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October 30th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda PERTH, Australia — Queen Elizabeth II’s wildly popular visit to Australia, along with succession changes giving equal rights to daughters, has dented the campaign for a republic in the country, experts say.
Even the Australian Republic Movement (ARM) conceded the mood for change was at a low ebb — although it said the long-term struggle to cut ties with the monarchy would go on.
“The republican campaign will continue, there’s no doubt about that. We’re certainly not going to lie down,” ARM deputy chairman John Warhurst told AFP.
“It’s fair to say that, in terms of ups and downs, it (republican sentiment) is in a down period at the moment.”
Crowds of up to 100,000 clamoured to see the queen during her trip to Australia, turning out across the country in Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth, where she opened a Commonwealth leaders’ meeting.
The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton this year has helped lift the monarchy’s popularity Down Under, with a poll taken just before the wedding putting support for a republic at around 40 percent — a near 20-year low.
Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy national convenor, professor David Flint, said the country had moved from the intense debate surrounding a 1999 referendum in which proposals for a republic were rejected.
Flint likened the republican movement in Australia since the referendum to Monty Python’s parrot sketch, where a pet shop owner insists a dead bird is not deceased but merely “shagged out following a prolonged squawk”.
“They say the republic’s not dead, it’s only resting,” he said.
“Well it seems to be quite comatose at the moment. Although that’s not to say it can’t come back at some future time, but I can’t see any interest in it happening for a long time.”
Flint said a decision taken at the Commonwealth meeting to scrap centuries-old laws barring first-born daughters and anyone married to a Catholic from inheriting the throne would also lift the monarchy’s popularity.
“I think it shows the monarchy moving, but not too quickly, reflecting modern attitudes but not changing the fundamentals,” he said.
US academic Erik Goldstein, an expert on British history, agreed, saying approval ratings for Sweden’s monarchy increased when it introduced similar changes.
“It has clearly given a great boost to the popularity of the monarchy (in Sweden),” the Boston University professor said.
“It is likely to have the same impact in Britain and across the countries that share the British monarchy.”
Warhurst said the bedrock of the republic case remained the same, as Australia would still have a monarch who undemocratically inherited the throne through birth, not merit.
“The smaller changes at the margin are welcome if long overdue, they’ve taken centuries, but we’d support them, though they make relatively little difference,” he said.
Warhurst also argued that many of the Australians who lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the queen were “Elizabethans”, who felt a personal affection for the long-serving monarch, rather than supporting the institution itself.
But he said he had never taken the attitude that the shift to a republic was a foregone conclusion and the reception enjoyed by the queen showed there was still work to be done bringing about change.
“I certainly don’t use the term inevitable, ARM doesn’t use it, because we believe it’s something that has to be worked for,” he said.
“But we do believe that Australians are republicans in spirit and that the ebb and flow of particular individuals is something that comes and goes.”
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.
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