Though sectarianism had died down compared to the colonial era, it has largely metamorphosed into a debate concerning to what extent an independent nation should retain symbolic manifestations of its historical links to Great Britain, though Australian sectarianism also led to the re-emergence of Hibernophobic sentiments in the 1970s and 1980s. Recognition, however, that sectarianism "as an everyday influence" was a thing of the past was most clearly seen in the Republic referendum campaign in 1999, where a number of commentators suggested that, broadly speaking, monarchists were more likely to be Protestants of British descent and republicans were more likely to be Catholics of Irish descent and that the republican debate itself risked resurrecting sectarian enmity between the two groups.