesting, very intriguing headlines, and I try to control myself, I told myself, don’t read it, because if I read it, I will be wasting my time to processing this information. So, for me, it’s about self-control, because I have read a lot of articles like this: it’s a very ordinary fact, however the way how they present it is very extraordinary.

MdS: Yeah. I understand. Okay. Well I’ll turn this off.

Marriage equality rally, Darling Harbour

On Saturday 1 August 2009 there were rallies in support of marriage equality around Australia and, with a friend, I was at the one held in Sydney. It started in the CBD at Town Hall but we joined it in Darling Harbour, where the Labor Party’s national conference was on. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story from Australian Associated Press which included this:

In Sydney's CBD Aretha Franklin's R.E.S.P.E.C.T. blared from the speakers and placards saying "Legalise gay marriage" were waved in the air, as protesters assembled outside Town Hall. The crowd of 1,500 then marched to Darling Harbour, where Labor's National Conference was being held. 

There they attended a wedding ceremony for 150 gay, lesbian and transgender couples. Nicholas Tyson, 32, and his partner Darryn Skelly, 35, were among the couples married at Darling Harbour by Pastor Karl Hand from the Metropolitan Community Church. 

"We're not asking for more than straight couples. We just want the same," Tyson said.

On that day I took the following 34 photos. Others were not included in this selection. The file definitions of these photos show that they were taken between 2.41pm and 2.54pm.

There were all sorts of people there and a couple of police. Some people had brought banners protesting against the Iranian government but most people, including the cops, looked relaxed and some attendees were dancing. One woman, wearing a white veil on her head, white gloves on her hands, and with heart-shaped earrings hanging from her earlobes, was laughing while looking at something on her mobile phone. Some people wore outlandish clothes in order to signal to others around them that the event was a bit of a joke. Two men in matching mid-blue suits, light-blue shirts, and yellow ties stood next to each other on the stage that had been set up in front of the shopping centre with its food court and shops selling tourist tat.

If gays and lesbians were allowed to marry, people seemed to be saying, there would be nothing – absolutely nothing – for anyone to worry about. For the people congregated next to the water on the western side of the CBD it was all a bit of a lark but some political parties were there too, capitalising on support for what turned out to be a broadly-backed social issue. There were signs bearing the Australian Greens’ logo. A Labor staffer attended to some sound gear. Most people were young but not all of them. At the end of the celebration, in the winter sunshine, people sauntered away on the plaza.

Labor was in power in 2009 but the law was changed eight years later after the (conservative) Coalition government conducted a postal plebiscite which allowed ordinary people to voice their opinions on the question. Over 62 percent of eligible people voted “Yes”. In the lead-up to the poll, on 10 September 2017 there was a rally at Town Hall.

This rally, which I happened to pass through while walking home from Kings Cross, was much larger than the one held in August 2009 and people were less ebullient. For a start there was hardly any room to breathe, let alone move, on George Street or Park Street in the CBD. But apart from that constraint by late 2017 things were different because the political situation was coming to a head. People were more serious as the finish line began to emerge after what had been, for many people, decades of gloom and doom. The following is a photo taken from the TV broadcast showing the federal Parliament on 7 December 2017. The photo was taken at 6.03pm.

In August 2009 I had already relocated to southeast Queensland and on my trip south was busy packing into boxes the belongings that filled my unit in southwest Sydney.

40th annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

The event kicked off in the morning when a representative from NSW police was interviewed on ABC News about the original Mardi Gras in 1978. “NSW police got it wrong in 78," when they disrupted with violence the first march, he said. It had been held to mark the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York, which had also been characterised by police brutality.

Much has changed. In Sydney last night, the prime minister and his wife Lucy were caught in a published selfie with the NSW state premier and US pop legend Cher. The leader of the Opposition and his wife were snapped walking on Oxford Street. A thousand police provided security in the streets, many of which were blocked to vehicles apart from the 200 floats and their attendant 12,000 marchers. Some streets were even blocked to spectators, who were estimated later to number 300,000, making the event Sydney’s second-biggest public event after the New Year’s Eve celebration in the CBD and around Circular Quay.

Much has changed in 40 years indeed. On the trains leading into the city young men and women in the carriages dressed in outrageous, skimpy outfits drew the gaze of other passengers. Finding a way onto Oxford Street itself was a challenge, as all the surrounding cross streets had been barricaded by police wanting to make sure the crowds were manageable. Getting inside the cordon was a matter of luck, and once inside a solid wall of bodies lined the route of the parade. People stood precariously on small plastic chairs they had brought along for the purpose, holding their smartphones up to record the proceedings. If you managed to stand still for a few minutes amid the rest of the throng circulating up and down the street you might see the top of a float as it lumbered past, music blaring from hidden speakers.

