Archive for the British Republic category.
Greg Barns
THERE is a saying about putting the cart before the horse, and it is particularly apt when one thinks about Julia Gillard’s recent remarks about an Australian republic.
The Prime Minister told the National Press Club on July 15 that she did not, for the foreseeable future, favour another vote on allowing Australians to elect directly or indirectly their own head of state, unless there was consensus on the issue. There had to be community consensus first, and she does not ”think we should put a republic referendum until we are able to say with some confidence that we are there”.
What we needed, Gillard told her audience, was for ”community activism [to] come forward in order to create the kind of environment where a republic referendum would be able to be successfully concluded”.
Assuming for a moment there is no such community consensus on Australia becoming a republic, that it is a highly contested proposition, the problem with Gillard’s approach is that community activism and consensus do not appear suddenly from the ether.
Issues only generate interest, debate and activity if there is a trigger for them. In the case of constitutional or governance issues, it is rarely – if ever – the case that there is community activism unless government leads on it. The federation issue is a historic example, as is commonwealth-state relations today.
Let’s go back a step. Is it true there is no community consensus on the need for Australia to finally end its relationship, forged by colonial circumstance, with the British crown?
Gillard cited the position in her own electorate of Lalor, in Melbourne’s west, to argue the case that there was no community consensus for a republic.
With respect to the honourable member for Lalor, this is disingenuous. The majority of her electorate narrowly voted in 1999 against the proposition of a president elected by parliamentarians. The vote was 48.7 per cent ”yes” to 51.2 per cent ”no”. In other words, almost one in two of her electors favoured the proposition. If we take the numbers who would have supported a directly elected president, it is fair to say support for an Australian republic in Lalor would have been more than 60 per cent.
Sixty per cent represents a consensus in any democracy. If Gillard seeks a consensus, she has it in her own backyard.
Around Australia there is a sense a republic is inevitable in most people’s minds. Support hovers between about 45 and 55 per cent. Even monarchists such as the former prime minister John Howard take the view that once the octogenarian Queen dies or abdicates, the game is up for the British monarchy in Australia’s constitutional lexicon.
On the basis of numbers and the likelihood of the Queen not being around forever, Gillard should feel compelled to reignite community debate on a republic.
If one seeks tangible evidence of how muddle-headed the Prime Minister is on her desire for some magical community activism and consensus to emerge on a republic without any leadership from her and Canberra generally, she should look no further than one of her predecessors, Paul Keating.
When he became prime minister in 1991, support for an Australian republic was – at best – in the mid-30s percentage. If Keating had applied Gillard’s logic to the issue he would have left it alone. But he knew politics is about leading, about shaping debate and public opinion. That is what he did throughout his time in government as the great reformer of the Australian economy.
By the time Keating left office in 1996, support for a republic sat close to 60 per cent. A number of Liberal leaders were as happy to support a republic as Keating’s ALP colleagues were. Around the country there was discussion about what a republic would mean. Children in schools talked about it, as did community groups and individuals.
The constitutional convention held in 1998 fascinated many because it was the sort of national ”conversation” (another Gillard favourite) that was engaging and important to us as Australians.
For a prime minister who is keen on the nation “moving forward” it seems extraordinary she would want the country to continue to be regarded as an oddity in the region in which it sits by virtue of its doffing its cap to a foreign monarch.
The current Australian of the Year, Patrick McGorry, observed last month that Australia is ”an independent country that is mature enough to have its own head of state”. Therefore, he said, ”I don’t understand why politicians always say: ‘Well yes, it’s an important issue but we’re not ready for it yet; there are other important issues.’ ”
He is right. Whatever happened to the idea of fleshing out a vision of nationhood in an election campaign? It used to matter. It certainly mattered to the great post-war leaders Ben Chifley and Robert Menzies. It mattered to Gough Whitlam and to Keating, and even to Malcolm Fraser. Increasing Australia’s independence was a fundamental tenet of nationhood for each of them, and it certainly mattered in the context of winning elections.
The former Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone observed of Menzies on October 28, 1999, that “he was a man who looked to the future, who was prepared to break with the past … Against advice from the United Kingdom, he established Australia’s first overseas posts in Washington, in Tokyo.”
