REPORT
The Referendum - Why Tasmania voted No!
In early polling by the Australian Republic Movement and media outlets, Tasmania was shown to be strongly in support of a yes vote for Australia becoming a republic. So what happened? Was it the case that the polling was manifestly innacurate or did the campaign run by the No camp manage to persuade Tasmanians to change their mind? Post referendum analysis indicate that it was probably a combination of the two.
Support for the republic was probably never as high in Tasmania as polls suggested. The State reflected the national trend in which country regions voted overwhelmingly against the proposal and metropolitan areas voted in favour. The only electorate in Tasmania to vote in favour of the proposal was Denison, which incorporates much of the city of Hobart and parts of the Eastern Shore. Elsewhere, just one booth from an estimated one hundred booths in the rural electorate of Lyons recorded a positive yes vote.
It is hard to exrapolate the reasons for such a resounding result. Some pundits maintain that the no vote was not a vote against the republic per se but the model of republic being proposed. If this is so, the No campaign exploited the divisons within republican ranks masterfully, portraying a yes vote as a power grab by politicians with the support of well heeled elites living in the cities. The No campaign succesfully tapped into a sense of powerlessness felt in rural and regional areas.
So would a model with provisions for a directly elected President have produced a different result in Tasmania? It's unlikely, although for many people who feel representative democracy is failing them the prospect of a President able to exercise some degree of political influence against an unpopular government might posess some superficial attraction.
The fact is that for people living in regional areas, and that includes most of Tasmania, the symbols of government and nationhood matter less at the moment than everyday bread and butter type issues. Issues like employment, falling living standards and access to services. For most Tasmanians the referendum was a costly indulgence that would not make any appreciable difference to their lives. Regardless of the model, constitutional reform for most Tasmanians will take a back seat to more pressing matters. Until then it is a luxury they can ill afford.