One truck that was covered in pink and purple balloons had CeCe Peniston’s 1991 ‘Finally’ going full-bore, which had some people standing on the roadway bopping and jiving. The song’s lyrics reminded you that in November marriage equality legislation passed in the federal Parliament. “Finally it has happened to me right in front of my face, And I just cannot hide it.” The song had gained fans after being used as the soundtrack for the final staged performance featured in the 1994 gay cult road movie ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.’ 

There was another float with an oversized cloth simulacrum of the nose of an airliner that had the name of Qantas, the national carrier, emblazoned in letters covered in red glitter on its side. It was blaring Cher’s 1998 hit ‘Believe’: “Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, ‘I really don't think you're strong enough, no.’” The airline’s gay CEO Alan Joyce had been criticised for using the company’s money to fund the campaign to change the law. 

Such emotionally-overloaded anthems animated the people crowding along the way, some of whom were heavily intoxicated or high on some substance or another. Most of them were just people in their twenties and thirties enjoying the fun vibe but there were older people as well and younger ones. A young father standing up against the side of a building carried a sleeping baby in a chest pouch, and on Bourke Street near Taylor Square a young mother pushed a stroller with a small child in it. 

Just off Campbell Street, a female uniformed police officer searched the pockets of a young woman next to the side of a marked police car. A man in a grey T-shirt standing behind them with a mobile phone dutifully raised to the level of his face captured the process electronically.

'Yes to equality' sticker, Bay Street, Ultimo

On Thursday I saw this sticker on a post box in Bay Street, near Broadway, outside the shopping centre. There had been the word ‘Yes’ scrawled on the pavement there during the marriage-equality postal survey the federal government held in September, October and November, in the characteristic script used by Arthur Stace to write the word ‘Eternity’ on Sydney pavements and buildings in the 30s and 40s. I wrote about it at the time. This sticker is a last hold-out for the successful push for change in the area. The sticker was printed by Green Left Weekly, an organisation in Sydney that publishes a newspaper that is sold on street corners by volunteers. They sell the paper outside the shopping centre sometimes.

Finally we vote for marriage equality

On 17 April 2013 New Zealand's Parliament voted to allow people of the same sex to marry. When the law was passed people in the public gallery stood up and spontaneously sang a waiata, a traditional Maori song of celebration, 'Pokarekare Ana', which is said to date from the time of WWI. It is a love song. Today, in Parliament, as soon as the clerk proclaimed the new law passed, people in the public gallery stood up and sang the chorus from 'I Am Australian', a song of The Seekers:

We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We'll share a dream and sing with one voice
"I am, you are, we are Australian"

The words reflect what the prime minister had said just before the law was passed in the day's final division (which saw a mere four members voting 'No'). But the selection of this song is certainly striking because the places that responded strongly 'No' in the postal survey that led up to today's vote were places where the concentration of new migrants is the highest, notably in western Sydney, as I outlined in a blogpost last month.

Who voted 'No'?

By comparing the same-sex marriage postal survey results with Commonwealth electoral districts and the results returned for them for the 2016 Census, we can get an idea of why a number of places - especially in western Sydney - voted 'No'. You can click on the table below to see an enlarged version. I've included all federal electorates that returned a 'No' vote of above 50 percent.

We can see that the places that voted 'No' were often urban or periurban areas with large populations of people who gave "Islam" or "Hindu" as their religion in the 2016 Census. There are exceptions to this, of course, including the electorate of Banks (which includes suburbs like Padstow, Revesby and Oatley), Bennelong, which has a large population of recent Asian migrants, and Mitchell, which includes the Hills District in northwestern Sydney, which is where the Hillsong Church is based.

The pattern is the same in Melbourne for the two electorates that functioned in this way there, but there seems to be less ghettoisation in the southern capital than there is in Sydney. Or perhaps the social dynamic is completely different. Maybe belonging to a football club makes all the difference..

Apart from these largely urban areas, the places which voted 'No' were all rural electorates in Queensland, including the town of Toowoomba. The huge rural seats of Kennedy (Bob Katter country) and Maranoa (which incorporates large swathes of southern and western Queensland) voted 'No'.

In the other states and territories, the large concentrations of people with strong religious views doesn't seem to have changed the vote. Or, perhaps in those cities these agglomerations don't exist.

The second table, below, shows a number of urban and periurban federal seats in Melbourne that voted 'Yes' and their religious make-up, again using ABS figures from the 2016 Census. This table shows that even where the Islamic component of the population was large, the electorate still voted 'Yes'. It should be noted however that the percentage of the populations in these electorates that is Islamic does not exactly compare to the proportions you find in Sydney.

