Our message of freedom is not only for those who campaigned during with us in 1999. It is also for a new generation of Australians, who like myself, were not old enough to understand what our parents were fighting to protect.
Campaigning in 1999 was a very different and challenging landscape, with republicans having several clear advantages. Facing a media monopoly, strongly biased towards the republican cause, our message was censored in many media outlets. Despite this Australians voted against becoming a republic in all states and in 72% of electorates.
Any future republican campaign would suffer an even larger defeat. With widespread and decentralised access to the internet, the media monopoly has crumbled. Unfortunately for republicans they are no longer in a position to stifle our message.
ACM has for many years now maintained our website www.norepublic.com.au which is receiving well over 7 million hits per year, of which 30% come from overseas. One would expect that the highest level of overseas hits would be from the UK, in fact the second highest source of traffic is from the US!
Facebook and Twitter, popular social networking sites, provide a dynamic and interactive platform for ACM to engage with the younger generation. Did you know that Facebook has over 400 million users, of which half are under the age of 35? With over 50% of these people logging in daily, we have an excellent opportunity to get our message out there.
ACM’s Facebook page can be accessed through www.facebook.com/acmnorepublic. ACM’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/crownedrepublic.