Menzies certainly talked big about Australia ”moving forward”, even if he did not use that term.
But today it is as though talking about a republic, or any form of constitutional or symbolic change, is now taboo in election campaigns. Gillard wanted to put it to bed before she hit the campaign trail, so it was neatly tucked away. Abbott won’t allow for a debate on a republic. You can bet his colleagues – most of them republicans, including his high-profile MPs Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb – will be similarly mute on the matter.
No doubt Gillard’s election advisers will tell her to leave the republic alone, because it is not that important in the context of the choice people will make on August 21. To think in such a fashion reflects an intellectual paucity. As McGorry says, national identity is always important.
So when Gillard asks the electorate to help her move Australia forward and her rival Tony Abbott promises to “stand up for Australia”, don’t both slogans sound meaningless if they merely refer to tax cuts, government spending and fears about a handful of boats arriving on our shores?
The failure of our political leaders to make the republic a topic du jour during this election campaign might be unwise for another reason. What if Queen Elizabeth were to die during the next parliamentary term? What if she announced a succession plan? What would Gillard or Abbott do? Pretend it wasn’t happening?
Greg Barns, a former chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, ran the ”yes” campaign for the 1999 republic referendum and is the co-author of An Australian Republic.
Despite declining numbers, politicians should still listen to voters’ worries over immigration as they are indicative of wider concerns
Concerns over immigration are often bound up in people’s worries over housing, inequality and employment options. Photograph: Martin Argles
New statistics show a continued decline in net immigration to the UK, which raises a question: why does the new government need to introduce a cap on immigrant numbers?
David Cameron has said repeatedly that he wants annual net immigration down to “tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands”. But the latest figures suggest that it was down to 142,000 in the year to September 2009 – an 11% decrease on the previous 12 months – and well down on the numbers in mid-2000s when it was persistently above 200,000. The economic crisis, natural cycles of migration flow and tougher policies of the last government have already turned the tide – and at this rate we will see net immigration fall below 100,000 without the introduction of the much-trumpeted cap.
But, of course, a drop on this scale will not satisfy those who want to see a drastic reduction in immigration to the UK. Migration Watch and its parliamentary wing, the cross-party balanced migration group, have demanded that immigration should be reduced to the levels of the mid-1990s, which would mean a net level of around 40,000.
David Cameron and his immigration minister, Damian Green, have hinted, without being explicit, that this is their target, too. But while the 15% fall in applications for employment visas with the possibility of settlement (tiers one and two of the points-based system) helps to bring a drop below 100,000 closer, the lower figure is going to be very tough to achieve.
Indeed, a recent Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report showed that net immigration levels of 40,000 could only be brought about if there were major restrictions on the entry of highly skilled workers, foreign students and the family members of UK citizens and residents. Such restrictions could harm the economy, would be opposed by business interests and universities, and run into legal difficulties
Of course, the new coalition government is set on this course because it is convinced that this is what the public demands. But all this discussion about numbers and policy may prove to have a limited effect on the politics of immigration. The coalition may be about to learn a lesson that Labour ministers learned in recent years – that tougher policy and declining numbers don’t assuage people’s political concerns about immigration.
This is partly a problem of perceptions. Net immigration (the surplus of immigration over emigration) has become the focus of the Conservatives and others, but this measure means very little to ordinary people in their communities While net immigration was 142,000 in the latest period, emigration was over 360,000, so (gross) immigration was over 500,000. To translate this into something approximating the experiences of real people, think about 50 new migrants moving to a community and 36 leaving.
The net impact on local population is relatively small, but it represents a lot of coming and going and people will likely be aware (and perhaps worried) about the number of newcomers. People don’t meet “net immigrants”, they just meet immigrants. The government is most unlikely to limit emigration (and may even encourage it if it continues the previous government’s efforts to limit the rights of migrants to settle in the UK), so it may find that much-reduced net immigration does less than it expects to reduce public concern.
More worrying for the government is the fact that concerns about immigration are often (rightly or wrongly) bound up with people’s worries about housing, inequality and jobs. Unless these issues are resolved – something that looks difficult in the current economic and political times – immigration will continue to be a political hot potato.
