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Why I Am A Republican
Speech by John Warhurst
Jubilee Lecture, University House, Australian National University
8 September 2004
Why am I a Republican?
Why I am a republican is a question that I should answer in a
number of ways: personal, academic and political.
In Australia to be a republican is to be in favour of replacing
the British monarchy with an Australian Head of State. The
current system in which the British monarch appoints a representative,
the Governor-General, on the advice of the Prime Minister,
offends my sense of being Australian.
Even to say that is contentious however. Other Australians would
dispute that it matters much or at all that the monarch is British.
Some even see it as an advantage. Others argue that Australia
already has an Australian Head of State, the Governor-General.
I don't take either of those counter arguments too seriously. For
me the present system is "broke" in that it is outdated, has major
flaws, and is ill-suited to modern Australia. To use one of Donald
Horne's phrases, it is actually "outlandish".
Like a majority of Australians I am a republican and therefore part
of a long and proud tradition. Since the early 1990s republicans have
clearly outnumbered supporters of the status quo. Unlike most
Australians, however, I am an active republican and I think the issue
matters enough to campaign for it. The disjunction between those two
statements expresses the problem of the republican movement in a nutshell.
The campaign needs greater intensity and urgency if it is to succeed.
I will explain why I get involved in the way I do.
My formation as a republican probably began in the 1960s growing up in
Adelaide. Adelaide, the supposedly conservative city of churches, was
also home to the poet and author Geoffrey Dutton, a member of a pioneer
South Australian family. I still have my copy of his symposium, Australia
and the Monarchy, published in 1966. He asked for answers to the simple
yet penetrating question "why the Head of our State is not an Australian".
For his pains the president of the Returned Services League in South
Australia, Brigadier Eastick said Dutton should be sent back to Russia
where he belonged. In the climate of the times that was a favourite form
of abuse.
A little before this, while acknowledging Dutton's even earlier
contribution in the journal Nation, Donald Horne had advocated a
republic in his classic book about Australian identity, The Lucky
Country. This provoked outrage and he too was denounced as a "red".
He asked the question: "Is Australia alone in the world in being
unable to rig up its own head of state? This is backwater colonialism,
nervous of its final responsibilities." I agreed. When he claimed that
"there is no basis of power or performance or reason in the monarchy"
I agreed with that too.
I have been a public republican for more than 25 years since the late
1970s. In 1977 the Queen's Silver Jubilee was being celebrated in
Australia. I guess this stimulated some interest in the republican
question. My first public talks on the subject were to Rotary clubs
in Hamilton and Warrnambool in country Victoria with the Queen looking
over my shoulder from her photograph on the wall behind me. Before
giving my talk I had to metaphorically grit my teeth through a Loyal
Toast to start the meeting. In preparing for this jubilee lecture I
happened across my notes for these talks, in particular for the one
I gave on Anzac Day 1978, tucked into my copy of Australia and the
Monarchy. At that time support for a republic was less than 30%. The
then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, had attempted to put down
republicanism and republicans as "fringe elements" and "a little loose
talk which was put forward in a minor kind of way". But I made the
point to the Rotarians that this level of support was extremely
encouraging for republicans because it had occurred without the
support of the media or either of the major political parties.
In saying this perhaps I had been influenced by Donald Horne writing
in a second Dutton symposium, A Republican Australia? (1977):
Consider how extraordinary it is that, with no significant republican
movement in Australia and, at best, indifference among the people in
the media and the political parties who help set the political agenda,
according to the surveys declared support is already three or four
Australians out of ten.
I argued then in Warrnambool that "the Queen is not the Queen of
Australia. We have somebody else's Queen. She is first and foremost
Queen of the U.K. Anything else is secondary. The monarchy is the
result of our previous relationship with Great Britain. We were her
colony. She was a great power. Neither is still true." I stand by
all of that and I'm proud that I said it when I did. I dismissed
the common argument that our constitutional arrangements had produced
our stability as a nation by reference to Northern Ireland, also a
constitutional monarchy and one beset by enormous strife and
instability. The culture of the Australian people produces our
political stability not our constitutional arrangements.
I subsequently devoted both my Inaugural Lecture as a professor
of politics at the University of New England in 1986 and my
Presidential Address to the Australasian Political Studies
Association in 1987 to republican themes. As well I made a
republican submission to the Constitutional Commission in Sydney
about the same time, arguing that the monarchy was inconsistent
with Australia's status as an independent nation. I did all this
an individual because there was no republican organisation to join.
I can't distinguish between my identity as a private citizen and
my role as a professor of political science in this respect. They
now go side by side, which causes unease among some people,
including an occasional student, because it is a divisive issue.
