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Why the role of our Head of State is important

By Lisa Singh - posted Tuesday, 14 February 2012


The balance of the world is shifting. With the rapid rise of Asian economies and culture, this has been dubbed the Asian century. With so much change, Australia has the chance to position itself for decades ahead. We have the opportunity to define our direction.

Yet it seems the republican movement is at an ebb. Opponents seek to characterise the questions of destiny arising from global change as a reason for us to relegate discussion of our republic. The truth is, no matter what the time, opposition to the republican movement has always been thus. Arguments against republicanism are retrospective at exactly the time when we need to be looking ahead.

Critics of republicanism stake their case on the household logic that: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The implication is that republicanism is an issue of those with a radical reform agenda. But it is difficult to maintain that Australian republicanism is confined to radicals and revolutionaries. Contemporary republicanism is better described as recognition than regicide; an acknowledgment that we have created a society with more to do with our ourselves and our neighbours than with some of our ancestors.

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When our new democratic nation was born out of the federation movement, through the initiative of Australian democrats like Andrew Inglis Clark and Sir Henry Parkes on 1 January 1901, what was so significant was the fact that occurred through the granting of a yes or no vote, albeit one with limited franchise.

No other nation in history had been created through the vote. More common were nations born out of war, rebellions or great heroism. From that time on, the constitution has only been successfully amended, through referenda, eight times.

In his book The Sweet Spot, Peter Hartcher writes of Australia being modelled on the American Union, yet no one asked the American people to vote on the Declaration of Independence. Despite the political, economic and social links between Australia and the United States of America, there were fundamental differences in the formation of our two nations. Ours was born from democracy, theirs from war; our delegates were elected, theirs were not. And at the moment of creation Australia clung onto the British monarchy whilst American broke away from it.

America ended its association with Britain by rejecting a monarch they saw as a tyrant, dissolving their link with the Crown altogether. But America held onto the rights of Englishmen, continuing to exalt the British tradition of liberty found in John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. More than that, America turned British values into American values, inspired by the Glorious Revolution rather than eternally limited by it. American culture, shaped by the self-belief of a country that was willing to confidently assert its place in world, has now become a global phenomenon and a guiding light for global democrats.

While some of our institutions changed quickly after 1901, many did not. Without an institutional catalyst for our new nation, our culture did not change or experience the progress of other republics, like the United States or India. Instead, inertia ensured that we were still more loyal subjects than citizens of a newly independent state. We continued to defer to Britain, and our policies continued to reflect British priorities rather than our own.

Why an Australian Head of State? Because it is only the republics of the world that have the political institutions with which to etch out national values and a national identity. It is exactly the President and the republican ethic with which American values could evolve British liberties; and it is only a republic which will enable Australian values to fully come into their own.

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Slowly, some of the particularly British artefacts of Australia did fade away. The despicable White Australia Policy finally ended in 1973, ending the overt racial discrimination in our migration system that had been based on a belief that our population should be literally coloured by our English heritage. God Save the Queen gave way to consideration of our own national anthem in 1974. And in 1994, less than two decades ago, reference to the Crown was removed from the Pledge of Commitment, replaced by a solemn respect for democracy, rights and liberties and the rule of law.

That means the more than 80 percent of new Australian citizens who do not hail from the United Kingdom no longer have to swear allegiance to a monarch who has never had an impact on their lives. These migrants have come not for an empire upon which the sun never sets, but for a sunburnt country. The heritage our new citizens honour when they take the pledge is the heritage of Australia. And it is time that all of us recognised what our new citizens do: that we don't need to pretend that British history is our history. Our country has its own history.

That history began 50 000 years ago, when Aboriginal Australians formed communities and founded nations across some of the most difficult landscapes in the world and forged connections to Country that are as certain as they are profound. Those connections were ruptured by colonialism, but contemporary Australia is a place in which Country can coexist with other deep spiritual beliefs. We can share our spaces and respect each other's cultures.

Why an Australian Head of State? Because an Australia that defines itself with reference to another nation cannot be an enabler of Australian rights, interests or endeavour. It will foreigners of patriots and aliens of Australians, even those here for the longest time.

Recently, the Government received advice from the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Constitutional recognition of our original Australians is well overdue. But just as we changed in 1967 with a successful referendum on racially discriminatory aspects of the Constitution, we can move forward on this issue. And we can move forward on an Australian republic. But this is a debate that will only be won with leadership.