On the opposition benches, Labour leadership candidates are also rightly worried about immigration – it is an issue where many traditional Labour voters felt let down by the last government. However, the current debate within Labour on immigration is based on a fundamental misapprehension: those who are arguing that Labour needs a tougher policy on immigration confuse symptoms of the party’s problems with their causes.
Phil Woolas was right to argue that Labour’s immigration policy in government was, by the end, pretty close to the mainstream consensus on the issue. The fact that immigration is now declining rapidly in response to changing economic conditions shows that the system is working as it should. But he was wrong to suggest that the answer was simply to communicate that policy better.
The real issue for Labour is not that its immigration policy was wrong, or even that it communicated it badly, but that it has become a top-down party, which does not spend enough time in communities engaging with real people. A tougher immigration policy or a more-slick communications strategy will not solve Labour’s more fundamental political problems. Leadership contenders need to remember that immigration is a symptom of Labour’s problems, not a cause.
Government ministers and Labour leadership candidates need to spend less time listening to anti-immigration groups and more time listening to voters, which means spending real time with them, not just five minutes on a doorstep. If they did this, they would certainly find concern about immigration, but they would also find a good deal of respect for migrants, recognition that many businesses and public services rely on migrant workers and that fears about immigration are often part of a wider set of concerns about the way that the economy, the workplace and local communities are changing.
Like I have been saying for years, these people are just humans, like you and I. Their fart stinks like yours and mine.
It would seem that someone within the ranks passed wind whilst on the balcony – much to the amusement of all. Notice the Queen’s face in the first two photos, then look at her final expression in picture three.
How guilty does the Duke of Edinburgh look?
Daile Pepper
Ben Elton has been forced to apologise for his royal rant onGood News Week that enraged Brits this week.
The comedian and writer’s opinions on the monarchy, British sporting prowess and more disgusted the British, where newspapers ran outraged stories about his comments on the comedy show.
Elton is moving back to Fremantle from his base in London – and it seems the British public can’t wait to see the back of him.
Now his spokesman has said the comments were taken out of context and Elton simply made the comments against the monarchy when asked to play a word association game.
“He was making a joke about Australian republicanism, pointing out on a comedy show that the Queen and her family were far more reflective of the modern rainbow population they represented than any other,” the spokesman said.
Displaying his vitriolic wit and sarcasm on the comedy show, Elton made a series of comments regarding the UK, calling the Queen “a sad little old lady”, Prince Philip a “mad old bigot”, joking about sex with Margaret Thatcher and saying Prince Charles was just a “disillusioned ex-hippy”.
He said London had scored the 2012 Olympics in order to give Britons some chance at sporting success and because the rest of the world felt sorry for the British when it came to athletic prowess, and launched a royal rant against the Queen calling her “a sad little old lady who lives in state sponsored accommodation”.
On sex with Thatcher he said: “She sort of annoyed me because she would always want to smoke afterwards and I hated that because that was so dirty”.
Elton, born in Sussex, England, has divided his time between Fremantle and London for years. The writer and comedian has dual British and Australian citizenship and is married to Fremantle-based jazz saxophonist Sophie Gare.
Today the British press published stories outraged by the opinions the comedic writer displayed on the show on Monday night, with many readers also expressing their disgust.
“The Aussies are welcome to this loud mouthed self opinionated man,” wrote Col P of Ware, England on the Daily Mail website.
“Elton has left the building (er U.K) – and don’t come back – never liked him anyway, talentless, unfunny etc” wrote SOS.
“Good riddens (sic) to this new POM with his Sheila down-under . . . they’ve got real nasty reptiles there Ben!” commented P. Owen from Llandudno, UK.
“With an attitude like his North Korea would have been a more appropriate move. My sincere sympathies to the Australian readers,” wrote Phil from Canada.
Elton’s latest book, Meltdown, is a humorous look at the global financial crisis.
Elton and Gare are expected to move back to Fremantle next month so they can spend more time with the Australian half of their family.
Daile Pepper
Ben Elton has been forced to apologise for his royal rant onGood News Week that enraged Brits this week.
The comedian and writer’s opinions on the monarchy, British sporting prowess and more disgusted the British, where newspapers ran outraged stories about his comments on the comedy show.
Elton is moving back to Fremantle from his base in London – and it seems the British public can’t wait to see the back of him.
