Guy Beres » The Republic

867,034 more reasons why the season is overdue

Guy — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:58:14 +0000

The latest scandal to emerge featuring Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York is shocking in its very predictability. Isn’t Britain just a wee bit embarrassed about the blundering extensions of its monarchy? It would be worth a right good chuckle from an antipodean standpoint if it weren’t for the fact that our ties to the monarchy remain all too real. Our supplication to the tedious nonsense of the British royal family remains.

The Prime Minister has promised the nation that a referendum will be held “in due season”. Will he promise to hold a plebiscite on the issue prior to or simultaneously with the 2013 election if re-elected? If he will not, I don’t really feel that Federal Labor can any longer credibly claim to support an Australian republic.

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The very name of Malcolm Turnbull’s albatross

Guy — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:36:37 +0000

Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir of his participation in the Australian Republican Movement’s campaign for a republic, Fighting for the Republic, was published in 1999. I wonder, when he was writing the words below, whether he had even the slightest inkling of what the coming years would bring (p.4):

When we launched the ARM, the monarchists quickly retaliated by forming a group called Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM). Its chairman was Lloyd Waddy, a Sydney barrister, and a number of well-known conservatives were among its founders, including Dame Leonie Kramer, Chancellor of Sydney University, and, more improbably, Michael Kirby, very much a small-’l’ liberal and President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal.

The ACM was pretty ineffective until it hired Tony Abbott as its executive director in 1993. Abbott had been a speechwriter for Liberal leader John Hewson and was an energetic, if somewhat erratic, advocate of the status quo.

And there is this (p.26):

The monarchist campaign was largely directed by Tony Abbott, who had now left his job with the ACM to take up a seat in Parliament. One of the strategy documents prepared by Abbott encouraged the monarchists to attack me personally. ‘As their public face Turnbull is arrogant, rude and obnoxious – a filthy rich merchant banker, out of touch with real Australians. He is the Gordon Gekko of Australian politics.’

Strong words. I wonder how both parties view their interactions during the late 1990’s now? Certainly Abbott would likely view them with a healthy dose of triumphalism. It seems that the life and times of Malcolm Turnbull for the past fifteen years or so have been bookended by two quite separate and quite personal defeats by the Federal Member for Warringah.

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A prince visits a lazy, uncertain nation

Guy — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:32:20 +0000

He came. He saw. He kissed some kids and made some clucky old dames blush. He went home.

Apart from the predictable lashings of sound and colour emanating from our (mostly tabloid) press and current affairs programs over the last few days, there have also been a few rumblings about the lately neutered republican debate in Australia in the wake of Prince William’s brief visit. Earlier this week, Julia Gillard re-iterated the Rudd Government’s new, contradictory approach to the republic; supporting the change in principle, but curiously declining to nominate when it would put the matter to a referendum once again. The government admittedly has a lot on its plate, but there is only so long it can promise change while doggedly refusing to instigate it.

Even Malcolm Turnbull, arch-republican in chief, in a piece for The Times Online, has admitted that Australia’s shift towards a republic is now being guided primarily by the Queen’s mortality:

Changing the Constitution is extremely difficult and that is why I believe that the next republic referendum has the best chance of success after the Queen’s reign. That moment will be an historic and political watershed.

What is deeply ironic is the general view on this troublesome debate of ours from Prince William’s grey shores, exemplified by this contribution from Stephen Bates in The Guardian. Many in the United Kingdom view the monarchy as anachronistic and somewhat redundant, and in the trying economic times that we still find ourselves in, a drain on the public purse that is difficult to justify. To be perfectly blunt, the very concept of a monarchy – even an essentially symbolic one – is a throwback to a bygone era when blood trumped merit. It is antithetical to the Australian ethos.

Generally, British people just don’t seem to comprehend why Australia is holding itself back from declaring itself a republic, from finally cutting itself loose officially from its mother’s teat. The British are intimately familiar with the fierce love that Australians have for their country, their sense of superiority (particularly on the sporting field). This chest-thumping pride in the greatness of Australia is contradicted by the frustrating vacillation that has swallowed up the republican debate.

Do we live in such a timid and uncertain nation that we must wait for a lovely old lady on the other side of the world to die before we can chart a course for ourselves? It certainly appears so.

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