The particular millennium said to begin on January 1st, 2000 is officially, at least, a non-event in Australia with the federal government vainly hoping its citizens will instead keep their powder dry for 2001.
It's not because of Prime Minister John Howard's pedantic position on when the century actually changes but because the year 2001 is being set aside to celebrate the centenary of federation.
In 1901 the founding fathers of the nation forged the six states, which until then had been separate bickering colonies, into a country for a continent. It was a massive undertaking, which like the recent republican question, had to be passed by a controversial referendum.
But the humiliating defeat of the republic in November has already cast a shadow over the celebrations because 2001 was when republicans hoped to see a president take over from the British monarch as head of state.
Despite Mr Howard's statement that the whole republic question is "all history now" it is unlikely the divisive question will remain settled until, even as most monarchists admit, the inevitable occurs and to use the jargon a "resident becomes president".
Although the vote of 55 per cent against change showed most Australians did not care very much for republicanism, the referendum and the manner of its defeat has highlighted new divisions across the nation.
The result overturned the traditional political and economic divide in Australian life between the city and the country or the big smoke and the bush. These two Australias' post-referendum are split by income, education and even hope and the political implications are far reaching.
As election analyst Antony Green put it: "In all the capital cities . . . the higher the quality of life in an electorate the higher the yes vote."
The Liberal Prime Minister, who was firmly against change, found his leafy prosperous Sydney seat vote strongly in favour. While traditional Labour voters, whose party had embraced republicanism as an article of faith for years, cruelly turned their back on it.
The same simmering discontent with the political and media elites was also manifest in the top no-voting electorates which were in rural areas and provincial cities. According to census figures they contained the poorest and least-educated populations.
They were similar types of seats which delivered almost one million votes to Pauline Hanson's right-wing One Nation party in the 1998 federal election. She lost her seat and the party only gained one place in the Senate but the pundits see similar forces at work.
Opposition to the republic and support for One Nation was seen as a sign as whether communities regarded themselves as winners or losers in the tide of rising national wealth.
Those doing very nicely, thank you, who were content with the political mainstream, had rejected Hanson and supported the referendum. The so-called battlers, who have to struggle to earn a quid, backed her and viewed the republic as a costly irrelevance.
Next March the Queen is due to make the first of two official visits in 2001 after an absence of some years. The tour will doubtless raise all the attendant questions of her cost and relevance to the country despite the referendum result.
And the whole centenary of federation build-up will also stimulate more analysis of the national destiny which will inevitably re-examine the republican issue anew.
The vote was not lost because Australians are monarchists - only 10 per cent actively identify themselves as backing Queen Elizabeth - but because the republican camp was hopelessly split .
The official "yes" of the Australian Republican Movement endorsed a small change with a president appointed by a two-thirds majority of parliament. But the so-called Real Republicans, who wanted the people to vote on their head of state, backed the monarchists' "no" in the hope of getting more radical reform in the near future.
If the republicans, who have a pedigree of 150 years in Australia, can reach a compromise and the prime minister of the day backs reform, then the historical precedent suggests a change could come sooner than later.
The author Thomas Keneally, who was founding chairman of the Australian Republican Movement in its latest incarnation, said the nation had condemned itself to umpteen years of an institution it plainly did not believe in.
"Ultimately though we must marshal all republican options behind one model, and show the monarchists to be what they are: a fringe, forced to campaign on the basis of the one thing they have, a panicked retentiveness of spirit," he said.
"I hope it all takes less time than I fear it might."
In other words if the republic can be sold the right way to the doubters it may in time succeed but the social divisions deepening across this allegedly egalitarian land may have to be addressed first.
Christopher Zinn can be contacted at zinnchris@msn.com.au