I tell my students that I am a republican political scientist.
They can make their own judgements about my arguments on that basis.
My professional judgement reinforces my gut reaction and vice versa.
In the mid-1990s I joined the Australian Republican Movement, the
leading organisation campaigning for an Australian Head of State,
which had been founded in 1991. After holding a range of positions,
including convener, in the ACT branch I became national chairman of
ARM two years ago in September 2002. I never expected this to happen
and it has been a great honour for me to hold such a position in the
footsteps of the previous chairs, Thomas Keneally, Malcolm Turnbull
and Greg Barns.
In Principle
The move towards an Australian Republic is such a sensible and logical
step for Australia to take. It is essentially a nationalist argument
for me. It is unacceptable to me that Australia should have a foreign
head of state and sovereign. It is demeaning that we should continue
without an Australian at the peak of our constitutional arrangements.
As such change is just another step in the long line of sensible and
logical steps towards full nationhood that Australian governments have
taken since federation in 1901.
Three points can be made about this complicated and uneven history.
First, that it has involved making breaks with Britain and the Crown
where timely and possible in the case of some institutions and practices.
Secondly, it has involved trying to make some of these institutions,
such as the Crown itself, as Australian as possible as a substitute
for a break with Britain that was impossible at the time. Thirdly,
these steps have usually taken place without reference to the Australian
people and all of them have taken place without the need for
constitutional change by referendum. This is crucial for understanding
the republic issue because it is a constitutional issue dictated by
formal rules.
The history of the evolution of the way we govern ourselves through
Australian political institutions has been one of shedding unnecessary
links with Britain and the Empire. Australia redefined its relationship
with Britain by signing the Statute of Westminster in the 1940s.
Australia shed the judicial ties with Britain and the Empire when it
abolished appeals to the Privy Council, the imperial court, between
the 1960s and 1980s. Australian governments began to appoint Australians
as Governors-General in the 1930s and confirmed this practice once and
for all in the 1960s. Australians passed the Australia Act in 1986 to
break the remaining constitutional links between Australian federal
and state governments and Britain. The trajectory is clear.
At the same time governments took the sensible step of working within
the system. In particular, monarchist and republican alike, they
attempted to Australianise the monarchy through the Royal Style and
Titles Act. The Liberals' Sir Robert Menzies did it in the 1950s and
Labor's Gough Whitlam did it in the 1970s. While understandable at the
time it makes untangling the arrangements more difficult that it might
otherwise have been had the Queen not ever been designated "Queen of
Australia".
None of these steps were taken with direct reference to the Australian
people, but they were still worth doing. Consultations were held by
Australian governments with monarchs, with the British government,
with other governments of the British Empire and Commonwealth, and
between federal and state governments within Australia. Only in the
case of the decision in the 1970s to drop the imperial anthem, "God
Save the Queen", were the people consulted. On that occasion it was
by a plebiscite to choose between the status quo and various
alternatives such as Advance Australia Fair (the eventual winner)
and Waltzing Matilda.
As well as having a Head of State of our own a modern democracy like
Australia also should have an open and transparent method of filling
the position. Hereditary appointments should be a thing of the past.
Every Australian child should have the opportunity to become Head of
State. I have come to feel more strongly about this aspect of
republicanism over time as I have thought more about the issues involved.
I have also developed a growing sympathy for the view, articulated
most convincingly by my ANU colleague, Mark McKenna, that the move
towards an Australian republic should be accompanied by reconciliation
with Indigenous Australians. But the political scientist in me will
not allow me to deviate from the strategic necessity for the
republican movement to be a single-issue movement committed solely
to an Australian head of state for Australia.
Once the transition to a Republic takes place the current method of
appointment effectively by the Prime Minister of the day will seem
increasingly out of place and anachronistic.
There are many possible alternatives for the people to choose from
that not only have been canvassed in debate here in Australia but
are actually in place and working effectively in other nations. The
range of choices was most recently on display during the Inquiry by
the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References committee,
which has just reported.
Personally I have never been too fussed about the particular model
that is chosen so long as it is a responsible one compatible with
our heritage. I trust the Australian people to make the right choice.
There are several acceptable models that do not require elaborate
constitutional engineering.
If there is a frontrunner at the moment it is probably some form of
direct election of the president. Opinion polls report that this
model is favoured by a majority of people. It is the model favoured
by Mark Latham, the Leader of the Opposition. It has the advantage
of surfing on a wave of popular support for greater citizen involvement
in public affairs in general, and in popular scepticism about
politicians and other so-called elites. Its disadvantage may be that
it still has to convince some Australians of its compatibility with
Westminster principles of responsible government. Direct election will
probably need to go hand in hand with codification of the President's
powers.
