Personally, I was disappointed only 46% of the population voted yes at the time. Many felt John Howard played a big role in the failure of the referendum by publicly expressing his support for the monarchy. But a lot of pro-republic voters also voted ‘no’ because they felt that the method proposed for electing a president was undemocratic.

Hopefully this will become an important issue again and so we can nut out the right formula to work for our country.