Ben Wellings (Australian National University, Canberra): Monday was Australia Day and this provided the opportunity to have tea with members of the Australian Republican Movement. ARM’s members are a small but committed group of individuals drawn by-and-large from the left of Australian politics and so the invitation to tea – well in fact Australian chardonnay and beer from Adelaide – was significant. The significance lay in the change of strategy which signalled a new phase in the Republican Movement’s campaign to remove the Queen and her representative as head of state in Australia.
As of Australia Day 2009, the ARM has moved into a more grass-roots oriented set of activities. Part of this new confidence is related to the Labor government which came to power in 2007 and which, in 2008, was encouraged by a citizens’ idea-fest held in Canberra to re-visit the issue of turning Australia into a republic. More confidence came about in mid-2008 when the former chair of the Australian Republican Movement, Malcolm Turnbull, was elected Leader of the Opposition. This meant that the political stars were in alignment given that no referendum in Australia’s one hundred and eight year history has passed without bi-partisan support in Parliament.
And this lack of bi-partisan support was one of the reasons why the Republican cause failed in 1999. But it was only one of the reasons. Some of the other reasons why the push to make Australia a republic failed ten years go still apply. One of these is that a republic doesn’t seem like a pressing issue for many in the community. The issue was first put on the political agenda when Australia last entered a recession in 1991 and some felt that this in itself was just a distraction from economic woe. This time round, both the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd and the Leader of the Opposition have signalled that Australia faces greater challenges that its relationship with the Crown as the Chinese economy falters and drags Australia down with it. Another problem faced by the republicans in 1999 was that the issue to divided Australia on socio-economic lines. Basically, the more educated a voter, the more likely to vote for a republic they were. Back in the late 1990s, Australia was led by a government quite willing to use nationalist-populism to enforce a radically neo-liberal, but socially conservative, agenda and the monarchists were able to operate in this atmosphere to their advantage, depicting the republicans as chardonnay-quoffing “elites” out of touch with real people’s everyday concerns. This populist ogre still scares both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The former having built the election victory of 2007 on a “steady-as-she-goes” economic platform not unlike Blair-Brown in 1997 and the latter who needs to assure monarchists in his opposition political constituency that he will not sell out their cherished ties to the Crown.
The last major matter which the Republicans need to address today is how a president will be chosen, and it was this issue which really divided those in general favourably disposed to a republic, splitting the pro-republic vote ten years ago. The basic tension is one between popular sovereignty and the sovereignty of Parliament. Any change to the Australian Constitution has to be ratified by a popular referendum. And the question remains why, having invoked the people’s will in order to rid themselves of the monarchy, should Australians then hand back that new-found sovereignty to Parliament? One reason of course is that Parliament is the democratically elected representative of the people, but the basic tension persists. Last time round the debate amongst pro-republicans got stuck between those who were not inclined towards a directly elected republic (the official position of the ARM designed to appease the conservatives amongst their supporters), those who wished for some recognition of popular sovereignty in the election of the head of state. In the end monarchy’s old friend – Burkean conservatism – came in and nicked it for the monarchists: “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” was their basic argument and ultimately this was enough for the wider community.
So what we can expect if the quiet band of republicans get their way is a two stage process to establish a republic. The first stage will be a non-binding plebiscite asking the electorate if they would like Australia to become a republic. If the answer is yes a binding referendum on the framework for that republic, probably between a directly elected president and one chosen by Parliament, would follow. But the issue of lack of voter engagement remains central – it takes a lot to prize an Australian away from the beach or barbeque. Perhaps this suggests why the ARM has shifted to a grass-roots strategy as opposed to the celebrity endorsement model of the 1990s. So in the final analysis, this republic will not be won by peasants with pitchforks or bandidos with berets, but rather by men and women armed with nothing more than a sausage on a skewer, a tin of VB and, once the weather loses its intense summer heat at least, a nice cup of tea.
