"GOVERNOR BUTLER: TURNCOAT OR TROJAN HORSE?"

By John Warhurst
The Canberra Times
22 August 2003

Time will tell just how good a fist Richard Butler makes of his appointment as Governor of Tasmania. He s not a Tasmanian. He has a notably blunt and over-confident manner. And he is a republican. Some critics have already panned the former Australian diplomat, best known for his position as head of the UN Special Commission on Iraqi Disarmament, on all three grounds.

The media, in particular, question his acceptance of the position given that he has been an active and high profile supporter of the republican cause, though not an office bearer of the Australian Republican Movement.

Another significant aspect has been the strategy of the Tasmanian Labor government in choosing to make such a striking appointment. There is no doubt that the Premier Jim Bacon has chosen Butler with an eye to projecting Tasmania's image abroad. The appointment in Bacon's words is "symbolic of the new Tasmania".

First indications are that, even in the bitter world of Tasmanian politics, this may turn out to be a strategically successful appointment. Bacon has bypassed the favourite son or daughter rule that has governed many of these appointments since Australians started to be considered. Sir Guy Green, the incumbent, was a sort of wunderkind example of a favourite son, having been Tasmanian Chief Justice from the age of 35.

Tasmania now boasts a Governor with a higher national and international profile than any other Australian state. This doesn't mean that he will make a better Governor but it does set a direction that others may choose to follow.

Australia's five other Governors set a high standard in this regard. Butler will be joining two former international athletes, an academic psychiatrist, a general, and a leading feminist educator. Prof.Marie Bashir of NSW is an eminent doctor, John Landy (Victoria) and Marjorie Jackson-Nelson (South Australia) are former outstanding Olympic athletes, General John Sanderson led the UN force in Cambodia, while Dr Quentin Bryce was head of Women's College at the University of Sydney.

But Bacon seems to have trumped them. And in so doing, he may have opened up the position to a different type of occupant. The 'new' type of Governor, potentially activist, may find it more difficult to operate under traditional assumptions about how the task is performed.

It is a further indication of the evolution of the position, whether the immediate future is constitutional monarchy or republic. Both monarchists and republicans need to take account of this development in their thinking about future arrangements.

Butler's acceptance came as a complete surprise to republicans and monarchists alike. Monarchist reactions suggest that the appointment caught them off-guard.

But many republicans were probably even angrier. For some this was the ultimate sell-out, not unlike Jack Egerton, the Queensland labour movement leader who accepted a knighthood from Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the 1970s.

Butler was a turncoat who had become a Queen's representative. Some thought it was a disaster for the republican movement. How could such an advocate fall for this? Some republicans also thought it was just plain stupid of Butler to accept the offer. Did he need the money? Had he been seduced by the prospect of the 73-room Gothic mansion set on 15 hectares overlooking the Derwent River?

After all this was not just any republican taking on such a position but a leading figure. Along with Robert Hughes, Butler was the person who more than any other assisted ARM leader Malcolm Turnbull fund the campaign by speaking at large fundraising dinners in Sydney prior to the 1999 referendum. Butler suffered considerable sniping from monarchists for his efforts.

Yet the reality of this appointment for the republican movement is quite different. What monarchists think doesn't matter on this occasion. The movement has lost Butler to a public office that probably prevents him playing an advocacy role. But that role had largely run its course anyway and the movement is moving in a different direction. The debate surrounding Butler's appointment has led to another bout of serious attention to the republican cause. Butler has stuck to his republican guns. Just weeks after the appointment of the monarchist Governor-General Michael Jeffrey this has been a healthy antidote.

Though even Jeffrey's own appointment was coloured by his assertion that the republic would rise again on the public agenda within five years.

Australians are republican in spirit. 70% of Australians are republican as a matter of principle. We are governed at the state level by eight leaders of a party committed to a republic. It has been Labor party policy for twenty years. Most of the Opposition leaders are also republicans. Under these circumstances Butler won't be the only republican governor either now or in the near future. With many of the others a "don't ask, don't tell" approach has been adopted already, like the position of gays in the American military.

Very few republicans aspire to hold a Vice-Regal position. Personally I hope that Butler is the last prominent republican to become a Governor while Australia remains a constitutional monarchy. But in saying that I accept that Australian society and government pre-republic will be the poorer if the talent pool for such positions is restricted to either crusty old monarchists or closet republicans who haven't had the inclination or the energy to publicly support the cause.

The irony is stunning. There is also something exhilarating about having Queen's representatives in Australia who are declared republicans. What a wonderful creative tension about our constitutional arrangements such a situation will bring about.