The advantage of the major alternative, parliamentary appointment of a
future president, is that it involves less radical change to our existing
ways of doing things. Also it is favoured by republican constitutional
conservatives, such as the Liberal Treasurer, Peter Costello, and the
NSW Labor Premier, Bob Carr. The disadvantage of this so-called minimalist
model is that it is tarnished by a previous defeat. It was put to the
people in 1999 but gained only just over 45% support. Furthermore, in
terms of attractiveness it perhaps lacks the ability to generate the
excitement that popular election does.
In Practice
Many sensible and logical ideas are never implemented. Just to look at
the list of failed constitutional referenda in Australia demonstrates
the truth of this nostrum. It is more than 25 years since we last changed
our constitution by referendum.
Republicans have to coax the Australian community to jump a big
constitutional hurdle. The hurdle is s.128 of the Australian Constitution,
which requires a double majority of Australian citizens: a national
majority and a majority in a majority of states.
The lesson of the failed 1999 republic referendum is that the right
question needs to be put, one that has been fully thrashed out within
the community beforehand.
As a republican I believe that the way to proceed is by community
consultation and initiative. The best way to do this is for a government
to hold several plebiscites as a prelude to the final and unavoidable
constitutional step, a referendum. A plebiscite is a test of community
opinion. The Australian Republican Movement is committed to three
plebiscites. First, a general question about whether Australia should
or should not become a republic with an Australian Head of State.
Then a particular question about which type of republic (which "model"
in the jargon) Australia should become. And finally a third question
about what we should call our new head of state. It need not be "President"
I am delighted that the Senate Inquiry into an Australian Republic
supports the general thrust of this view. Only last Tuesday the Senate
legal and constitutional references committee released its report entitled
The Road to a Republic. Please read it if you want to educate yourself
further about the issues.
In Terms of My Own Background
Why do some people become republicans and not others? On an occasion
such as this I would like to offer a personal reflection.
I suspect most of my forebears would have been monarchists. One side
of my family are 19th century British immigrants mixed through marriage
with Portuguese blood, while the other is more Irish-Catholic with a
dash of Norwegian thrown in. I have first cousins active on the
monarchist side so no one simple factor is at work. I can't just say
republicanism is in my blood.
But my immediate family moved with the times. Both my late father and
my father-in-law, veterans of World War II, voted Yes in 1999. I was
always proud to see my late father's car boasting a republican sticker
on its back windscreen.
What my background did give me was an opening to broader international
influences. Catholic schooling by the Jesuits in Adelaide was not
focussed on British heritage alone. Nor was my family. My maternal
grandmother's heroes were Mario Lanza, John F Kennedy and Pope John
XXIII rather than royalty. The "continent", as she called it, rather
than Britain was her spiritual home. Ironically her name was "Queenie".
I was part of a generation for whom the trappings of the British
monarchy were intrusive enough to make me want to reject them. I am
part of the generation, now well into their fifties, whose earliest
memories include being paraded by our school teachers to see Queen
Elizabeth on tour down under in 1954, in my case at Adelaide's Queen
Victoria racecourse. It was during this tour that Prince Philip, the
Queen's consort, officiated at the opening of University House.
One of the things that I wanted to reject because it was foreign was
"God Save the Queen", played in picture theatres as a matter of custom.
It rankled with me, although I was embarrassed (I'm embarrassed now to
say) when a girl friend who was made of sterner stuff refused to stand
up for the national anthem with everyone else. I was too much of a
conformist.
I was mildly offended too when I applied for my first passport in 1971
in order to leave Australia for the first time and discovered that I
was still officially a British subject.
Just to recall those pin pricks gives me heart as an Australian
republican because it shows just how far Australia has come and how
much society has changed in such a relatively short time. SA Premier
Sir Thomas Playford named Adelaide's new satellite city Elizabeth in
the 1950s. Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies wanted to call Australia's
new decimal currency "the Royal" in the 1960s. Prime Minister Malcolm
Fraser floated the idea of Prince Charles as Governor General in the
late 1970s. We were British to the Bootstraps in my recent memory and
not very long ago.
But it also is a salutary reminder to me that when compared to the
everyday experience of my students the British monarchy was constantly
"in my face". That fact helped generate a reaction and some momentum for
change. The republican movement would be stronger if a little more of
that was still around. Not that I would ever want it back.
What makes a republican activist?
As a republican I chose some time ago deliberately to make the jump
from academic to activist. The particular moment occurred in 1997 in
the lead up to elections for the 1998 Constitutional Convention. Until
that time I had devoted my energies primarily to the Constitutional
Centenary Foundation, a government funded, non-partisan vehicle for
impartial education about constitutional issues. I resigned as their
ACT convener because I thought the position was incompatible with
campaigning for a republic.
