Not quite the road to Damascus

I am a republican. Have been as long as I can remember. The thought of someone holding an office because of birth rather than achievement is obnoxious to me. But in Australia today, in the context of the current referendum, I am a Constitutional Monarchist.

My conversion was a gradual one and the road starts at a Liberal Party Branch meeting.

Chatsworth Road Branch is one of the most politically progressive branches of the Liberal Party, so when I spoke against a pro-Monarchist motion I expected to receive some support. I was wrong. There was no other Republican in the room. That set me back.

Why were these people, who I respected, so attached to this institution? The answer was emotion, and in the scramble over national symbols, that is as good an attachment as any. They were mostly older than me, and they had grown up in a vastly different Australia. One where people referred to "The Mother Country". Where Australian courts were still subject to review by the Privy Council. They also remembered the Second World War, when the young Elizabeth II, drove an ambulance, and her mother and father refused to evacuate London themselves.

I thought about my own position. Yes, I was a Republican, but the current system worked well enough which is to damn with faint praise. We have one of the best systems of government in the world. While I was committed to change, it was not a high priority. I believed that change would come inevitably as the older generations died out and the illogic of the monarchical system became increasingly evident. So, if I had no urgency to change, why should I upset the emotional equilibrium of a group of older Australians.

The polls showed at best only a bare majority for a Republic. If a Republic is inevitable, and adopting it as a form of government would have minimal effect, shouldn’t its adoption be left to a time when the overwhelming majority of Australians will embrace it? Otherwise it will divide the community when it should be uniting it.

Later that year, the motion was put up to a Liberal Party State Conference to be debated. I was a delegate. The mover of the motion was not even present, so I was given the job of moving it. How could I move the motion and maintain my Republican integrity? In the shortest speech of my life I said that the matter was a political diversion on the part of the then Labor government. That I was sure there was no-one in the room who would speak against the motion. And that it should therefore be carried by acclamation so that we could get on and discuss more important issues. It was.

This was another step on the way to conversion. Not only was the Republic an issue that did not need to be resolved then, but Keating was using it in a divisive and partisan way. Under these circumstances I could not support a Republic. Times have moved on from then, but it is still a matter in the back of my mind.

Sometime after that Convention my opposition to a Republic moved from being one of opposing the immediate introduction of a republic to one of support for the Constitutional Monarchy. I came to the view that we have in fact, a republic. The Queen has absolute power, on the condition that she never uses it – she reigns as long as she does not rule. This is an absurd state of affairs, but how human – it is illogical but it works

The constitutional monarchy as it has evolved is a very Anglo Saxon way of doing things. Edmund Burke, observing the French Revolution, said that he refused to sacrifice a system of government for a mere theory. That empirical, positivistic position is one of the hallmarks of the English speaking world, and one of the reasons why of all the colonial powers, ours was the most civilized and civilizing. We are an accommodating, tolerant culture, happy to improvise solutions and make them work. It is something we should be proud of.

To some degree the Republican push is a denial of this culture.

But then Australians are a very insecure mob as evidenced by our obsessive search for national identity.

I have heard Malcolm Turnbull assert that we are an international laughing stock because "we do not have an Australian as Head of State." Really? I have yet to hear anyone dismiss New Zealand or Canada because the Queen is their Head of State too. This is a line that could only run in a community lacking in self respect and pride.

My conversion became complete when I tried to imagine the ideal constitutional system. We Australians are not a nation of forelock tuggers. At football matches we frequently boo dignitaries. All men are born equal, and that is the way we believe they should be treated. A system of government suited to us would have as few chiefs as possible.

If you are going to cut management you should start at the top. What role does the Queen and her Vice-Regal Representative play? That of umpire. The G-G invariably signs bills into law when they are presented, and only has real power at the change of government. But in most of our affairs we already have an independent umpire of last resort – the courts. When the system evolves from a constitutional monarchy, why replace the Queen with anyone? Why not vest the power to resolve disputes with the High Court? That way not one person, but seven, would make the decision, there would be an open debate of the issues, and the reasons for judgement would be delivered and printed. What a contrast to the last time the reserve powers were used!

The most minimal model of all would be simply to remove the Head of State altogether.

When I run this idea with people I am invariably told that it would violate the doctrine of the separation of powers. Yet it is an open secret amongst Constitutional lawyers that the great strength of the Westminster System is that it has fused the Executive and the Legislature. This separation of powers is a fiction.

Like most of the contributors to this section, my conversion was not sudden, and not without reservations. I believe that we already have a Republic, that it is a cultural artifact in its current form of which we should be proud, and that over time it will and should evolve. But I do not believe that its evolution should lead to any of the Republican models that are on offer today, and when it evolves it should be because an overwhelming majority demand it, not merely to satisfy fashion on the cusp of a new century.