"BROKE ARM PASSES THE HAT AROUND" – "ARM FACES CASH CRISIS"
It is with these headlines that The Australian and the Daily Telegraph of 12 October report that the ARM is facing a funding crisis. It must raise $50,000 in the next four to six weeks.
“Malcolm Turnbull is not paying the bills anymore”, lamented the only paid ARM employee, National Director James Terrie.
The ARM has just cancelled what was described as a ball, “The Second Coming” in Sydney on 13 October.
Apparently no one wanted to come.
This is the latest of a long series of “no-shows”.
When ACM indicated it would hold a National Conference on the anniversary of the 1999 referendum, the ARM said it would do the same. ACM’s had theirs, the ARM’s didn’t!
The ARM then said it would hold a National Conference this year. It didn’t.
ARM has been saying for months that it would release a Discussion Paper on republican models. It hasn’t.
Not a bad record for an organisation which said that whatever the result, it would no longer exist after the referendum.
Both newspapers suggest that patriotic feelings following terrorist attacks on the USA are thought to have diminished republic sentiment in the wider community.
Perhaps the real reason was given by Malcolm Turnbull when he wrote in his diary four months or so before the referendum – “Nobody is interested”.