With more than 1000 attending in Perth alone, the March for Australia protests on August 31 have reignited the debate on what it means to be Australian, bringing renewed interest in the possibility of an Australian republic. 

To many, republicanism is an isolated topic. But Western Australians may find it echoes the longstanding notion of secession. 

But are these movements compatible?

“People would probably like to draw that intellectual analogy,” said Australian Republic Movement WA branch member Dr Robert Wood, “that if Australia left the British Empire, it would be like Western Australia leaving the Australian nation-state.”

While Dr Wood advocates for republicanism, he warns a WA secession could “lead to further and further social isolation”. 

“[Republicanism] relocates sovereignty back onto the country itself,” Dr Wood said. “That sense of place and environment is the bedrock of culture and community.

While the republican movement is rooted in sovereignty, secessionism primarily addresses economics, said historian and City of Albany councillor Malcolm Traill.

“It’s mainly, ‘We’re being screwed by the t’othersiders, and if we kept it all for ourselves, wouldn’t we be better off?’ So I think it’s mostly driven by economics.”

Something the movements have in common is a current trough in support.

After winning no seats in the 2021 state election, the secessionist WAxit party is no longer a registered political party in WA.

The secessionist movement may be struggling because Western Australia “actually gets a pretty good deal through GST,” Mr Traill said. “There’s too much to lose.”

Similarly, Dr Wood said the republican movement “entered a lower point after the defeat of the Voice referendum in 2023, which meant that other constitutional reform was off the table.”

In October 2024, a poll by research company Roy Morgan indicated 57 per cent were in favour of a republic—2 per cent fewer than the year before, but 12 per cent greater than the result of the 1999 referendum.

WA secessionists are no strangers to failed referendums. In 1933, more than 60 per cent of Western Australians voted to secede from the Federation. But the British Parliament did not have the power to ratify WA’s secession.

“It got as far as London,” said Mr Traill, “and they said, ‘Oh, actually you can’t do that. The rules say you can’t.’”

One possibility combines elements of both ideals. University of Notre Dame law professor Greg Craven wrote in a paper that individual states, unlike the Australian Commonwealth, are not bound by the constitution to be monarchical.

Mr Craven wrote that only state legislation would need to be amended before Western Australia could secede from the monarchy and become a republic. 

“If republicanism has to start out West and move further East, that I think is a good thing,” Dr Wood said. “I would like us to be a leader in a national conversation.

He added, “I think incremental change is really important … and republicanism, as an issue, is bigger than an electoral cycle.”