Equality Campaign

1. 1

   61.6% Yes on 79.5% participation in the 2017 voluntary postal survey; Parliament passed marriage equality on December 7.

2. 2

   More than 1 million calls, according to GetUp: volunteers at calling parties found supporters and asked them to post their form the day it arrived.

3. 3

   98,000 new voters, 65,000 of them aged 18 to 24, joined the electoral roll between August 8 and 24, when it closed.

4. 4

   Tiernan Brady, former political director of Ireland's Yes Equality, kept the tone respectful and centred on family and friends, and never answered the No side's negativity in kind.

5. 5

   The campaign challenged the survey in court and built its operation at the same time: Tim Gartrell took charge the morning after the announcement.

Copy summary

If you're new to this, start with the fundamentals, from the vote goal to what the research says. Read the fundamentals

Nobody on the Yes side wanted this vote: it was costly, voluntary, by post and not legally binding. But once the government called it in August 2017, the campaign had about 13 weeks to get a long-standing majority to send back their forms. The plan had three parts: enrol the missing voters, find supporters one by one and remind each of them to post.

61.6%

Yes (7,817,247 responses); 133 of 150 federal electorates voted Yesofficial Source

79.5%

participation: 12.7 million eligible Australians took partofficial Source

1M+

volunteer get-out-the-vote calls, according to GetUpcampaign figure Source

65,000

18- to 24-year-olds joined the electoral roll from August 8 to 24official Source

From the Senate to the altar

1. 2004The Marriage Act is amended to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
2. 2016Tiernan Brady starts work with Australian Marriage Equality in March. The Equality Campaign launches on October 27; on November 7, the Senate rejects the plebiscite.
3. Aug 2017The Senate blocks the plebiscite again (Aug 9) and the government directs the ABS to run a voluntary postal survey. The morning after the announcement, Tim Gartrell takes over as campaign director.
4. Aug 23–24Calling parties begin. The roll closes: 98,000 new voters, 65,000 of them aged 18 to 24, and 933,000 enrolments or updates in 16 days.
5. Aug 29–30The first No ad airs on TV, with three mothers and the schools theme. Soon after, Yes puts out a reply from the doctor Kerryn Phelps.
6. Sep 7–12The High Court upholds the survey; forms start going out. The calling script now asks people to post their vote straight away and talk to their loved ones.
7. Sep 23–Oct 3A national door-knocking weekend. On October 3, the ABS estimates 57.5% of forms returned and GetUp counts 650,000 calls.
8. Nov 1561.6% Yes, on 79.5% participation. Brady credits thousands of positive conversations; Anna Brown asks Parliament to pass the law as soon as possible.
9. Nov 29–Dec 9The Senate passes the bill 43 to 12, and the House on December 7, without amendments. In force from December 9, 2017.
10. Sep 2024Equality Australia, born of the campaign and led by Anna Brown, attacks the exclusion of LGBTIQ+ people from the Census; the government backs down and adds sexual orientation and gender questions to the 2026 Census, but not intersex status. The Census asked them for the first time on August 11, 2026.

Three layers

A coalition with a professional headquarters, field leadership in every state and a crowd making calls wherever they were.

• The coalitionAustralian Marriage Equality and Australians for Equality under the Equality Campaign brand. Co-chairs Anna Brown and Alex Greenwich, executive director Tiernan Brady, campaign director Tim Gartrell and, at its peak, more than 80 paid staff, according to SBS.
• The fieldA national field director (Patrick Batchelor), directors in every state and territory, headquarters in Sydney and bases such as Victorian Trades Hall. The calling operation was built with GetUp.
• The crowdAbout 15,000 volunteers, according to SBS, and calling parties hosted by unions, churches, businesses, clubs and friends, plus people who told their own story on video.

What was specific to Australia in 2017 and may be missing elsewhere.

Platforms

Calling parties

The engine of the campaign. From August 23, volunteers called in groups through an automated dialling tool, reaching numbers from purchased commercial databases selected by gender and age. Unions, churches, businesses, clubs and groups of friends ran their own sessions; by mid-September the campaign counted 305 registered events.

