The glittering prize from the ABC’s reporting of the Governor-General’s Boyer lecture republic comment is the release of the VoteCompass results for the republic question. People were asked their opinion on this statement: “Australia should end the monarchy and become a republic.” The data was gathered in the run-up to the 2013 federal election. With 1.4m respondents, this is the most comprehensive data on factors influencing attitudes to the republic ever collected. It is dissected by age; education level; gender; ideology; income; industry; language; marriage status; level of interest in politics; religion; place of residence (rural or urban); State; voting intention. As WfaAR has always contended: education level, income, place of residence and level of interest in political/civic matters outweighs gender considerations on this subject (see attachment) although the gender data still shows women’s support to be lower than men’s. We also note that across the board around 40% are currently in favour, about 20% neutral and approx 40% are against. Counting only those Strongly Against running at about 25% overall, up to 75% are potential YES voters as we would expect, the Neutrals and Somewhat Disagrees likely to move in favour in a concerted education exercise before any vote. In all dissections, those Strongly For and Strongly Against outnumber those Somewhat in Favour and Somewhat Against.
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
