Migration and changing attitudes of the young will ensure fewer conservatives with the power to cling to Australia’s colonial past, writes Craig Emerson.
When Australians in the middle of this century look back on us, they will be astonished that we supported a national day that insulted the original inhabitants of the continent, we refused even to mention them in our constitution, we stuck a British flag in the corner of our flag, and we had a foreigner as our head of state.It’s not that the citizens who oppose change to any of these absurdities will have changed their minds by 2050, it’s that there won’t be many of them around.
We know this from the Australian National University election study and other ANU analysis. The Coalition vote among under-35s has slumped from about 60 per cent in 1967 to less than 20 per cent. And while 40 per cent of those born between 1981 and 1996 previously voted for the Coalition, only 25 per cent do now.
A 2021 Deakin contemporary history poll of more than 5000 people found that while 60 per cent of all respondents wanted to keep Australia Day on January 26, 53 per cent of Millennials wanted it moved. Baby Boomers strongly opposed change, but many of them will be gone by 2050. Just as the conservatives’ campaign against the referendums of 1988 – if you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it – was highly effective,And when the detail is provided, they will say it’s terribly complex, so if you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it.
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