Door-knocking

The campaign billed the weekend of September 23 and 24 as Australia's largest door-knock. In Leichhardt, in Sydney, teams of volunteers went house to house asking people to post their vote in time.

The mail

The paper form went out by post from September 12, and all forms had been delivered by September 25; the ABS asked for it back by October 27, and the final deadline was November 7. So the core ask was to post it straight away.

Email and social media

An email to supporters launched #PostYourYES, with selfies at the postbox on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and videos of personal stories, such as 88-year-old Pat and one family.

TV and radio

Yes ads showed Australians from all walks of life walking to the postbox with their form, plus a quick reply to the first No ad. By September 26, Ebiquity estimated about A$2.9 million in advertising by the two lead Yes groups, against about A$4 million by the Coalition for Marriage.

Mass SMS

On September 23, a pro-Yes text message went to randomly generated numbers and drew privacy complaints, including from Yes voters. It is recorded here as part of the terrain; the playbook does not recommend it.

Local conditions

• Voting is compulsory in Australian elections, but this survey was voluntary, by post and not legally binding: the job became getting every supporter to vote.
• Support for marriage equality had sat around 62% for years, according to GetUp, and by 2014, 16 marriage bills had failed in Parliament, according to SBS.
• The Senate blocked a compulsory plebiscite in November 2016 and again on August 9, 2017; the government then directed the ABS to run a postal survey, which the High Court upheld on September 7.
• Only about two weeks to enrol (deadline August 24); under-18s excluded; more than a million Australians overseas still had to return their form in October.
• Without normal electoral advertising rules, Parliament rushed through a temporary safeguards law, in force from September 14 to November 15.
• A public debate about a minority's lives: reported verbal and physical assaults on LGBTIQ people more than doubled in the three months after the announcement.
• A movement already organized: Australian Marriage Equality, Australians for Equality, the Equality Campaign launched in October 2016, GetUp and the unions.
• Executive director Tiernan Brady had been political director of Yes Equality in Ireland's 2015 referendum (see the Ireland 2015 playbook).

The campaign started from a diagnosis: the majority already existed, and the biggest risk was abstention in a voluntary postal vote. Almost everything served one goal, finding every supporter and getting them to send back the form, without losing the respectful tone.

Three fronts

Turnout before conversion

Calls and doors went to likely supporters, selected by gender and age. The aim, as The Guardian reported it, was to activate Yes voters to return their ballot and take action themselves.

People voters know, a respectful tone

Families, friends and colleagues at the centre of the message. Brady refused to mirror the No side's negativity and called for millions of respectful conversations; videos of personal stories spread on social media.

Fast reply with a trusted messenger

When No took schools onto TV, Yes answered straight away with the doctor Kerryn Phelps, and a school principal publicly denied one of the ad's stories.

The campaign cycle

The cycle followed the official calendar: the enrolment deadline, the arrival of forms, the recommended return date and the close.

1. Enrol Before the deadline, get people who are not enrolled or have moved onto the roll, especially young people.
2. Recruit Public meetings, email to supporters and calling parties any group can host.
3. Find Call and knock on doors to find supporters and learn whether they will return the form.
4. Ask Post the form the day it arrives, and talk to family and friends.
5. Make it visible #PostYourYES, selfies at the postbox, public figures such as Ian Thorpe posting their forms and videos of personal stories.
6. Reply Every fear the opponent raises gets a short, fast reply from a trusted messenger; then the conversation returns to people.
7. Measure Count calls, answers and conversations; follow the ABS return estimates and fight complacency.
8. Convert On results day, ask Parliament to pass the law as soon as possible.

And again.

This playbook draws on what the organizers themselves wrote and said: Alex Greenwich and Shirleene Robinson's account in the book Yes Yes Yes, interviews Tiernan Brady and Anna Brown gave during and after the campaign, Sally Rugg's review for GetUp, and the account of a volunteer who came over from Ireland's Yes Equality. Official data come from the ABS and the AEC.

