The republicans fail to 'steal' Eureka

I am left to reflect on the relevance of Eureka to our constitutional debate. What was the legacy of Eureka? Why had the republicans and the Labor Party tried to appropriate it? Was their attempt valid?

After attending the Eureka conference - after listening to Geoffrey Blainey, Desmond O’Grady, and even to Gough Whitlam and Greg Barns - I am even more convinced that we have the best form of government Australia could have and that the legacy of Eureka is the democratic, peaceful and stable society we have become. It was tragic that 35 people lost their lives that day - but as Geoffrey Blainey has demonstrated there was no need.

The men who endorsed the principles and objects of “Ballarat Reform League” on Bakery Hill on November 11, 1854, which stated:

That it is not the wish of the League to effect an immediate separation of this colony from the parent country….but that if Queen Victoria continues to act upon the ill advice of dishonest ministers and insists upon indirectly dictating obnoxious laws for the colony, under the assumed authority of the Royal prerogative, the Reform League will endeavour to supersede such Royal prerogative by asserting that of the people, which is the most royal of all prerogatives, as the people are the only legitimate source of all political power.

They simply did not understand - as with others who had flirted with republican principles in the 1850s - that democracy and self-government were perfectly compatible with remaining under the Crown. We understand that now, as did our Founding Fathers in 1901. The commitment that the diggers of Eureka had to democracy in 1854 remains with us today - but we know that we can have our democracy within the framework of a system of constitutional monarchy which provides the checks and balances to protect those “rights and liberties” so eagerly defended under the Southern Cross on that Eureka day in December 1854.