Monarchist Confusion
I was amused by Ray Levick's contribution to this week's letters page in the Northern District Times regarding the 1999 referendum on the republic. He commenced by saying that the referendum was defeated by a two thirds majority. It seems either his memory or his mathematics are deficient.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission the national results for the republic question were 45.13% for and 54.87% against. Of the States, only Queensland came close to Mr Levick's claimed 66.7% opposition, with 62.56% of voters opposing the republic. This was followed by Tasmania with 59.63% and Western Australia with 58.52%.
In New South Wales only 53.57% opposed the republic, and here in Bennelong the majority favoured the republic, with 54.62% voting "Yes", thus delivering John Howard his first defeat in his own seat.
Victoria came close to voting "Yes", with the "No" case winning by a mere 9,602 votes out of 2,988,674 voters. The republic referendum was held in 1999 and I believe this was during the period Mr Levick was a resident of Melbourne. If so this would make his error doubly disappointing.
In the ACT 63.27% of voters supported the republic.
Aside from Mr Levick's mathematical errors, his argument assumes that the "No" vote supported the Queen. In fact the most prolific advertisers for the "No" campaign, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM), did not argue in its campaign in favour of keeping the Queen. Rather they argued that the model for the republic was wrong, and grossly misrepresented the nature of the changes.
The misrepresentations of ACM worked. As one anecdote, a first time voter told me the day after the election that she voted "no" because the changes were too complex and she would prefer a new referendum in which the only changes were to replace the words "Governor-General" with "President" throughout, remove references to the Queen, reduce the power of politicians to choose the President and make just the minimum number of other changes that were necessary as a result. That was exactly the form of the changes in the 1999 proposal.
Mr Levick's closing question was "Is the Queen the cause of all our problems?" Judging on the position of Mr Levick's chosen political party, the Christian Democratic Party, and also on material Mr Levick provided to me during the 2004 election campaign, I understand that his position has always been that it is in fact queens who are the cause of all of our problems.