• Tiernan Brady

  Executive director of the Equality Campaign (2016–2017); before that, political director of Yes Equality in Ireland (2015)

  Started work in Australia in 2016 with the rule he brought from the Irish referendum: persuade through respectful conversations and never meet negativity with negativity.

  Sources

• Anna Brown

  Co-chair of the Equality Campaign; lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre; CEO of Equality Australia since December 2018

  Ran Australian Marriage Equality's legal challenge in the High Court and, during the campaign, summed up the message: marriage equality is “not a what, it is a who”.

  Sources

• Alex Greenwich

  Co-chair of Australian Marriage Equality and the Equality Campaign; New South Wales state MP

  Campaign spokesperson and co-author, with Shirleene Robinson, of Yes Yes Yes (2018), the inside account, based on more than 40 interviews.

  Sources

• Tim Gartrell

  Campaign director for Yes in the postal survey; chief of staff to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese since May 2022

  Former Labor national secretary (2003–2008) and former campaign manager of Recognise; appointed the morning after the survey was announced.

  Sources

• Sally Rugg

  Marriage equality director at GetUp

  GetUp ran the calling parties with the Equality Campaign; Rugg later reported that volunteers had passed 1 million calls.

  Sources

• Patrick Batchelor and the state field directors

  National field director; Georgia Kriz and Audrey Marsh (New South Wales), Wil Stracke (Victoria) and teams in every state and territory

  Set up bases across the country, such as Victorian Trades Hall, and filled rooms, hallways and fire stairs with volunteers on the phones.

  Sources

• Shirleene Robinson

  Historian, board member of Australian Marriage Equality

  Co-author of Yes Yes Yes: Australia's Journey to Marriage Equality (NewSouth, 2018).

  Sources

What organizers and volunteers said about the decisions they made. Paraphrased unless otherwise noted.

• The campaign was not there to defeat anybody but to persuade people, and you cannot persuade with anger or by shouting at people.

  Tiernan Brady, on arriving in Australia, Crikey, Marriage Equality brings Irish charm, not Gaelic tempers, to the debate, Apr 27, 2016

• Yes would not mirror the No side's negativity; this was a marathon, not a sprint, and people needed to take care of each other.

  Tiernan Brady, executive director, OUTinPerth, Tiernan Brady on why a positive message will win, Sep 27, 2017

• “This is about people that we know”: family members, friends, colleagues and neighbours. That is why the campaign had to be respectful.

  Tiernan Brady, on the door-knocking weekend, SBS News, Yes campaign door knocking for support, Sep 23, 2017

• The high turnout came from conversations at kitchen tables and in workplaces; marriage equality “is not a what, it is a who”.

  Anna Brown, co-chair, OUTinPerth, Advocates welcome high participation rate in marriage survey, Oct 3, 2017

Pick the moves that fit your context and add them to your kit.

1. Enrolment drive before the deadline

   Get people who are off the roll, especially young people, to enrol or update their address before the deadline. In Australia, 98,000 people joined the roll in two weeks, 65,000 of them aged 18 to 24; the campaign's share of that rise was not measured.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when your support is highest among the people least likely to be enrolled and the deadline is public.

   Don't use when

   It fails once the deadline has passed or if you give out wrong information about the rules: always point to the official source.

   1. Week −12 Confirm the deadline and enrolment rules with the official source
   2. Week −12 Map where unenrolled people are: campuses, first jobs, people who moved
   3. Week −11 Post the official enrolment link on every channel, with the deadline
   4. Week −11 Ask every supporter to check their own enrolment and three other people's
   5. Week −11 Make a final push in the 48 hours before the close
   6. Week −10 Keep, with consent, the contacts of people who enrolled for the reminder

   Team

   • Enrolment lead: deadline, rules and official link
   • Student and youth groups: carry the message to campuses and workplaces
   • List keeper: holds consented contacts for the reminder phase

   What to measure: Supporters who reply confirming they checked or completed enrolment, their own and other people's, before the deadline.

