Australia recently recently threw the Labour party out of office after six years in government. One of the major  planks of Labour’s election campaign was a promise by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to legalise same-sex marriage. It got him precisely nowhere.

According to the blog, Mercatornet, “[Rudd] pushed it all the way to election eve and the issue received prominent and overwhelmingly positive media coverage”.

However, the public were distinctly unenthusiastic; Labour returned its lowest primary vote in 100 years. Meanwhile, their coalition partners, the Greens, who were even more committed to the issue of same-sex marriage, lost three percent of its support.

Why did pushing for same-sex marriage do Labour no good? The answer is that few of their own supporters were that interested, let alone the rest of the Australian public.

A poll conducted last week asked Australians to identify what issues were most important to them when they voted on September 7.  

According to the survey, only 13 per cent of voters rated same-sex marriage as a top-three issue, with only four per cent of those voting for the Liberals and their coalition partners the National party rating it as important.  

Even among Labour voters, 85 per cent don’t think it is a high priority and 72 per cent of Greens voters are not energised by it.

Ireland isn’t Australia of course, but the Meath by-election which took place earlier this year was the last time a candidate here made same-sex marriage a key part of their campaign.

Labour candidate, local councillor Eoin Holmes made same-sex marriage and abortion prominent parts of his election manifesto. He got 4.6pc of the vote, compared to 21pc in the 2011 General Election for the previous Labour candidate.

Opinion polls may show a majority of the public favour same-sex marriage but if you asked Irish voters how important they think it is in the overall scheme of things I daresay the result wouldn’t be so different from Australia.