There have been 45 referendums since the Commonwealth was formed in 1901, with only eight of them successful – a miserable strike rate of 18 per cent.
ustralia confirmed its standing as the world champion for defeating referendums with the resounding rejection of the Indigenous Voice last weekend.
According to a British academic expert, compulsory voting is perhaps the biggest structural hurdle for referendums in Australia.A big difference is that voting is not compulsory for the Swiss . And they are an ingrained part of its political system; there have been votes on everything from seatbelts to breakfast cereals. Ireland is even more successful, with 28 of its 38 referendums approved since its constitution was ratified in 1937.
“Some would say opportunistically,” says Qvortrup. “But it was still rejected by the voters.” He notes that contentious proposals on abortion and gay marriage succeeded. “The system we have now is unfair in many ways. But the possibility of having the Australian system was quickly relegated to it being ‘the Fijian system’, and then the ‘Papua New Guinean system’, and people started saying, well, we don’t want to be like Papua New Guinea.”
He notes that in Sweden, both ABBA and IKEA urged the Swedes to vote yes to joining the European single currency in 2003. The proposal was rejected.Scottish tennis player Andy Murray was on the losing side when a majority in Scotland voted no to independence in the 2014 referendum. So too were footballer David Beckham and scientist Stephen Hawking during the Brexit vote of 2016, when Britain voted to leave the European Union.In most countries, a referendum result is binding on parliament.
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