   Risks to watch: Wrong information about deadlines, or asking for documents, breeds distrust and legal trouble: always send people to the official site and never collect documents.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

2. Calling parties to get out the vote

   Volunteers call together, for about two and a half hours, to likely supporters: they ask whether they support the cause and ask them to vote early. In Australia, unions, churches, businesses and friends hosted hundreds of these sessions, and GetUp counted more than 1 million calls.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when the majority already exists, the risk is abstention and you have legal lists to call.

   Don't use when

   It won't convince opponents, and it's off-limits with purchased lists where data law forbids them; the answer rate is also low (40,000 out of 300,000 in the first calls).

   1. Week −10 Choose the dialling tool and build legal, consented lists
   2. Week −10 Write the script: do you support? will you vote? when?
   3. Week −9 Open hosting: any group schedules its own session with the same script
   4. Week −8 Train for 15 minutes before each session and debrief as a group after
   5. Week −6 Switch the script to “vote today” when ballots arrive
   6. Week −1 Call back people who promised to vote and haven't yet

   Team

   • Host: room, phones, food and the quick training
   • List coordinator: legal numbers only, opt-outs honoured on the spot
   • Support: looks after anyone who got an aggressive call

   What to measure: Completed conversations per session in which a supporter committed to vote or post their ballot that day.

   Risks to watch: Unwanted calls annoy people and can breach data law: use consented lists, honour “don't call again” on the spot and always say who you are calling for.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

3. Post it today: the visible vote

   A single, dated and visible action: return the ballot the day it arrives and show it. In Australia, the campaign emailed supporters to launch #PostYourYES, with selfies at the postbox, and the hashtag was trending on Twitter within hours.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works for postal or early voting, when every ballot returned early frees the campaign to chase the rest.

   Don't use when

   It doesn't work where photographing your vote is banned: show the envelope or the queue, never the marked ballot.

   1. Week −7 Prepare the kit: how to vote, the deadline and where the nearest postbox is
   2. Week −6 Email supporters the day ballots start arriving
   3. Week −6 Ask for the first wave of photos of envelopes being posted
   4. Week −5 Reshare people who voted and ask each to tag three friends
   5. Week −2 Track the official return rate and push back against complacency
   6. D-day week Make the last call to action before the closing time

   Team

   • Digital: email to supporters and photo curation
   • Voting information: checks deadlines and rules with the official source
   • Spokespeople: keep repeating that nothing is won

   What to measure: Supporters who confirm, by reply or form, that they have posted their ballot, as a share of those who committed.

   Risks to watch: A photo of a marked ballot may be illegal and pressures people who prefer a secret vote: ask for a photo of the envelope, never the vote, and respect people who don't want to show it.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

4. Fast reply with a trusted messenger

   When the opponent drags the debate onto a side fear, answer fast, with someone the audience trusts, and get back to your theme. In Australia, soon after the first No ad about schools, Yes aired a reply from the doctor Kerryn Phelps, and a school principal denied one of the ad's stories.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when the attack rests on a checkable fact and you have a messenger undecided voters respect.

   Don't use when

   It fails if the reply puts the attack front and centre or if the spokesperson sounds like an interested party.

   1. Week −12 List the three fears the opponent is likely to use and prepare a reply to each
   2. Week −11 Recruit trusted messengers and give them media training
   3. Week −10 Have filming and sign-off ready to go out within 24 hours
   4. Week −8 Check the facts in the opponent's piece against primary sources
   5. Week −8 Publish the reply and send the key line to callers and door-knockers
   6. Week −7 Return to the central theme: the people voters know

   Team

   • Rapid response: monitors, checks and signs off within hours
   • Trusted messengers: professionals undecided voters respect
   • Field: carries the key line into calls and doorsteps

   What to measure: Callers and door-knockers who received the reply and used it in conversations the same week.

   Risks to watch: Attacking the people who appear in the opponent's piece becomes a story against you: dispute the fact, not the person, and cite the source of your fact-check.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

5. Look after the people being voted on

   A vote on a minority's lives takes a heavy toll on that minority. In Australia, reported verbal and physical assaults on LGBTIQ people more than doubled after the announcement; Brady asked people to take care of each other, and the campaign organized events for supporters to meet up.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works, and is a must, whenever the rights of a specific group are on the ballot.

