Lukas Coch

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Publications

After the lows of the same sex marriage campaign and the nerves of the vote, an uplifting moment. Labor MP Linda Burney crossed party lines and was held aloft by Liberal MP Warren Entsch on the floor of parliament.

Photographer Lukas Coch described the deeper significance of the moment in his entry statement: “For Burney it was a bittersweet moment—her son, who was gay, had died just six weeks before. For all of those who campaigned so hard for so many years, it was both a happy day and a day far too long in coming.”

The judges praised Coch’s image as “a brilliant news picture with so much backstory behind it. The colour of the flag is visually powerful and tells so much. It’s a spontaneous moment superbly captured. There’s a lot of life in this image. And so much emotion, it humanises our parliamentarians.”