New Zealand handed wedding windfall due to Australia’s failure to legalise gay marriage

If same-sex couples can’t persuade Australia’s lawmakers to let them marry, maybe their money will. Instead of splashing out on celebrations in their own backyard, rising numbers of gay Australians are taking a three-hour flight to get hitched.

Weddings of foreign same-sex couples in New Zealand last year overtook those of local gay marriages, with 58 per cent of them travelling from Australia.

Australia’s refusal to adopt same-sex marriage forced more than 270 of the nation’s couples to marry in New Zealand last year, where gay weddings have been allowed since 2013. Such ceremonies could add A$550 million (US$405 million) to the economy within a year of legislation, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group estimated in a 2015 report.

“There is no doubt that Australia is missing out on the business that would be generated by same-sex weddings if we had marriage equality legislation,” said Cherelle Murphy, a senior economist at ANZ who co-authored the report. “We’re probably also losing wedding-related consumption to overseas destinations.”

Same-sex weddings have spawned a new global industry, with many of the major economies including the US, Britain, Canada and France legalising the unions since the turn of the century in a domino effect.