   Don't use when

   It doesn't replace professional mental health services or justify putting vulnerable people forward as spokespeople without preparation.

   1. Week −12 Map support services and helplines and publish them on the site
   2. Week −10 Train volunteers to handle abuse and refer people who need help
   3. Week −8 Schedule regular gatherings where the community can meet and rest
   4. Week −6 Open a channel to report attacks and follow up every case
   5. D-day week Prepare results night for both outcomes
   6. 1 week(s) after Hold a care gathering after the result, win or lose

   Team

   • Care lead: services, protocol and follow-up
   • Gathering hosts: a safe, regular space
   • Spokespeople: prepared and free to step back

   What to measure: Community members and volunteers who attended a support gathering or were referred to a service.

   Risks to watch: Reports of attacks are sensitive data: keep the minimum, with consent, and only refer to police or specialist services if the person wants it.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

What the Equality Campaign built, organized for you to copy. It fits any vote where your side is already the majority and the risk is abstention: a referendum, a consultation, a low-turnout election.

What works anywhere and what depended on Australia in 2017.

Choose your country

The Equality Campaign sequence, from the announcement to results day, as a checklist; some items are this playbook's suggestions. Your progress is saved in this browser.

Five questions, each explained after you answer.

The rules below protect the campaign's credibility and the people whose lives are being debated.

Lists with consent

In Australia, the campaign used numbers from commercial databases and texted randomly generated numbers, drawing privacy complaints. Under the GDPR and Brazil's LGPD, call and write only to people who opted in or to your own contacts.

An exit always at hand

Anyone who asks not to be contacted comes off the list immediately, and every message says how to opt out.

Say who is speaking

Every call, ad and message identifies the campaign and who authorises it; the Equality Campaign site carried the name of the person authorising its material.

Never a photo of the vote

Ask for a photo of the envelope or the queue, never of the marked ballot; respect people who prefer to vote quietly.

Respect for people who say No

Thank them and end the call. Nobody pushes, nobody insults.

Against intimidation from any side

Churches were graffitied with messages against No voters, and a train was sprayed with a swastika in favour of No. Condemn it publicly, wherever it comes from.

Protect the community

Published support services, an abuse protocol and regular gatherings. Nobody tells their story without preparation or without being free to back out.

Voting information from the official source

Deadlines, rules and addresses always linked to the electoral authority.

Authentic accounts only

No fake profiles, bots or bought accounts.

Local law

Rules on campaign advertising, donations and data protection vary from country to country and even from vote to vote: in Australia, Parliament had to pass temporary safeguards. Check with a lawyer.

The vote itself did harm

In a study of more than 9,500 LGBTIQ people and allies, reported verbal and physical assaults more than doubled in the three months after the announcement, and reports of depression, anxiety and stress rose by more than a third. A peer-reviewed study (Ecker et al., 2019) linked debate-related stress to psychological distress. In February 2018, a Senate committee recommended that this kind of survey not be used again on human rights questions.

It doesn't prove conversion

The result landed close to the support polls had shown for years. The method mobilized a majority that already existed; nothing shows it created one.

Calls yield little per dial

Of the first 300,000, about 40,000 were answered and 19,000 became conversations. Without a large pool of volunteers, the numbers don't add up.

Purchased lists and mass SMS

They gave reach, but annoyed even supporters and would not be legal in many countries. They are not in this playbook as a step.

It didn't carry over to the Voice

On October 14, 2023, the Indigenous Voice referendum lost with 60.06% No and in every state. The Liberal-National Coalition campaigned against it, and polls showed support falling: getting out the vote is not enough when the majority is slipping away. This comparison is this playbook's reading.

Who was left out

16- and 17-year-olds could not vote, and there were concerns about remote Indigenous communities and Australians overseas. The law only came because Parliament voted for it afterwards.

This playbook was built from Alex Greenwich and Shirleene Robinson's published account, interviews with Tiernan Brady, Anna Brown and Sally Rugg, volunteers' testimony, official ABS and AEC data, reporting from 2016 to 2026 and research on the vote's impact. All pages were accessed on October 28, 2026.

Updated 28 October 2026