This is from the same people who told us in the nineties that a republic would reduce unemployment, improve trade, increase immigration and that even the then editor of The Sydney Morning Herald would actually deign to take out Australian citizenship.
Oh, and if we didn’t accept their republican model we would be Asia’s and the world’s laughing stock. (We weren’t; the world’s respect for this country just increased. I watch the SBS TV news from Paris whenever I can. Australia seems to be mentioned often favourably almost every second day.)
Well, you probably saw the story in the Fairfax press on Sunday: ” Republic takes a king hit” in The Sun Herald and Josh Gordon’ s “Republican hopes take a king-hit,” in The Sunday Age, and Jessica Wright’s “Not ready for a republic? Well, we are amused” in The Sydney Morning Herald.
We reported the poll here.
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As Josh Gordon put it, The Age/Nielsen poll “shows support for a republic is now running at 44 per cent. This is the lowest level since 1994, and well down from the peak of 57 per cent in 1999, the year the question was tested in a national referendum. The national poll of 1400 people found almost half (48 per cent) are now against the idea."
…hostility to republic…
As The Age said, "Such a level of hostility has not been recorded since the late 1970s, when about 61 per cent were against a republic.”
James Jeffrey’s popular Strewth column in The Australian (30/8) tells us just what the republican movement is capable of:
WHAT a difference emphasis can make. Here's the headline and lead paragraph from a press release from the Australian Republican Movement that lobbed into our inbox yesterday:
"Neilsen poll says 2/3 of Australians want a republic . . . A poll published in The Sun-Herald today reported that support for a republic had slipped, even though, consistent with previous polls on this issue, at least 63 per cent of Australians support a republic, or around 2/3 of the population."
So let's go to the source, namely the original story in The Sun-Herald, and examine its headline and lead paragraph: "Not ready for a republic? Well, we are amused . . . Public support for a republic has slumped to a 16-year low with more Australians in favour of retaining the monarchy for now."
Well and truly caught out – they just don’t learn, these “passionate” republicans.