ARM MEDIA RELEASE - 18 Jan 2007

England Versus Australia: Cricket and The Republic

The Barmy Army, supporting an England Test Team that was beaten pointless on the cricket field, still won the battle of the spectators. Faced with the vulnerability of their own team, they resorted to chanting their constitutional superiority to taunt the Australian crowd. Good luck to them. They obviously love their Queen in a way that most Australians do not any more and they sang "God Save the Queen" with gusto and deep feeling. She awards their cricketers MBEs after all. Furthermore they know deep down that in a special way the Queen is theirs not ours. It can never be any other way. The Barmy Army reflected this in the new lines they used to rub in their message: "God Save your Gracious Queen" and "Long may she reign over you".

The Australian team itself responded in its own way. The team song, led most recently by the now retired Justin Langer, is "Under the Southern Cross", apparently drawn from Henry Lawson's poem, "Flag of the Southern Cross".

The team song is sung in the change-rooms after each victory. Whatever its heritage this song, rough and sweaty as it is, is an anthem to bring joy to the hearts of many republicans:

"Beneath the Southern Cross I stand,
A sprig of wattle in my hand,
A native of my native land,
Australia-you f---ing beauty".

I have no idea of the republican sympathies or otherwise of the individual members of the Australian team, though the former Test captain Ian Chappell has long been a key figure in the republican movement. But other sporting figures, like former Wallabies skipper John Eales, are proudly republican as he was when Australia won the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

An England cricket tour is one of the best times to discuss Australian national identity and the republican issue. Monarchists pretend that maintaining the tie with England is not part of the driving force of their movement but it is always at least a latent issue for them.

The England tour gives rise to a remarkably negative view of England among Australian media. The overall theme, generally good spirited, is "the poor old Poms". Yet the nation that holds these views failed to pass the republican referendum in 1999. Where the bloody hell are you when it counts?

Last November in The Monthly magazine, just before the English tour began, the eminent Australian cricket writer, Gideon Haigh, made some thoughtful connections between cricket, culture and politics in an article called "British Rules". Haigh laments, "Here we are, culture-rich, forelock-free, a mature constitutional democracy, a republic in all but name". What is going on?

There is some truth in Haigh’s description of the role of cricket in Australian-English relations: "sport is, in some respects, the most dynamic, demotic and enduring dimension of Australia's relations with the country that gave it birth; there may still be some vestiges of a cultural cringe, but the sporting cringe is long gone, and has even been replace by a bit of a strut and a sneer." Yet Haigh is wrong in one important dimension. Queen Elizabeth and the institution of the monarchy, not cricket, remains the most enduring dimension of Australia’s relations to England. How about some Australian Rules!

Drawing on the monarchist David Stove’s article thirty years ago in Quadrant magazine about "Cricket versus republicanism", Haigh laments that perhaps winning at cricket has become for Australians a substitute for changing our constitution from a British-type monarchy to a republic with an Australian head of state. If we can’t have one under John Howard, we sure as hell can consistently achieve the other under Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting. As he puts it: "It is hardly impossible that we could by now have had both cricket and republicanism; we will, surely eventually do so. But has succeeding in one made us crave the other less?" Perhaps republicans in 1999 should have stopped worrying about Australia remaining in the Commonwealth and campaigned on having more cricket matches in a republican Australia.

Haigh's train of thought doesn't go nearly far enough. We should have both cricket and republicanism. Winning cricket matches is a poor substitute for an Australian republic. In fact the recent history of cricket serves as a model for what the republican movement can achieve. We should modernize the constitution just as cricket has been modernized. Like Australia's old-fashioned monarchist constitution, test cricket was dying before it was modernized in the 1970s. It was a fusty old game ruled by an anti-democratic establishment rooted in the past and scared of popular involvement. Then along came the Packer revolution that made cricket appealing to ordinary Australians.

"Come on Aussie, Come On" became the new anthem of cricket spectators. Cricket was modernized by changing the old rules. We now have two new games, one day cricket and the 20/20 game. We also have traditional test cricket played with a new spirit.

That is just what we need in our constitutional life. If changing the rules of cricket to make the game more open and democratic is possible then so is changing the constitution. We can retain and strengthen the best of the past while looking to the future. Traditionalist cricket was overturned by Kerry Packer and the power of the people, while traditionalist constitutionalism has so far survived. Yet both the spirit of the Australian players under the Southern Cross and the enthusiasm of the Australian spectators for their sporting heroes display an Australian identity that demands an Australian Head of State.

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