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One
hundred years ago Henry Lawson described the Federation
celebrations in Sydney as being full of dreary
drivel and claptrap for the cuff and collar push.
Sadly, there would probably be many Australians
who think the same about yesterday's Centenary
of Federation celebrations.
But
this is not to blame those Australians who think
that Federation is a big yawn. It's the fault
of successive governments that have failed to
educate the vast majority of us about what Federation
means and about our constitutional arrangements,
a situation that was abundantly obvious in the
1999 republic referendum.
So
the challenge is to ensure that we use this centenary
of our nationhood for something more than a bunch
of festivities that are forgotten as soon as Steve
Waugh leads his team onto the SCG to take on the
West Indies today.
The
Centenary of Federation celebrations provide a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Australians
to reflect on and celebrate the past 100 years
of the Australian nation. But more importantly,
they provide an opportunity to ask ourselves where
we are heading as a nation and how our constitutional
arrangements should reflect that destiny. And
on this score we ought to reflect on the speeches,
comments and debates that made up the long-drawn-out
process, which finally resulted in us becoming
a nation on January 1, 1901.
The
leaders of the Federation movement, Henry Parkes,
Alfred Deakin and our first prime minister, Edmund
Barton, along with various community and religious
leaders, were motivated by the yearning in the
community for a better future. A future in which
the values of economic and social confidence could
flourish. Mind you, this was not a Federation
for all - it was an Anglo-Celtic environment in
which indigenous Australians and migrants from
Asia and the Pacific were completely excluded.
So
where does an Australian republic fit into the
Federation context? Among the many issues raised
in the decade-long Federation debates was what
independence would mean for our relationship with
Britain. The drafters of the Constitution resolved
to maintain a strong link with Britain and have
the Queen as our head of state. However, the future
possibilities were also acknowledged.
Geoffrey
Bolton, in his recently published biography of
Barton, records that in 1893 Barton told a rowdy
meeting at the Sydney Town Hall that the question
as to whether this nation was to occupy its present
position in relation to the English Crown or whether
it should be an independent nation could not be
settled by half a dozen separate colonies, but
it could be settled one way or another by a united
Australia.
Barton
was spot on. He knew something that seems to escape
many conservatives today: that our constitutional
arrangements are designed to evolve to suit our
community and not the other way around.
So
let's not let Henry Lawson down again. Let's make
sure that as a community our acknowledgment of
the milestone of Federation is a springboard to
engage all Australians in something more than
a trite and eminently forgettable series of pageants.
We
owe it to ourselves and to our children to ensure
they gain a better understanding of what we have
achieved in the past 100 years and what this tells
us about our future over the next 100 years. We
must also make certain that we no longer find
ourselves in the appalling position where a government
has to spend our money to educate us on who our
first prime minister was, because most of the
community didn't know. And we must never again
allow unscrupulous political campaigners like
elements of the monarchist movement to peddle
grotesque fantasies about our Constitution being
a document set in stone and incapable of evolving
without a revolution occurring.
Australia
in 2001 is a very different place to the one that
came into being 100 years ago. Through two world
wars, the influx of immigration in the postwar
period and many social advances since the '70s,
we have grown into a vibrant, democratic, multicultural
nation with a strong international focus and presence.
The success of the Sydney Olympics was in many
respects an affirmation of who we are and how
we are viewed by the rest of the world.
But
the image of Australia today that we will hopefully
celebrate in 2001 jars in one key aspect: we still
have a head of state who lives 20,000 kilometres
away and who belongs to a sexist, religiously
prejudiced, class-obsessed system just as her
predecessor did in 1901. Surely we deserve a head
of state who is unambiguously Australian and who
reflects the values that we hold so dear today.
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