Now his spokesman has said the comments were taken out of context and Elton simply made the comments against the monarchy when asked to play a word association game.
“He was making a joke about Australian republicanism, pointing out on a comedy show that the Queen and her family were far more reflective of the modern rainbow population they represented than any other,” the spokesman said.
Displaying his vitriolic wit and sarcasm on the comedy show, Elton made a series of comments regarding the UK, calling the Queen “a sad little old lady”, Prince Philip a “mad old bigot”, joking about sex with Margaret Thatcher and saying Prince Charles was just a “disillusioned ex-hippy”.
He said London had scored the 2012 Olympics in order to give Britons some chance at sporting success and because the rest of the world felt sorry for the British when it came to athletic prowess, and launched a royal rant against the Queen calling her “a sad little old lady who lives in state sponsored accommodation”.
On sex with Thatcher he said: “She sort of annoyed me because she would always want to smoke afterwards and I hated that because that was so dirty”.
Elton, born in Sussex, England, has divided his time between Fremantle and London for years. The writer and comedian has dual British and Australian citizenship and is married to Fremantle-based jazz saxophonist Sophie Gare.
Today the British press published stories outraged by the opinions the comedic writer displayed on the show on Monday night, with many readers also expressing their disgust.
“The Aussies are welcome to this loud mouthed self opinionated man,” wrote Col P of Ware, England on the Daily Mail website.
“Elton has left the building (er U.K) – and don’t come back – never liked him anyway, talentless, unfunny etc” wrote SOS.
“Good riddens (sic) to this new POM with his Sheila down-under . . . they’ve got real nasty reptiles there Ben!” commented P. Owen from Llandudno, UK.
“With an attitude like his North Korea would have been a more appropriate move. My sincere sympathies to the Australian readers,” wrote Phil from Canada.
Elton’s latest book, Meltdown, is a humorous look at the global financial crisis.
Elton and Gare are expected to move back to Fremantle next month so they can spend more time with the Australian half of their family.
A decade after its defeat at the polls, the prospect of an Australian republic remains very much alive. The referendum loss on November 6, 1999, left many Australians dissatisfied. They had been denied a vote on their preferred model, and the proposal put to them had problems. For others, the arguments in favour of change have remained as strong as ever.
Things started to go wrong at the 1998 convention on the republic convened by John Howard, the prime minister. Only half of the delegates were elected by the people – the other half being MPs or government appointees.
In general the government appointees supported either the current monarchical system or minimal change. This undermined support at the convention for the direct election of a president. The appointed delegates skewed the result towards a more conservative outcome, with the model put at the subsequent referendum providing for the selection of a president by a two-thirds majority of Federal Parliament.
That the composition of the convention, rather than the merits of the models, proved decisive left prominent direct election republicans bitter and disillusioned. Some split from republican ranks to oppose the referendum in league with the monarchists. Together they gave life to the powerful ”no” argument that Australians should reject a ”politicians’ republic”.
It was always going to be a battle to win a majority ”yes” vote at a referendum, given Howard’s opposition. No referendum has ever succeeded in Australia without bipartisan support, let alone without the support of the prime minister.
These were not the only problems. Even the parliamentary appointment model put to the people by the Howard government had defects. The most significant was a mechanism by which the president could be dismissed unilaterally and without reason by the prime minister. Parliament would have been required to approve the dismissal, but could not overturn the decision, nor reinstate the president.
Opinion polls since 1999 have shown continuing strong support for a republic. Many continue to press for change to our constitution because it is at odds with our political and legal independence. They also rail against a system under which Australia’s head of state is the hereditary monarch of a foreign nation, chosen under a 1701 English statute that ranks men over women and rules Catholics ineligible. Sexism and religious discrimination are unacceptable tests for any position in modern Australia.
The Rudd Government came to office with a commitment to again put the issue of a republic to the people. This time things need to be different. There should be an initial popular vote on whether to move to a republic and, if yes, another on what type. Any referendum following these plebiscites should be on the model that people most prefer. Australians should not be asked to vote on a proposal that has been imposed upon them and that they regard as second best.
If the polls are right and the debate does not shift people’s views, this may result in a referendum on a republic in which our head of state is directly elected. I hold no fears about such a model, provided it is properly drafted.
