If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.

Study after study has demonstrated that people are better off financially, healthier, happier if they are married, and indeed, I repeat, if they are formally married as opposed to simply living together.

Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect, indifference, cruelty or adultery, to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief.

Do the bishops seriously imagine that legalising gay marriage will result in thousands of parties to heterosexual marriages suddenly deciding to get divorced so they can marry a person of the same sex?

My commitment to the Republican movement was pure and simply patriotism, a love of Australia... a desire or passion that all of our national symbols should be unequivocally and unambiguously Australian.

When politicians offer you something for nothing, or something that sounds too good to be true, it's always worth taking a careful second look.