Day after day, every daily newspaper has promoted the cause with headlines, polls, special supplements, editorials and pages of reports seeking to stoke nationalist fervour. And, as the Australian Financial Review emphasised on its front page last week, corporate chief executives overwhelmingly advocate a yes vote. Dick Warburton and Pacific Dunlop managing director Rod Chadwick. In recent days this publicity effort has gone into overdrive. But the mobilisation of elite opinion behind the republic appears to have backfired.
Polls show a bitter social divide.
This debacle is looming despite a decade's work by key sections of big business. The issue of a republic did not arise from any popular movement. It first emerged when millionaire investment banker Malcolm Turnbull and other corporate high-fliers formed the ARM in 1991. In the mid-1990s it was given prominence by the Keating Labor government. The concerns of the business and Labor leaders have been two-fold.