The key would be to ensure that the powers of the new head of state are written down so the office cannot rival that of the prime minister. The failure of the current constitution to define the powers of Australia’s monarch and her representative, the governor general, represents a major fault in the system. In 1975 it meant Sir John Kerr could use powers that had not been known to exist to sack the Whitlam government.
Australians should have the chance to vote at a second referendum on the type of republic they most prefer. The next republic debate should not be driven by false fears. Instead, it should be about what sort of nation we aspire to live in, and how this can be reflected in the office of our head of state.
George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor of law at the University of NSW. He is a member of the national committee of the Australian Republican Movement.
After 10 years in the wilderness, the republican movement is looking for a way out of the woods. David Marr reports.
On the day of her death, flags will be lowered around the globe to mark the passing of the most famous woman in the world. Obituaries will be published by the acre. Books will rattle down the assembly line appraising her long and apparently blameless reign. Though sad times, they will also be thrilling. The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of her heir – Charles III or William V – will be the most exciting thing to happen to the monarchy in half a century.
Yet republicans have pencilled this time in their diaries to start the next big push to get rid of the Crown. It’s not an obvious winning strategy. They are not proposing to have the constitutional machinery in place to allow a seamless transition from the Queen of Australia to a president. Instead, amid the archaic excitements of a coronation watched by billions, Australia is expected to muster the enthusiasm for conventions, a few rounds of plebiscites and hand-to-hand brawling with monarchists to stand, at last, on its own constitutional feet.
Since the defeat of the referendum 10 years ago next week, republicans have been living in a state of postponement. The political establishment has never been more republican, yet never more wedded to delay. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who seems never to have given a major speech on the republic, sidelined the 2020 summit’s overwhelming call to cut ties with the Crown and won’t even put a date on when he might turn his Government’s attention to the “inevitable” change; perhaps in his next term.
The old republican Malcolm Turnbull has done more than anyone to lodge in the public imagination the notion that we should let time do its work even if it takes another 20 years. “The actual end of the Queen’s reign will be such a watershed, an end of an era in every respect, that it will mean that many people will say that it is time to reconsider the status of the monarchy in Australia. So I stick to my view that after the end of her reign is the right time to reconsider the issue.”
His successor at the helm of the Australian Republican Movement, retired Major-General Mike Keating, is a more impatient man. “It’s just crazy to link a discussion and a possible vote on our national identity and our national future with some event – that is, her death or abdication – over which we have no control in a foreign country. It’s crazy to philosophically make that link. We may as well wait until the Dalai Lama attends Parramatta Eels footy club. It’s just about the same relevance.
“A lot of people think this will happen on a Tuesday and we’ll wake up on Wednesday and be a republic. Well, that isn’t the case.” He estimates that, at best, it would be three years from her death before we became a republic. “Perversely, if Charles and Camilla take over, the old Aussie ethos will say: he’s in there now and maybe he won’t be such a big dolt now that he’s the monarch; it’s only a fair thing to give the man a go …”
The 2005 engagement of the Prince of Wales – condemned so memorably by the Anglican Dean of Sydney Phillip Jensen as a “public adulterer” – provided the biggest spike in membership for the ARM since the referendum. Keating is coy about membership now. He talks of a “pretty solid base” of a few thousand. Like the republic movement itself, ARM is flatlining.
A decade’s polling provides no evidence that Australians are passionate republicans. To say the nation is split overstates the drama of the contest. The republic was, perversely, never more popular than in the weeks immediately after the failed referendum of 1999. But support soon fell from that high of about 57 per cent to bump along as it has for the past few years with 50 to 52 per cent for change, 30 to 40 per cent against and the rest of us bored, indifferent or undecided.
Time is not necessarily working in the republic’s favour. Figures revealed in May by UMR Research show that support for dumping the Crown rises with wealth and education as support usually does with liberal causes. The city is keener than the bush; men are more eager than women. But the republic is not a great cause of the young. It is a middle-age thing. The UMR figures suggest if you weren’t around in 1975, you don’t quite see the point.
For the convener of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, David Flint, the overthrow of the Whitlam government was a feather in the cap for the Crown. He also enthusiastically endorses the 1932 vice-regal sacking of the NSW premier, Jack Lang – although it saddens him that risk of another such crisis means no member of the royal family can ever inhabit Yarralumla. “They would need a guarantee and that is impossible to give.”