Being present in Old Parliament House as an observer for some of the
final votes of the Constitutional Convention in February 1998 was
incredibly emotional for me. I hugged other republicans and danced
around just like the Australian delegates did in London back in 1900
when the Australian Constitution was approved by the British government.
But it was a false dawn as it turned out.
The CCF, chaired first by Sir Ninian Stephen and later by Donald McDonald,
was an honest broker. It produced good ideas, such as the idea of a people's
convention that was taken up first by Alexander Downer and then by John
Howard on behalf of the Liberal Party. It also produced good workable
models of community consultation, such as the Schools Constitutional
Conventions and the Local Constitutional Conventions.
These ways of operating still have much to teach republicans and anyone
else interested in community debate. They gave me my first training as a
community facilitator, a role that I enjoy playing and draws on my
experience of what I think of as unbiased but intellectually challenging
university teaching that draws people out of themselves.
But it was not enough to satisfy me. I couldn't stand back from the fray.
I needed to become a declared advocate and a public republican. Such a
role does not come easily to academics trained to see both sides of any
question. In the media I have had to move from the comfort of the role of
expert to the hot-seat of the role of advocate.
Most of my republican colleagues in universities have not taken this path.
But I wish they would join in. For various reasons, such as retaining
independence and academic objectivity, as well as their good name, they
have held back. Their academic support is invaluable. But the republican
movement needs their insights and energy within our organisations. We
have enough prominent academic supporters but not enough prominent
academic activists. There are too few academic activists in the ARM.
Ideas don't win battles on their own. While the pen is mighty ARM needs
sword carriers prepared to strike some blows. The battle will be won in
public not in the cloisters. Academics can play a major role, on either
side, in a way that many others are not free to. I have been struck, for
instance, during my time in the ARM by the way in which their employment
in either the public or private sector can often prevent republicans
from publicly advocating our cause (public servants are a prime example
but by no means the only one). Academics sometimes forget how privileged
we are in an everyday matter such as public political involvement.
A Future Republic
I am delighted that many young Australians are committed to achieving my
dream of an Australian republic. I am left in no doubt of this whenever I
speak to gatherings of those young people committed to making a contribution
to public life, such as participants in Schools' Constitutional Conventions.
These young people recognise the absurdity and illogicality of the current
situation. We are part way towards achieving that dream and I am confident
that the best and the brightest will direct their passion towards this goal.
It will be their task to inform friends and colleagues of their own generation.
Four young Australians of this calibre (Macgregor Duncan, Andrew Leigh,
David Madden and Peter Tynan) spell out the case in their recent book,
Imagining Australia: Ideas for our Future (pp 28-29).
An Australian Republic would be a powerful symbol of independence and
maturity for the nation… The reasons for severing ties with the House of
Windsor are straightforward. Australia is today an independent sovereign
nation with no colonial relationship with the United Kingdom. Yet retaining
Queen Elizabeth II -a monarch and resident of another country - as our head
of state sends the wrong message to ourselves and to the world. We continue
to portray ourselves as a branch office of the United Kingdom. Moreover a
system based on privilege, birthright and religion is the antithesis of
Australian egalitarianism. Modern Australia deserves something that fits
us better: we should have a head of state who is one of us. It should be
possible for any Australian child, from any background, to aspire to hold
the highest ceremonial office in the land. This is not a case of Australia
denying its British heritage. Australia cannot, nor should it want to,
paper over our past. The republic, as Paul Keating once said, is the
icing on the cake, it is about confirming the best in us and completing
our national picture.
At the moment Australia is stuck with one foot in the past as we strive
to move forward. The republic idea is about the future. It is an idea
which is the logical culmination of the lengthy process of building a
distinctive Australian identity. It is the next step. The monarchy,
especially a British monarchy trying to be relevant to an Australian
nation in 2004, is an idea from the past. The need for the/our monarchy
to be replaced comes not just from its anachronistic constitutional
position but because of the values that it stands for. Whatever the
personal qualities of the monarch and the monarch's representative in
Australia, the Governor-General, these values are not modern values
fit for a modern independent nation.
But a republic is not inevitable. Forget that word. Republicans should
never presume that it will come early or even at all. Neither life nor
politics works like that. Worthwhile achievements in politics, like
achieving a Gold Medal at the Olympic Games, have to be worked for. The
opponents of the idea are still determined and well-funded. That is my
challenge to younger Australians. Work to bring this desirable objective
to fruition in your lifetime and hopefully in mine. A majority of
Australians want the issue to be resolved soon. Let's do it.
John Warhurst is Chair of the Australian Republican Movement.
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