The April 2014 Royal Tour of Australia by the Duke
and Duchess of Cambridge was trumpeted by headlines that proclaimed,
“Australians gripped by royal fever”. Republican Australians, on the other
hand, were left despairing. For Australian advocates of a republic, a declining
percentage of the population, the elevated popularity of the young Royal Couple
reminds them of the growing futility of their cause. Anti-monarchists pinning
their hopes on a renewed republican zeal after the passing of our current
monarch cannot help but be disheartened by the enthusiasm in Australia for
Prince George of Cambridge, born July 22, 2013. Has Australia’s republican
moment come and gone? Back in 1999, it was widely assumed that the referendum
on a republic that year would mark the end of monarchy in Australia.
The first wave of Australian nationalism, which
occurred in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, was neither
anti-British nor republican. The establishment of a federated Australian nation
in 1901 did not require the dissolution of official British ties as per the
American Revolution of 1776. Most Australians saw their country, in the first
half of the twentieth century, as a united and self-governing entity in the
wider context of the British Empire. Then everything changed. The demise of the
British Empire in the post-Second World War era, not to mention Australia’s
close military alliance with the United States during the Cold War years, weakened
some of those old certainties. The second wave of Australian nationalism,
culminating in the 1999 referendum, possessed a degree of anti-British
sentiment. Becoming a republic, opined the progressive or leftist commentariat
of the day, would mark Australia’s coming of age.
Over the last three or four decades of the
twentieth century, for the dedicated follower of political fashion, a
pro-republican disposition gradually became de rigueur. Even members of the right-of-centre Liberal Party
disclosed republican sensibilities, although the subject remained a matter of
individual conscience. The Australian Labor Party (ALP), more collectivist in
nature, made republicanism official party policy in 1991. That same year saw
the establishment of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM), propelled
forward by an assortment of celebrities, from the novelist Thomas Kenneally (Schindler’s
List) to the former captain of
Australian cricket Ian Chappell.
In 1993, the Keating Labor government established
the Republican Advisory Committee, a state-subsidised entity tasked with
providing the wherewithal for Australia’s inexorable transition from
constitutional monarchy to republic. Virtually every Australian media outlet,
including the Murdoch press, came on board. All that remained, before the
Commonwealth of Australia reconstituted itself as a fully-fledged republic on
January 1, 2001, one hundred years to the day after Federation, was a
constitutional conference and a referendum. Easy.
It is an historical fact not generally
acknowledged, perhaps because her position as a constitutional monarch is an
inherited one, that Queen Elizabeth II has participated – albeit indirectly –
in a popular election. Moreover, she won in a canter. On November 6, 1999, the
Australian electorate rejected the entreaties of the Australian Republican
Movement (ARM) and affirmed Her Majesty as the Head of State in the
Commonwealth of Australia by a margin of almost 55 percent to 45 percent. It
was not only a victory for common sense and pragmatism over the transient
obsessions of Australian progressives, but also a stinging rebuke to vulgar
inevitablism per se. The
fancies of the Left need not be our future reality. In March this year, Prime
Minister Tony Abbott, a high-profile monarchist campaigner at the time of the
1999 referendum, made an even more authoritative point when he re-introduced
knight and dame honours for Australia. With this unexpected pronouncement, the
conservative Abbott signalled to the Australian public that reform was no longer
a one-way street.
Republicans often bicker among themselves about why
they lost the 1999 referendum, especially when pro-monarchist sentiment had
become a minority position by that time. We had thrilled at the marriage
between Charles and Diana in 1981, and the subsequent arrival of Prince William
and Prince Harry, but those days were well and truly behind us. Often it
appeared as if certain members of the Royal Family were furtively in league
with ARM. After all, Queen Elizabeth II herself described 1992 as annus
horribilis in the aftermath of the
separation of the Duke and Duchess of York, the Princess of Wales’ tell-all
tale, Diana, Her True Story,
and Princess Anne’s divorce from Captain Mark Phillips. For a great number of
Australians, the tragic death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, represented
the end of an age. ARM was perfectly positioned to
exploit popular disenchantment with the Royal Family – the wonder is that they
failed miserably.
