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Shifting Australian Public Opinion on the Monarchy

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Shifting Australian Public Opinion on the Monarchy THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Loyal to the Crown: Shifting Australian Public Opinion on the Monarchy Prepared for delivery at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Political Studies Association, Sheffield, March 30 – April 1 Luke J. Mansillo 10 February 2015 Over the past half century the Australian public has remained divided on the issue of whether Australia should retain the monarchy or become a republic. Clive Bean (1993) found there had been remarkable stability on the issue and evidence of a long-term trend away from support for the monarchy with a sudden decline in 1992. This article adopts Bean’s (1993) longitudinal cross- sectional methods to examine the social and political basis of public attitudes. This articles analyses the Australian Election Study (1993-2013) to compare Bean’s results and reanalyse earlier data from the National Social Science Surveys and Australian National Political Attitudes surveys (1967-1990). Public opinion has been fluid and is now at a crossroads between the 1980s high and the 1990s lows. Cohort analysis suggests socialisation impacts long term opinions. Gender and ethnic nationalism also influences opinion. It has been put ‘The survival of the monarchy in late twentieth century Britain is a socio- psychological phenomenon of strange proportions’ (Billig [1992]2002:1). If so the monarchy’s survival in twenty-first century Australia is far more outlandish. What is more peculiar is monarchy’s growing antipodean popularity. In the lead up to the 1999 referendum public opinion wilted for the monarchy (Bean 1993: 191) in spite of this the referendum failed (McAllister 2002) as voters took a least risk strategy opting to keep the Queen to one day vote for a congressional system instead of alter a parliamentary one (Davidson et al. 2006: 866; Wellings 2003). In the referendum’s aftermath, there has been a resurgence of public support for the monarchy. The monarchy’s fortunes were expected to continually decline over time given previous cohort analysis evidence (Bean 1993: 204) ‘bolstered by the effects of [...] education and religion and related social change.’ This article investigates the social basis for support for the monarchy and argues events in both the United Kingdom and Australia influenced monarchy’s appeal in conjunction with the processes of banal nationalism. This article is a longitudinal analysis of Australian public opinion on the monarchy-republic issue. It is an update of an article by Clive Bean (1993) which demonstrated opinion on the monarchy-republic issue had then been stable until 1990. Bean noted that commercial polling on the issue showed a shift away from monarchy in the early 1990s. This article demonstrates that public opinion on the issue since 1990 has been anything but stable. Before 1990 was an era of general stability with modest gradual declining support for the monarchy, which is well documented (McAllister 2011: 29). An era of instability has proceeded. First a rapid decline of support in the 1990s, followed by significant gains of support in the twenty-first century. It is opportune to revisit the study of the monarchy-republic issue in Australia. In the intervening years since Bean’s analysis there has been a series of events with the potential to affect public opinion. The 1990s featured significant royal scandals. These include the 1992 annus horribilis, Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s divorce in 1996, and the death of Princess Diana in 1997. This was followed by the failed 1999 republic referendum. More recently, the wedding of Prince William and Princess Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge and the birth of Prince George, has been a boon to the monarchy. The monarchy has been modernised with an end to succession and royal marriage anachronisms (Parpworth 2013). A quarter century since Bean’s analysis it is worth returning to the issue to investigate the social compositional factors behind opinion change over this period. This article uses Bean’s (1993) analysis of Don Aitkin’s Australian National Political Attitudes study (ANPA) (1967-79) and Jonathan Kelley’s National Social Science Surveys (NSSS) (1984-90). It compares Bean’s analysis with data from Ian McAllister’s Australian Election Study (AES) (1993-2013) using Bean’s methods. This is an attempt to update Bean’s article with the most recent AES data; comparing the era of stability with the era of instability. This study compiles 46 years of academic public opinion data building upon previous research (Bean 1993). I find support sharply declined from 58 per cent in 1990 to 40 per cent in 1993 dropping to a low of 34 per cent in 1998. Ian McAllister (2011: 29) described public opinion (as of 2010) as, ‘monarchy has attracted renewed if modest public support.’ There was a 5 per cent increase in support from 42 per cent in 2010 to 47 per cent in 2013. The increase in support from 34 per cent to 47 per cent challenges the assertion of a mere modest support increase for the monarchy as an institution of Australian government. Rather public opinion on the monarchy is at a crossroads. It is 2 | P a g e between the 1998 low of 34 per cent and the 1987-88 high of 60 per cent. It is worth questioning why the movement of public opinion in both directions over the decades. Trends in public opinion Here I shall provide a brief overview of public opinion trends on the monarchy-republic issue as recorded by fourteen academic surveys. It is important to note that responses vary to a small degree on the exact question asked. Bean (1993: 192) noted that ANPA, NSSS and AES all have comparable questions which have only ‘minor differences.’1 The first question asks respondents ‘how important do [they] feel the Queen and the Royal Family are to Australia’ and the second question asks if ‘[they] think that Australia should become a republic with an Australian head of state, or should the Queen be retained as head of state.’ For the first question there are differences with the number of response categories.2 Second there are minor wording changes across the NSSS to the AES and ANPA questions and in the opinion of Bean (1993:192) – and for that matter the author too – ‘[t]here is no reason to assume that [...] these small variations would have any bearing on the comparisons.’ Overall since the referendum support has improved in both absolute numbers who hold monarchist views and in strength. There was reasonably stable support for the monarchy for both measures up to 1990 (see Table 1; Figure 1) which is reinforced by commercial polling (Figures 2 and 3). Curiously before 1993, there were significantly more people who wished to retain the monarchy but did not think the Queen was terribly important; however this had changed by 1993. This probably is due to the 1992 scandals. Commercial polling shows a leap from 36 per cent approval for the republic in 1991 to 57 per cent in 1992 (Bean 1993: 196). Murray Goot (1994: 65) also nominates 1992 as the year when ‘a high level of support for the republic’ emerged – surprisingly royal misbehaviour and public opinion has been neglected in academic discussions despite the 1992 height of public Royal misbehaviour.3 The strength of support for the republic has declined. In 1998 and 2001 respectively, 34 per cent and 38 per cent, believed Australia should ‘definitely become a republic.’ This has declined to 27 per cent and 26 per cent in 2010 and 2013 respectively. There is a similar level of strong republicans in 2010- 13 to 1993; however the weak republicans have fallen away declining from 33 per cent to 27 per cent in 2013. The high level point of weak monarchist support is 2013 with 33 per cent exhibiting weak support for the monarchy. Furthermore strong support for the monarchy is at its highest point since 1990 – the damage from the annus horribilis may have been recovered. In 2013 importance for the monarchy was at a similar level to the 1980s after Prince Charles’s marriage to Diana. The AES results mirror a similar analysis using International Social Science Surveys data (Kelley et al. 1999). Ben Wellings (2003: 47-48) observes ‘the failure of the republican campaign cannot be seen as a 1 The question used in the AES is adopted from the ANPA. Bean referred to the ANPA and NSSS similarities. 2 The ANPA and AES have three response categories: ‘very important’, ‘fairly important’ and ‘not very important.’ The NSSS has the additional category: ‘not important at all’. It is assumed that the ANPA and AES ‘not very important’ category corresponds to the NSSS ‘not very important’ and ‘not important at all.’ In the 1979 ANPA the question ‘should Australia retain the Queen’ did not have the four categories but instead they were collapsed into two categories. In 1967 only the importance of royalty question was asked. 3 Billig (2002: 2-15) wrote of the volumes of popular press and nothingness of academic press on the issue as a function of academic sociologists and social psychologists failing to identity monarchy itself as a ‘problem.’ 3 | P a g e victory for monarchism or Australian attachment to Britain.’ This recovery in both total support and strength of support surely must be seen as a victory for the Palace. Figure 1: Public opinion on the monarchy: Importance and whether to retain 4 | P a g e Table 1: Attitudes towards the Monarchy-Republic issue, 1967-2013 (%)a 1967 1979 1984-85 1986-87 1987-88 1990 1993 1996 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 Importance of the Queen & Royal Family Very important 28 25 16 20 18 17 13 12 10 10 10 11 13 16 Fairly important 26 29 29 29 25 28 22 27 21 21
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