New South Wales State Election, 2015

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Why does Australia stand alone in terms of being so retrograde on gay rights compared to the other Anglo countries like Canada, the UK, New Zealand and these days most parts of the U.S. as well?

It's not really the Australian populace that is opposed to gay marriage (a recent poll showed that 72% of Australians support gay marriage, and that was six months ago, so support may have increased since then), but the strong influence of socially conservative unions within the ALP. A lot of people have speculated that Gillard's failure to support gay marriage was due to her need for the support of the socially conservative leader of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, Joe de Bruyn. The ALP has also traditionally had a fairly culturally conservative Catholic base, though religious-based voting patterns have basically dwindled over recent years.

The NDP and the ALP are both members of the Socialist International, so I don't think it's absurd to say they're sister parties.

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Since it's being discussed here, I'll ask why is the SDA union so socially conservative? I know they affiliated with the DLP for many years but I'm unsure as to why a union would be more interested in social conservatism than economic matters. Are the shop workers all traditional Catholics or something?

I don't think the rank and file of the union are all rabid socons (apparently there's been struggle within the union on the issue), so much as the leadership and particularly Joe de Bruyn (who is a traditional Catholic, I think). But you're right that the union was conservative even before him. I think it's in the nature of retail work - casualised, often perceived as 'temporary', disproportionately done by young people and women - which creates a vulnerable workforce and thus discourages militancy.

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Haha, I just realised that the SDA spokesperson in the article I linked is a well-known Trot at my university, so probably not the most accurate indication of the average SDA member's stance on the issue.

But yeah, following from morgieb, I feel like the base of the shop workers union should if anything be more in favour of gay marriage than the average union - given that so much retail work is carried out by women and students. I guess the fact that shop workers are either low-income and fairly vulnerable, or only there temporarily (in the case of students), makes them less inclined to challenge the leadership on the issue.

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Is that still prevalent though?

I'm not sure on the specifics of that kind of thing in Australia, but there are still a few unions here run by hard-left sects (i.e. the PCS). The SDA is the same kind of thing but from the other side...

This is anecdotal but I did hear that there were a lot of Maoists in the BLF back in the 70s/80s? I think that might have played some role in why they took on so many non-union causes such as the Green Bans etc. But, yeah, they were deregistered, so it's hardly prevalent today (that I've heard) and I doubt there's much of a far-left influence in the Queensland BLF.