'Yes' for Marriage Equality rally, Town Hall

Yesterday as I was walking west on William Street, Woolloomooloo, there were people with rainbow signs, hats, flags and feather boas. The young, carnivalesque folk were walking west in the same direction as I was. The council’s rainbow banners were hanging along William Street.

At the corner of College Street I talked with a young man wearing a rainbow flag around his neck who told me about the rally at 1pm at Town Hall. He had heard about it on Facebook, he said. I headed down Park Street and merged with the thick crowds of people on the street. The mass of people got heavier the closer to George Street I moved, and I had to slow to a crawl outside Woolworths at the corner of George and Park. The store guard was busy managing the crowd, which spilled into the store.

I worked my way through the tightly-packed mass of people south onto George Street, and walked along to Bathurst Street. In Sydney Square there were thousands of people, 30,000 according to organisers ‘Yes for Marriage Equality’, and I asked a man there who had organised the rally.

On the street I saw people holding West Papuan and Chilean flags as well as rainbow flags, and there were rainbow banners mounted all the way down Bathurst Street. Bill Shorten, the Opposition leader, was there today addressing the crowd, I learned when I got home, because I didn't try to get into the square to see who was speaking. The ABC said there were “thousands” of people in the afternoon, in their news bulletin. On TV, Shorten congratulated the prime minister for backing the ‘Yes’ side.

A marriage equality rally was also held in Brisbane yesterday.

Above two photos: Walking west along William Street, Woolloomooloo.

Above two photos: Looking northwest from the southeast corner of George and Park Streets.

Above: Looking north toward Sydney Square and the Town Hall.

Sign at Cuckoo Callay cafe, Surry Hills

On Monday I walked along Crown Street through Surry Hills from the south and took this photo. The sign was there on the pavement again today. On the obverse of the sign there's another message: "I'm interested in fitness. Fitness whole burger in my mouth." Chuckles aside, I thought today was a good opportunity to put up this photo because the High Court has just decided that the government's postal survey asking for the popular view on marriage equality could go ahead. O frabjous day!

Rainbow banners, Taylor Square

On Sunday I was buying a kebab at Taylor Square and the rainbow banners the city has installed caught my attention. I asked the woman serving in the shop when they had been put there but she didn't know. She asked a man seated at the back of the shop if he knew, but he shook his head. "We don't notice things around here," she said to me with a wry smile. She has started to recognise me since I began going to the shop for lunches. "I only noticed them today," the man said to me from his table.

Yesterday I emailed the city council about the banners, asking them if it had been the City of Sydney itself or someone else who had decided they should be placed in such a prominent location. 

"The Rainbow Banners are booked by the City of Sydney to support our Sustainable 2030 plan to support Diversity and Inclusion," the acting manager of corporate partnerships replied to me. "We fly the Rainbow Banners as part of our ongoing support for Sydney’s LGBTI community and for the marriage equality campaign." She then pointed me to a web page setting out the city's policies for diversity and inclusion.

Mardi Gras always makes me happy

The last time I went to the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade was a few years ago when I had come down to Sydney from the Coast to see a friend. At that time I walked on the crowded pavements of Oxford Street appreciating the get-ups and the outfits of all the fabulous young girls and boys. But my links with the event go back to the 80s when I too was young and fabulous. Many people don't know for example that for my buck's night before getting married in '91 a group of us fellows went to The Albury - a notorious gay pub in the Art Deco building at 2a Oxford Street, Paddington - and hung out with all the characters you find in such places. They are usually just nice chaps.

But I would often take someone to the parade when I was young. It was just part of the Sydney scene, for me, although we never were invited to the after party. For us it just meant happily pounding the pavements watching the life of the city stream past in its glorious colours. It's an event that always offers stunning visuals, the parade.

And it always makes me feel happy. Yesterday, when I was sitting in my quiet living room watching the social graph stream past - and with the TV on as usual in the background as it is in the late afternoons - I decided to do some photo posting (those stunning visuals!). So I got out my camera and sat down in front of the TV taking pictures of the images that came up in the feed. When I had enough in the memory stick I went back to the computer and connected the camera using the little cable in the USB port on the front, and loaded the photos to Facebook. I also put some up onto Twitter, although it was soon telling me that the files were a bit too big for it and that I had to make them smaller. To fix that problem I just fired up my trusty graphics program and resized them, and saved them.

