ARM MEDIA RELEASE - 2 May 2007

Republicanism in Heart and Mind and Culture

The heart of republicanism in Australia is still beating strongly although there is little sign that it will be a prominent issue in this year’s federal election. Likewise the mind of republicanism is still addressing the issues that moving Australia from a constitutional monarchy to a constitutional republic involves.

Cultural republicanism is alive and well.  What I call civil disobedience preceded the change from “God Save the Queen” to “Advance Australia Fair” as our national anthem; that is increasing numbers of people refused to take the anthem seriously and to treat it with due respect. Many just refused to stand up.  A similar pattern is emerging with recognizing the Queen in our toasts on formal occasions.  The formal toast at diplomatic functions around Canberra seems to vary between “To the Queen of Australia” and “To the Queen and People of Australia”. Yet whenever it is used it is being greeted with very noticeable civil disobedience. More and more Australians respond defiantly by omitting the word “Queen” and by raising their glasses loudly either to “Australia” or to “the people of Australia”.

This is not something which is imposed from above. This is not at all what monarchists mistakenly call republicanism by stealth. It is quite the opposite. It is cultural change from below which in time will sweep away such recognition of the constitutional monarchy in Australia and replace it with the republican words that are already in people’s hearts. From such small gestures come big changes.

This will happen because Australian values have changed. The undercurrent behind the reporting of the split between Prince William and his girlfriend, Kate Middleton, demonstrates this value change. Michelle Lensink, Liberal Member of the South Australian Legislative Council spoke for many Australians when she wrote to the Adelaide Advertiser to defend the Middleton family against the snobbery of the British aristocracy: “so Carole Middleton saying “pleased to meet you” and calling a lavatory a “toilet” offends the British Royal Family and therefore Kate is not worthy to become William’s wife? What more proof do Australians need that their values are not in line with ours? Bring on the republic!”

Janet Holmes a’Court, the Western Australian business leader, made the same point when she received her award as Companion of the Order of Australia in Canberra earlier this month. Holmes a Court is one of those republican participants in the 1998 Constitutional Convention who has kept the faith in an active way. Unlike some others she never misses an opportunity to proudly proclaim her republican convictions.

That she would do so at Government House, a bastion of monarchism, is greatly to her credit. Republicans do it tough on these occasions because the whole system, while Australian, is so monarchical in character. So too, to judge by the newspaper photograph in the Canberra Times, is the medal itself that Holmes a Court received. It is dominated by a large Crown.

Some republicans, but not Holmes a Court, even have to suffer the indignity of their award being announced on the Queen’s Birthday. Happily hers was announced on Australia Day earlier this year. As Liberal Senator Guy Barnett from Tasmania has argued, awarding Australian Honours on the Queens Birthday undercuts the spirit of the occasion. For this reason, just like the current toast, the custom of Australian awards on the Queen’s Birthday will be overtaken by cultural change and will soon disappear.

The culture of monarchy is contrary to the open-ness that should be characteristic of democracies like ours. This has been shown to be true on more than one occasion.

One small example occurred during the publication of the excellent recent book by Anne Twomey called The Chameleon Crown: The Queen and her Australian Governors (The Federation Press, 2006). Both monarchists and republicans seem to like this book which is a political history of relations between the British monarchy and Australian Governors and Premiers up until the passage of the Australia Act in 1986.

Twomey herself has told the story of what happened when she tried to publish her thesis. Buckingham Palace insisted upon the removal of any references to the views of the Queen and her private secretaries, despite their undoubted basis in research. The Governor General, Michael Jeffery, also refused permission for the use of a representation of the Crown of St Edward on the front cover. Despite the best efforts of the Queen and the Governor General the core content of the book has survived, with a generic Crown and fewer specific references to the Queen.

This is just the sort of closed culture discussed by Professor John Power of Melbourne University in two recent university seminars in Canberra. Power rightly thinks that republican political scientists should be spending more time on the function and operations of Head of State so as to advise on how the office of President should operate.

His paper on “What should heads of state do?” followed one on state governors and state governments. It examined questions of performance and accountability. But questioning the performance of the Queen and of her representatives like Governors and Governors General is difficult because they like to do things in secret and very few speak openly about their experience.

In Power’s terms the neglect by political scientists can partly be explained by the secretive culture that surrounds these offices. Power calls it the “good chaps” culture. The good chaps culture is anti-democratic. Republicans should do all they can to throw light on such culture, which is especially prevalent in monarchies, because the movement towards an Australian republic will be generated by popular cultural change.

For media comment contact: John Warhurst 0439498283 or ARM National Office 02 6257 3705.