The organisers of the "bye-bye Betty barbie" on the plaza in front of Sydney's Opera House have been forced to admit that their plans to celebrate the demise of the House of Windsor's reign in Australia were premature. Britain's Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, will remain as heads of state of a country half a world away from Buckingham Palace. The vote was an historic one. For the first time an hereditary monarchy has received a democratic mandate directly from its subjects. That Australia should be the nation to take this step is all the more remarkable. The republican ideal has existed there far longer than in any Commonwealth country. It was a concept that arrived with the colony's first unwilling settlers in 1788 and has played a strong role in its polity since then. Many of the early advocates of ousting the monarchy were Irish, but it should be remembered that English radicals were also sentenced to transportation for their republican views.
The single historical event from which Australians have drawn greatest inspiration for their egalitarian and libertarian spirit had strong republican, and Irish, overtones. In proclaiming the "Republic of Victoria" at the Eureka Stockade in December 1854 a blow was struck by 863 "diggers" in favour of democracy and against a hierarchical system which had lowered them almost to the level of serfs. Their leader, Peter Lalor, was the brother of the Irish revolutionary James Fintan Lalor. The strong Irish resonance of this seminal event in Australian history was underlined further by the fact that the password for entry into the stockade in which the Republic had established itself was "Vinegar Hill". But in a foretaste of the Australia's multi-cultural future there were English radicals in the stockade and the pikes wielded by a group known as the Tipperary Boys were fashioned by a German blacksmith.
It seems apt, therefore, that Victoria was the one Australian State in which the republican concept, circumscribed as it was by the wording of the referendum, was carried. That wording in which voters were asked to support the idea of a president nominated by parliament rather than one elected by the people had the effect of splitting the Australian republican movement. The way the question was phrased also led to bitterness on the part of some supporters of the Republic who feel it was deliberately set by Prime Minister John Howard in order to divide the opposition. It is impossible to gauge how many republicans voted to retain the current constitution but the number would appear to have been significant. Queen Elizabeth in her statement on the poll's result seems to have accepted this.
The Australian referendum rather than giving a definitive answer on the question of the country's constitutional status has served to let the republican genie out of the bottle. The end of the monarchy there appears to have been postponed rather than cancelled. The publicity engendered by the referendum has had its effect outside Australia. Fledgling republican movements have been formed in New Zealand and Canada but it is in the countries of the Caribbean that the republican idea has taken root most effectively. Jamaica, where the three main parties now oppose the monarchy, will almost certainly take the step that Australia balked at.