Support for the republic and the indirectly elected president has increased since the Constitutional Convention, according to the latest Canberra Times-Datacol poll.
The poll was taken ACT over the past four days. It shows that the ACT is more likely to embrace change than other states and territories.
The Datacol poll puts support for the republic at 69 per cent with 14 against. Support for the indirectly elected model is at 71 per cent, slightly higher than support for the republic, presumably because some constitutional monarchists see it as a lesser eveil than a directly elected president.
Canberrans appear to have embraced the thought of having the president elected by a two-thirds majority of Parliament on public nomination with community consultation — the bipartisan model preferred by the convention — possibly because they put having a republic as more important than the method of choosing the president.
Support elsewhere is not so high either for a republic or the bipartisan model. Newspoll in The Australian puts support for the bipartisan model at 47 per cent with 45 against and 8 don’t know. The ACT-Neilsen poll in The Sydney Morning Herald put support for the bipartisan model at 43 per cent with 45 per cent for the present system.
Those figures would result in a republic referendum being defeated. However, support for the bipartisan model is growing, considering earlier polls put preference for a directly elected president nationwide in the mid-70s. The Australian poll had support for the bipartisan model increasing from 34 per cent to 47 per cent since the convention.
Pollsters now seem to have abandoned the offer of a choice between direct and indirect election now that the convention and Prime Minister John Howard have made than choice irrelevant and replaced it with the choice between retaining the Queen, on one hand, or becoming a republic with a president chosen by a two-thirds majority of Parliament after public nominations, on the other.
Given that choice, support for the bipartisan model is growing.
The Sydney Morning Herald poll puts the vote of republican who would vote for the monarchy if they cannot have a directly elected president (suicide republicans, according to one convention delegate) at only 18 per cent. The Australian poll did not test that question.
A letter writer to The Canberra Times has suggested that direct-elect supporters should see the bipartisan model as a first step from which it would be easier to obtain a direct election than starting again from the position of a monarchy.