An hour spent with this man shooting the breeze about monarchy is never wasted. Professor Flint regrets the fall of the Nepalese house; chides America for the “serious error” of not restoring King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan; would rather like to see the Habsburgs (”They weren’t evil people”) back in business; and is sure a Bourbon restoration would benefit France. “They’ve never been able to get a constitution that works in moments of stress. It collapses. It’s a peculiar mix. It’s doomed to failure.”
Are monarchs different from you and me, I asked Flint over coffee at the Wentworth Sofitel. “No. Except that they are trained. Constitutional monarchs in a good system are trained from their early years to take the position.” Anybody can be trained. “If, for example, the Queen had adopted a child, and that had been accepted, I can’t see why that adopted person couldn’t fulfil the function.” They’re not inherently more caring or intelligent? “Reasonable intelligence is required. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to be a monarch. Indeed, it may be undesirable.”
That the Canberra A-team is no longer protecting the monarchy means, on the one hand, republicans can’t blame John Howard for their troubles any more. But, on the other, the monarchists have lost significant parliamentary firepower. The leading monarchists left in Canberra are Tony Abbott and senators Nick Minchin, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Cory Bernardi and George Brandis.
Here’s something strange: Brandis to one side, they are all global-warming sceptics. Flint is one, too. In Australia, devotion to the Crown and blaming sunspots go hand in hand. This puts them seriously out of sync with the Mountbatten-Windsors who are as green as royal families get. In Brazil in March, the Prince of Wales declared global warming the “greatest and most critical challenge” facing the world.
Commemorations of the 10th anniversary of the referendum next week are muted. John Howard will dance a little jig on the grave of the republic by addressing monarchists at Sydney’s Tattersalls Club on Thursday. His subject: A Crowned Republic. The following day, a number of republican groups including the ARM will attempt to present a joint, formal letter to Turnbull, Rudd and Bob Brown urging the party leaders “to get beyond party politics” and reinvigorate the republican cause.
“When push comes to shove, you can’t get this on the agenda unless politicians want it on the agenda,” says Mike Keating. ”If they can’t summon the political will to overcome what may be called our timidity, or our apathy or the cringe factor, nothing will happen. It isn’t going to happen inevitably. Therefore, we need a spark.”
A referendum cannot even begin without a bill passing Parliament. It cannot succeed unless, as Turnbull says, it faces “almost no opposition” from the nation’s political leaders, state and federal. But the republic Australians want is the one they are determined we don’t get.
This fundamental conundrum is the focus of the only real passion in an otherwise bloodless contest. Eighty per cent or more of us insist that if there is to be a republic, its president must be directly elected. The figure hasn’t budged for a decade. Direct election is the overwhelming choice of all Australians, including monarchists. Once the dust settles, electing the president would bring all sides together.
A decade down the track, the people and the politicians still find themselves at loggerheads. So here’s the question republicans are facing: why would politicians reinvigorate an almost comatose movement to deliver a result they don’t really want? Until one side gives ground here, dumping the monarchy looks a very distant prospect.
Meanwhile, Prince Edward, Earl of Essex, president of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Scheme, was in Sydney this week working for what his family calls the Firm. He turned up at St Mary’s Cathedral School in a couple of Audis and a Ford van, attended by presentable NSW cops in suits with wiggly wires sticking in their ears. By prior arrangement, he waved to the crew from Kyle and Jackie O’s breakfast radio show broadcasting live from the footpath.
“Hello, hello,” he says as he moves around the room doing what royals do: showing interest. “Very good. Yep. Great.” He has big teeth and a comb-over. When he points, cameras flash. Every joke wins a chuckle. One of the boys has the job of presenting Edward with a gift. With a Sydney accent he stands up straight and says, “Your royal highness …”
The teachers I talked to were all republicans, but the Prince’s presence had effortlessly generated excitement. “There is a romance about them,” says Flint with a faraway look in his eye. “They certainly have an impact. Australians like royalty. I often say to members of the ACM, ‘never stand between Australians and visiting royalty – even minor members of European royalty – because you will be knocked over in the rush’.”