The reason for ARM’s lack of success, it turns out,
had less to do with the vagaries of popular emotion and the tabloid press than
the ongoing utility of constitutional monarchy in a modern liberal democracy.
The pro-republic camp was essentially split into two factions. The course
mostly favoured by ARM, and the proposition put to the public in 1999, involved
a “minimalist” pathway to a republic. The President of Australia, in this
scenario, would be elected not by the people but selected by Parliament. The
so-called minimalists feared that a Head of State elected to that post by the
general public would enjoy a mandate or authority not available to a
Governor-General, and thus undermine the equilibrium that currently exists
between Prime Minister and Head of State. As a consequence, it was the minimalist
approach that was put to the Australian people – and rejected – in 1999.
However, many Australians, including a number of
those who were pro-republic, recoiled at the idea of a Head of State chosen
from the political class, and voted ‘No’ in the referendum. All
Governor-Generals appointed by Labor governments in the post-war era have had
close associations with the ALP. This kind of practice has also been the case
with Coalition governments on occasion. The pro-republic movement – torn
between minimalist and maximalist models – could not carry the day in 1999 any
more than they could win the same referendum if it were held again tomorrow.
ARM presently attempts to avoid the irrevocable division in their ranks by
calling for a series of plebiscites, starting with a first-round “non-binding”
vote on a proposition that omits all mention of incompatible republican models,
and simply asks this question: “Do you want Australia to become a republic with
an Australian Head of State?” In other words, ARM believes Australia should
eschew constitutional monarchy without being offered an acceptable and workable
replacement. Here is progressive thinking at its delusional worst. Clearly, the
anti-monarchists in Australia have a bigger problem on their hands than the
soaring popularity of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Constitutional monarchy, UK-style, is a remarkable
institution. Were the British starting from scratch there is small likelihood
of them dreaming up this hybrid system as an ideal method of governance, and
yet it works. Societal arrangements that are timeworn often prove superior to
what – in theory, at any rate – seems ideal. There is, of course, the argument that though the British
monarchy gainfully serves the United Kingdom, what place does it have in an
independent liberal democracy such as Australia? The first, and not least
important, riposte for a conservative Australian is similar to a conservative
British one: were Australians today starting from scratch there is little
likelihood of us conjuring up the current hybrid system as our ideal system of
governance – and yet it works.
Late twentieth century Australian nationalism,
characterised by an adolescent hang-up about the old Mother Country, has
declined somewhat in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum. Moreover, it now
competes for the hearts and minds of Australians with a more confident,
traditional-style patriotism that is in many ways epitomised by Prime Minister
Tony Abbott, a man who happens to be small ‘c’ conservative to his core, unlike
(say) David Cameron. This kind of Australian traditionalism might be ambivalent
about socio-political trends in modern-day Britain – save the fortunes of Ukip
– and yet it treasures, as codified in the Australian constitution and fixed in
the national psyche, British concepts of law, justice, freedom, democracy and,
yes, monarchy. Our British heritage is not something to outgrow, like a young
adult leaving behind teenage self-consciousness, but a way forward in an era
affected by the soft totalitarianism of the PC brigade and ever-increasing
nodules of Sharia Law.
On their last day in Australia, April 25, the Duke
and Duchess of Cambridge made a surprise visit to the dawn service in Canberra
to mark the commencement of Anzac Day, Australia’s (and New Zealand’s) special
day of remembrance for those who sacrificed their lives fighting tyranny and
defending our democratic way of life. The young Royal Couple, respectful and
gracious, seemed anything but foreign in the eyes of this Australian.
This article is published in the Autumn 2014
edition of the Salisbury Review
