An Australian republic for national unity and stability

Since the 1970s, a massive number of non-British and non-European immigrants have arrived in Australia. After intense early discrimination, distrust of Asian immigrants has been somewhat supplanted by the onset of ‘Islamaphobia’. Wars in African and the Middle-East have seen subsequent waves of immigrants to Australia from such places as Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most live in the poorer suburbs of major cities on low incomes and are frequently viewed with distrust and even outright contempt by less recent arrivals, hence the Cronulla riots.

There is no doubt that British immigration will continue to decline and the proportion of people that feel a bond with Britain will correspondingly diminish. Former Prime Minister John Howard saw the problem, and devised a rather folksy citizenship test - which included questions about Don Bradman’s test batting average - along with plans for a preamble to the Constitution that emphasised some amorphous idea of “mateship” in a feeble attempt to define Australian national identity. It failed to have much resonance even within his own WASP clique.

Though an ardent royalist, in his heart Howard probably knows that the only way to create a true national identity is to create a true nation. Only by breaking its last colonial links will Australia be able to assuredly claim that it is a fully and truly independent nation.

In terms of the Australian peoples, it is hard to conceive Indigenous Australians being prepared to stand fully behind a nation still intrinsically linked to the colonisers who took away their land and humiliated them. For many Indigenous Australians, Australia Day is known as Invasion Day. They surely want to be able to turn the page on this unfortunate past and have a nation with a Constitution that recognises their intrinsic importance to this land and regards them as full equals with their usurpers. Similarly, recent arrivals to these shores are unlikely to be inspired towards a deep loyalty to a nation without the will and the pride to become fully independent - a nation that illogically allows its citizens to be the subjects of a foreign monarch.

We can bind all Australians together to a common purpose - a loyalty and deep love for this nation - that extends beyond shallow pride in our national sporting achievements. We can achieve this by showing we are subservient to no foreign nation, or monarch, but are a truly independent, fully democratic, egalitarian nation. And with an Australian head of state, we can show our children that the top job in our system is something every one of them can aspire to be and so be inspired to become.

The Australian Republican Movement policy expresses this well:

An Australian republic is about Australia’s future. It’s about our shared identity and place in the world. It will have a constitution that reflects the sovereignty of the Australian people, so that any Australian citizen can aspire to the highest office in the land.

An Australian republic will embrace our egalitarianism and the concept of a fair go. It will acknowledge our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and respect its culture, with its timeless connection to the Australian land and sea. It will recognise and build upon our British heritage and acknowledge its gifts, including our political and legal institutions. An Australian republic will celebrate our immigrant heritage of opportunity and endeavour and its contribution to our national identity. It will unite all Australians behind an Australian Head of State.

With all recent polls showing that less than 30 per cent of the Australians identify themselves as monarchists, and with republicanism supported by about 60 per cent, the Crown does more to divide us than bind us as a nation. It would be awful to think of Australia breaking down into chaos and disunity - and perhaps fracturing - by not us not making the effort to find another meaningful idea to bind all our disparate peoples together. Only an Australian republic, with its compelling national vision for our nation - a fully independent egalitarian Australian nation united under an Australian head of state - seems able to create this true sense of national unity. It would be unwise to let this important national project drift on for too long, allowing the fault lines to widen too far.