The immediate appeal of the Mardi Gras to someone of my generation - and I'm going to be 54 later this year - is the appeal of something that is native. There's no filter necessary. The thing in its natural state is enough to get through to the place where our sentiments dwell inside. It's because it was the generation just before mine that launched the event in the first place. And it was only this year that the state government and the police apologised for the brutality they unleashed in those early pioneers from back in '78! That's a lifetime for some. But for old farts like me it was just yesterday when we were young and fabulous. We'll never be young and fabulous again, so all we can do is post pictures of all the young and fabulous things in their glorious finery on social media, and have dreams of times past.

Irish marriage equality poll showed what Twitter can do

Unlike the passing of the New Zealand marriage equality law through that country's Parliament - which took place two years ago - Saturday's Irish marriage equality referendum was really a global event and part of the reason for this was how Twitter was used in conjunction with the #MarRef hashtag. While in the first case the news of the legislation was noted by international news outlets in their web pages, in the case of #MarRef the media played catch-up to social media as usual, like a sleepy bear to Twitter's cloud of pesky and insistent sandflies.

Voting in the Republic or Ireland is not compulsory but over 60 percent of eligible adults turned out to cast their votes at polling stations on the day. Of these around two-thirds voted for marriage equality. This news could first be seen on social media, with traditional news sites releasing stories at least 30 minutes after the fact. And the speed at which tweets appeared was something astounding to see. In fact, in order to reliably sample information from the streaming feed you had to do things to slow down or stop the feed. One way to do this is, for example in TweetDeck, to remove the focus of the reading column away from the docked position at the top of the column. To do this you scroll the column of tweets down a tweet or so. Once the focus is taken away from the top of the reading column new tweets will be registered using a counter but the currently-viewed tweet will not be replaced by new ones.

Today is Wednesday and the #MarRef column in my TweetDeck is still active, with people in Ireland posting their views on the event on a fairly regular basis, although the frequency with which tweets arrive in the column is nothing like how it was at the time the poll results were being tallied, and results made public by the authorities. Still, the hashtag still has a viable life as people digest the meaning of the event for them, for their country, or for their community.

What is remarkable about those hours when results were arriving in the public domain in Ireland was the level of excitement the hashtag registered for anyone in the world to see. Already, in Australia, we have seen the prime minister questioned on TV about a private member's bill the opposition leader intends to introduce in favour of marriage equality. Already, the matter has become a local issue in Australia just as it quickly became an international issue due to the presence of that frenetic hashtag and its accompanying tweetstream. That level of excitement cannot be communicated easily in the absence of social media, although a viral video might have come close. This event shows us the unique way that social media can contribute to global and local debates. In fact, it shows how the global can quickly become the local.

Is the rainbow pope on a collision course with doctrinal conservatives?

This picture just cracks me up: the "Rainbow Jesus". What in the flying fuck was the person who made this fabulous image thinking? In any case it predates the publication of a long interview with Pope Francis that came out in a number of Jesuit magazines globally in which the pontifex says that the Catholic Church is on the wrong track when it expends too much energy proscribing gays, abortion and contraception. The New York Times headlines its story 'Pope Bluntly Faults Church’s Focus on Gays and Abortion', so of course the obvious thing to do is to look for a picture that suggests the pope is embracing homosexuals. Right?

“It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” the pope told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a fellow Jesuit and editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal whose content is routinely approved by the Vatican. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. 

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

The elderly Argentinian may look like a greengrocer but he's a lot smarter than your average buttoned-down apostolic purist because he understands that a structure that is too rigid risks cracking and toppling over into ruin. For those who value the Catholic Church and give a fuck whether it topples into ruin or not, the story contains a bunch of heartstoppingly-radical ideas, such as this:

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality,” he told Father Spadaro. “I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”

Cathoholics with mental tools equipped to unleash the full flavour of papal utterances might also find guidance - if that is what popes are designed to provide - in Francis' hipster retro-60s bent, which privileges the kind of artefacial modernisation people in Australia might most readily identify with troops of young Christians sitting on the ground at night around a campfire singing Kumbaya:

“The church is the totality of God’s people,” he added, a notion popularized after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which Francis praised for making the Gospel relevant to modern life, an approach he called “absolutely irreversible.”

Given the rise and rise of megachurches the aesthetic repercussions of this tendency might seem quaint but, after all, the daggy Christian protester of the 70s today is probably sitting in a huge amphitheater on her Sunday afternoons listening to hot gospel sounds blasting from towers of brain-altering speakers and waving her hands above her head like a sea anemone. Given this scenario, Francis starts to look refreshingly like some kind of albino clownfish, the only one of its tribe able to survive the touch of the anemone's stinging tentacles.