As Sir Henry Parkes led the federation movement in 1889, so we need leadership to light the republican movement in 2012. Deakin inherited a polity deeply entrenched in the British monarchy. He led with the regulation of working conditions, just as Fisher later enshrined the minimum wage. That kind of leadership helped begin the definition of Australia, leaving behind the British class system and creating a nation based on egalitarianism and the fair go.

But it took a brave Prime Minister to push forward on an Australian republic. In a recent transcription of handwritten notes taken after meeting in 1993 with Her Majesty the Queen at Balmoral Castle, he wrote:

I had come from Australia on the unpleasant errand to tell her, in all conscientiousness, that we did not need her any more. (Keating 2011)

He went on to write:

I wanted her to understand how and why Australia had changed, how it was different now than the way she might have found it in 1954 when she first visited.

... That we live in the East Asian hemisphere and that for 50 years we had had an ambitious migration program which had changed our character; I told her the monoculture was a thing of the past. (Keating 2011)

This Australian leader wrote of making our place in the world, a task:

... made more difficult when we appeared uncertain as to who we are; when our Head of State was not one of us, when we go to the region as the Australian nation with all of our hopes and aspirations yet go with the monarch of another country. (Keating 2011)

That brave man was of course Paul Keating: the only Australian leader to tell the Queen her service to Australia was no longer relevant. He had a vision for Australia to define itself according to the values and makeup of its people. Like many Australians of mixed heritage, I identify with the aspiration of Australians being represented by one of their own.

In 2011, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced the creation of a white paper on Australia in the Asian Century. If the nineteenth century was the European century, and the twentieth the American century, this century is most assuredly to be the Asian century.

As the only Western country in the Asian region, we have an extraordinary opportunity to be involved in the region which will shape our world for the next hundred years. We must invest the time necessary to be a nation that lives, works and plays as much abroad as we do at home. Only 20 percent of Australians currently working in China, for example, can speak the language. There is a mentality that when we punch out at the end of our time in China, we come safely home to the West. But we can no longer afford to think of ourselves as simply visitors to this region. We are part of it.

Learning a second language is crucial to our engagement, not just to enable people to communicate, but to provide the ability to far better understand differences in culture; to understand not just what is said, but why. We can no longer fall back on the safety of the tongue of mother Britain.

The strength of the Tiger economies of South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan speak for themselves. The Association of South-East Asian Nations is now one third larger than Australia in market exchange rate terms. China and India's amazing economic growth has tripled their share of the global economy in the last twenty years. In the next twenty years, their share of the global economy will grow from a fifth to a third. We can no longer rely on the bounty of the Empire.

Why an Australian Head of State? Because Australia is no longer in the antipodes. It is from this region that the agenda for the future will be set, and it is from this country that we must shape the attitudes and perception of our neighbours – in control of our own agenda and ready be involved in the region's affairs.

We need to look to the future in reference to who we are: a multicultural society comprised of new arrivals from all over the world; an economy with the advantage of adjacency; and a polity with robust, distinctly Australia institutions and attitudes. It is our own leadership on which we ought to be relying.

We are fortunate in this country to have that kind of leadership on this issue. Unlike other conservative nations of the Commonwealth, like Canada, the forces that would actively resist a republic do not have the authority of Government. We have a Prime Minister who believes in Australian republicanism. We have the energy and enthusiasm of young people and community activists for whom republicanism is the next logical step.

Yet despite our support, despite the opportunities before us, the republican movement too often hesitates. Perhaps chastened by the referendum in 1999 which was set up to fail, we equivocate, deferring to the macabre idea that we should wait until Queen Elizabeth passes on, even when the influence of the Royal Family wanes and the power of the United Kingdom is fundamentally challenged by our Asian neighbours.

Let us ensure the idea of an Australian republic with an Australian Head of State occupies a central place in our national political debate once again. Let us take the idea of our own Australia to our workplaces, our schools, our kitchen tables and our leaders. Let us rebuild the republican movement, mark out our own path in this region and build the momentum that can shape our future.

Just as Sir Henry Parkes had to fight the 'no' campaign against federation, we must rise to fight the 'no' campaign against an Australian republic with vigour, fortitude and belief in the nation we want to define for the future. A nation with our own Head of State that is truly Australian.

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This is an edited version of a speech given by Senator Lisa Singh on February 4 at the Australian Republican Movement Victorian Conference.



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About the Author

Senator Lisa Singh is Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water and prior to this was Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General. She was also a Minister in the Tasmanian Labor Government.

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