By Sean Healy
The republic was crushingly defeated on November 6; 55% of the electorate voted "no", and not a single state approved it. The preamble was rejected by 61% of voters.
The biggest losers are the "official", minimalist republicans — the Australian Republican Movement, the Labor Party, the Australian Democrats and Peter Costello's wing of the Liberal Party.
Their insistence on a "safe and conservative" model, in which a president would be elected by parliament, doomed the republic from the beginning. Not only did this incense the large numbers who favoured direct election of the head of state, but it also destroyed any possible enthusiasm: if this republic would change so little, why bother?
The nominal winner is John Howard. But Howard's victory is pyrrhic. The only way the "no" case could win was to cease arguing for a constitutional monarchy and instead argue against the particular republican model. Support for the monarchy can now only shrink further — a Newspoll survey published in the Australian showed that 55% of "no" voters supported a republic.
Howard may also have handed his opponents a handy weapon. Labor now knows that it has a policy which can win wide support (especially if it junks indirect election) and that the issue can split the Coalition.
Within 24 hours of the republic's defeat, Kim Beazley had already laid out his timetable for a republic (typically, it doesn't involve any change for at least six years).
Deep division
There's one, far more important, reason why the referendum result may come back to haunt John Howard. The result shows a deep divide in Australian society and a deep anti-establishment sentiment, which will not favour any of the major parties.
The result did not proceed along traditional party lines. Safe Labor seats such as Sydney and Melbourne voted "yes", as did those in the western and northern suburbs of Melbourne. But seats which are just as safe for Labor, such as Blaxland and Port Adelaide and Fremantle, voted "no".
Safe Liberal seats on Sydney's north shore and in Melbourne's eastern suburbs voted "yes". Similarly safe Liberal seats in regional areas voted "no". The only party which held firm was the National Party: all its seats voted "no".
There was a clear social and geographic divide. The inner cities in all states voted "yes"; Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong voted "yes", as did areas with high numbers of non-Anglo migrants.
Farmers voted "no", in proportions up to 77%.
The lower-paid white working class voted "no": the regional towns, such as Geelong, Goulburn, Ballarat and Gosford, voted "no", as did the white outer suburbs. Of Sydney's western suburbs, only the seat of Fowler (which includes heavily migrant Cabramatta) voted "yes". Brisbane's burgeoning outer suburbs all voted "no". In Melbourne, 18 of the 23 electorates voted "yes"; the five which didn't are all outer eastern and southern suburbs.
Some of this is hardly surprising. The country, especially in Queensland and WA, remains the most politically conservative part of Australia. Regional towns and even the outer suburbs also have histories of political conservatism.
The "no" vote was strongest in those places where social exclusion is highest. The more powerless and aggrieved people felt, the more likely they were to vote "no".
In NSW, a July study of income distribution by postcode identified the 30 poorest localities, nearly all rural, regional or outer suburban. In the referendum, 27 of these voted "no".
Regional and rural Australia, and the outer suburbs, have been worst hit by the pro-business economic policies of the last two decades. Services have closed, industries have shut, jobs have disappeared, amenities have fallen into disrepair. The republic offered no improvement for such areas. The refusal to offer a direct election option was an insult added to injury.
Hatred of politicians
There's good news and bad news in this for the left. The good news is that the referendum shows the depth of ordinary people's hatred for politicians and the system. All of the major parties are loathed for favouring the wealthy, for their lack of interest in issues facing working people, for their hypocrisy and lies. And rightly so.
The "yes" case therefore blundered when it paraded Hawke, Fraser, Wran and Whitlam. This simply reinforced the (true) impression that the "official" republicans had nothing to do with ordinary people and everything to do with elite privilege.
The hatred of politicians is shown even more starkly by the preamble's fate. The preamble was overwhelmingly rejected, at least in part, because it had support from almost every politician.
This phenomenon is common to all the advanced capitalist countries, all of which have followed neo-liberal redistribute-wealth-to-the-rich policies.
A study in the British Economist magazine, printed on July 17, compared distrust and suspicion of politicians in Europe, Australia, Japan and North America. In all countries, the belief that politicians are honest and trustworthy has declined by one or two per cent every year since the early 1960s. Over the 1990s, average faith in politicians' good offices declined by 6%.
In the United States, in 1964 only 29% agreed that "the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking after themselves". By 1984, that had risen to 55%; by 1998 it was 63%.
This shows that many scales are falling from people's eyes. The growing anger is something that the left should not only identify with but stoke.
There's also good news in how little impact the establishment media's intense "yes" campaign had — the media don't have as much power as they think they do, nor are people so easily suckered.
Conservatism
However, it would be wrong to see only that side of the result. This was not a left-wing vote.
The number one reason a majority voted "no" was in protest against the exclusion of the option for a directly elected president. That's not as radical as it sounds.
The main reason people want a directly elected president is because they hope that a directly elected president will not be a politician but will save them from politicians.
This is an inherently conservative, because passive, view: it amounts to little more than "Keep your head down and wait for rescue". From there, it is not so far to the "no" case's other main argument: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". "No" voters' motivations were a confused mess of wanting more change than was on offer and protecting the status quo.
The "no" vote was foremost a victory for the anti-political, a rejection not just of capitalist politicians but of politics altogether. It was a revolt against the politicians, yes, but one which took a bizarre form: saving the queen.
Revenge voting is an increasing factor in Australian politics. In part, it is entrenched because of compulsory voting. If voting were voluntary, much of the adult population wouldn't vote, just as they don't in the US.
The thirst for revenge against arrogant and uncaring governments makes elections increasingly unpredictable. It was a big part of Jeff Kennett's unexpected, but thoroughly deserved, defeat in Victoria. Something similar happened to Wayne Goss' Labor government in Queensland in 1996.
But such deep, and volatile, anti-political sentiment can advantage the right as easily as it can the left. The monarchists certainly showed that with their hypocritical use of the "Vote No to the Politicians' Republic" slogan.
Attracted by her "outsider" image, the electorates which voted "no" at the referendum were also the ones which voted in the largest numbers for Pauline Hanson's One Nation at the 1998 federal election. Labor-held Banks, Werriwa, Greenway and Chifley, in outer metropolitan Sydney, all easily rejected the republic; in all of these seats, One Nation polled more than 10%.
In outer metropolitan Brisbane, the seats of Oxley and Blair voted "no" by large margins. In 1998, One Nation received primary votes of 17.7% and 35.9% in these two seats.
In Victoria, Hanson got her best results in Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong, Mildura and Gippsland (between 5% and 11%). The same seats voted Labor or independent in the September state elections and kicked out Jeff Kennett. They voted "no" by large margins on November 6.
This increasing disaffection from establishment politics can be a good thing for the left — but it won't automatically become so. It will become a positive only if we challenge the passivity inherent in it and argue that people need to get more political (in a left-wing and socialist fashion) rather than less.