where there is a high concentration of people with tertiary education, showed a very high Yes vote. The Penrith, lower Blue Mountains area, which is an Anglo outer-suburban area with far fewer tertiary educated people, more self-employed tradespeople, and more church-going Protestants, showed a fairly strong No vote. В
A referendum day vignette. Fun and games at Newtown
A curious experience of the republican referendum campaign was to work on voting day, as I did, for the Yes side, at the main Newtown polling booth. Early in the day some members of the most obvious sectarian socialist group, the International Socialists, put on a bit of a stunt for a couple of hours, noisily campaigning for a No vote, with the slogan, "No to the boss's Republic ".
A number of the Yes campaigners had to be gently restrained from doing bad things to the ISers, who got a universally hostile response from the Newtown voters, who are wildly multi-ethnic and pretty young, including quite a number of students.
In the event, the result for the two Newtown subdivisions, one in the seat of Grayndler and one in the seat of Sydney, were about the two highest booth results for the Yes vote in the whole of Australia. The Newtown subdivision in Grayndler registered an almost unbelievable 83 per cent Yes vote. The irony of the eccentric behaviour of the IS is underlined by this result. Newtown is their patch, so to speak. It's the only place in Sydney where they consistently sell their paper. The masses of Newtown decided to do precisely the opposite of what was recommended to them by the International Socialists. p> Conclusions about the current shape of Australia and future electoral prospects
It seems very likely to me that observant and demographically informed conservatives will be looking at the republic referendum result with very considerable uneasiness about the electoral future for Australian conservatism.
The angry social and political undercurrents in rural, provincial and outer-suburban parts of Australia were expressed in the No vote in those areas. They are also expressed in the Pauline Hanson phenomenon. These undercurrents are quite clearly an ongoing feature of current Australian political life, and are unlikely to go away for quite a while.
The monarchists achieved the immediate electoral result that they desired on the republic by a very populist and very public appeal to the discontent of these social layers against political and commercial elites.
It would not be overstating it to say that the monarchist side snatched a victory by stepping aside a little and vigorously exploiting the reactionary demagoguery of the so-called Direct Election republicans, Ted Mack, Phil Cleary and Peter Reith. There is an obvious danger in this tactic for the general conservative side in politics, which was demonstrated dramatically in the recent Victorian election.
The problem for the conservatives is that this kind of anger is even more easily directed against the Tory parties in politics than it is against the Laborites, which is clearly indicated by the result in the Queensland election, the Victorian election and even in the last federal election.
The other problem for the conservatives at the level of electoral politics is that the existence of different Hansonite independent electoral formations tends to atomise the conservative vote, with obvious electoral benefits for Labor. This situation is developing in much the same way as the existence of the Democratic Labor Party severely damaged the electoral prospects of the Labor Party from 1955 to 1972.
The current electoral backlash against the conservatives is likely to peak after the introduction of the GST in June this year. Many of the social categories of Australians most disadvantaged by the GST, and most opposed to its imposition, are precisely the social categories that were persuaded to vote against the republic by the populist campaign attacking the political and commercial elites. Particularly important in this regard is the self-employed small business sector. They are going to be particularly infuriated against the Liberals during the long period of initial implementation of the GST.
On the Labor-Green-Democrat side of politics, the electoral prospects are a good deal more promising. The only thing in question here is whether the Labor leadership has enough foresight and courage to adopt a more leftist, populist economic policy, which is obviously required, to appeal to the discontented social layers who were so obvious in the referendum result.
The age polarisation that showed up in the referendum will also obviously help the progressive side in politics electorally, for the foreseeable future. In addition, the lack of emotional involvement by ethnic Australians in the monarchical ethos ...
