British comedian John Oliver has delivered a scathing rant against Australia’s postal vote on the legislation of same-sex marriage, calling it “dispiriting and pointless” and a “weird” waste of taxpayer money.

During this week’s episode of his late-night talk show Last Week Tonight, Oliver shared his opinion on the federal government’s “non-legally binding voluntary postal vote at a public cost of $120 million”.

The political satirist said the postal vote was “an odd thing to do because polls already exist showing around two-thirds of Australians support it”.

Oliver used an Australian in-joke to articulate his thoughts on the wastefulness of the vote, making reference to the often divisive films of Sydney-born director Baz Luhrmann.

“[The post vote is] the weirdest waste of Australian money since every Baz Luhrmann movie ever made.”

Oliver then turned his attention to Liberal MP Kevin Andrews, who drew ire in August this year for likening same-sex marriage to his relationship with his “cycling mates”.

Oliver showed a clip of Mr Andrews arguing on Sky News that his “affectionate relationship with his cycling mates” did not equate to a desire for marriage.

The British comedian then imitated Mr Andrews’ Australian accent to deliver a scathing, sarcastic parody of his comments.

“Yeah I mean we do f––k, we finish cycling and we slowly peel our clothes off and we f––k on the side of a bucolic country road,” Oliver said.

“We f––k, but that’s not marriage. That’s f––king your cycling mates.”

He also took aim at the unusual terminology being bandied about, openly laughing at ‘No’ campaigner Sophie Yorke’s suggestion gay marriage should be called “garriage”.

“Garriage, that is a stupid word. Except in the very rare case of a wedding between two men named Gary, in which case obviously they should be getting ‘garried,'” Oliver said.

Finally, the late-night host raised the furore surrounding US rapper Macklemore’s performance of same-sex marriage anthem Same Love at the NRL grand final earlier this month.

“Okay so that is putting me in a bit of a tough position because I do support gay marriage but I refuse to ever say, ‘Let Macklemore perform,’” Oliver joked.

The comedian concluded his rant by slamming the vote as “dispiriting and ultimately pointless”.

Watch John Oliver’s speech below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjnTfoSEY38