At the National Press Club in Canberra, Julia Gillard is asked about the Republic.\u00a0 She said “where the republic debate went wrong was that it became too much about what people like me think and not enough about what the community thinks”.\u00a0 She said that there has to be consensus (not yet evident) and a change from the NO vote of 1999 to YES.\u00a0 She strongly signalled that unless her Government could clearly\u00a0see that a referendum will succeed, then it will take no action.\u00a0 She also commented that she doesn’t see the same level of engagement with or activity on this issue as was the case in the late 1990s.\u00a0 WfaAR reminds the Prime Minister that voter engagement with the Republic was minimal until the Constitutional Convention was convened by the Howard Government in 1998 and\u00a0continued at\u00a0a high level until the 1999 referendum.\u00a0 After that, it dropped off quickly when it became evident that no further votes were\u00a0on the horizon\u00a0with the then\u00a0Government remaining strongly opposed.\u00a0 If\u00a0a Gillard Government holds one or more non-binding polls or a referendum, the electorate will engage – strongly.\u00a0 It must, it has to vote and make a choice.\u00a0 See also Australia Will Not Vote on Ties to British Monarchy by Bonnie Malkin in the UK Telegraph 15 July; PM Lukewarm on Republic by Michelle Grattan in The Age 16 July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the National Press Club in Canberra, Julia Gillard is asked about the Republic.\u00a0 She said “where the republic debate went wrong was that it became too much about what people like me think and not enough about what the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-22","wpcat-22-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1892,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891\/revisions\/1892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}