'Oi Oi Oi, Aussie Aussie Aussie!' This is a chant heard all around the world wherever Australians have gathered. Even money says that these chanters, who would probably not be averse to a new Australian flag featuring the boxing kangaroo, perhaps with the chant stenciled underneath , would be sympathetic to the idea of an Australian republic - after being told for so long that this is what they want. For make no mistake, the push for a republic is coming from above rather than below - there never being a grass roots movement desiring a republic. It has been more an exercise in public education, rather like anti-littering campaigns, than a spontaneous outburst of an urgent need for an independence of snowflake-like purity.
If such a need existed, perhaps some thought may have been spared for a few other niggling impediments to such a Utopian independence, such as: international banking, multinational corporations, binding treaties signed with the United Nations, the influence of giants like China and the US, the International Monetary fund, the World Bank, and that's not even to mention the shadowy but real powers behind the throne with names such as the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the soon to be announced World Government - names meaning nothing to most Australians.
But 'Oi Oi Oi, Aussie Aussie Aussie!' chant the flag-wavers, screaming themselves hoarse and wearing war-paint and funny coloured wigs at international sporting fixtures. 'My country right or wrong. It's simple; let's keep it that way. Don't bore me with intricate details'. This of course is the 'patriotism', the social pressure valve, so beloved and encouraged by the elite, in stark contrast to the nationalism loathed and feared by the same coterie. Mister Rudd himself is a patriot of the castrated kind. Why else would would the political pygmy currently enjoying the perks of being Prime Minister be making so many references to 'the national interest' - count them - when the nation state, the interest of which so enthralls him, is being dissolved at the behest of his New World Order masters? National interest indeed! But then again the star of an ego such as this can only rise so far in the local solar system. Nothing less than an entire universe is needed to provide the appropriate dimensions.
If only it was that simple. If only all we had to do was free ourselves once and for all from the nasty, oppressive British who, let's face it, secretly pine for the days when their red coats were a precursor to the black of the German SS, and we would stand atop Olympus like gods unto our own selves.
Given that our illustrious leader currently has his hands full saving the planet, the issue of Australia becoming a republic has been left to quietly bubble on the back-burner, but as any cook worth his salt knows, from simmer to boiling takes very little time. And Rudd is a confessed, dyed-in-the-wool republican. Belying his supposed skills as a diplomat, Rudd confided to his British counterpart in 1998 that sooner or later Australia would be getting rid of the Queen - only several hours before meeting her for the first time. Sooner seems more likely than later. As reported by Telegraph.co.uk on April 4, 2008 '.. [Mister Rudd] declined to set a timetable but suggested it would occur while the Queen was on the throne.' Assuming the Queen shares her mother's longevity and that she will never be over enthused on passing the sepulcher to the son who, one assumes, is a perpetual spring of bitter disappointment, this opens a decidedly wide time-frame.
One however suspects that this lack of precision is little more than a smoke-screen (let's not scare the horses just yet)and that the assault on the constitution will come much sooner. After all, just as the election of Hamas to a majority in the Palestinian parliament in 2006, even though the result of fair and democratic voting, this outcome like that of the 1999 referendum on whether Australia should become a republic was not what was wanted. We'll just have to keep trying until we get it right.
A more accurate indication of when we can expect republicans to begin mobilising was given by TimesOnline of April, 21 2008 in quoting Mister Rudd who said, 'Under plans outlined yesterday, a plebiscite on becoming a republic would be held, probably alongside the 2010 federal election. A “yes” vote would trigger a referendum to decide on the model, probably in 2013'. This would be a 'big step forward ... after the issue dominated a conference of the country's top minds'. The country's top minds! Well according to the organisers who stacked the so called 2020 Summit with party faithful and lick spittles.
Apparently these geniuses smell nothing the slightest bit putrid in, after finding the front door closed to them, opting for a slimy, back-door approach. Simply ask the mob if they want a republic - any kind of republic. This overcomes the obstacle that stymied them the first time around: a prospective republic fleshed out and given form. The general public was keen, if not zealous, but Gott im Himmel, they wanted to choose the president themselves. This was the iceberg that wouldn't get out of the way of the Titanic. This really wasn't what the politicians and their cronies wanted. They wanted to choose the president themselves because, as anybody with more than no political nous at all would know, a popularly elected president would set up a competing centre of political gravity. Nobody really likes competition - especially politicians locked in a perpetual struggle to hide the despot within.
Jumping at the chance to show their patriotism, it is likely the word 'YES' will roll on a wave of mass hysteria. To make it an even surer bet, because the way in which a plebecite (non binding) or referendum (binding) question is worded is crucial and can make all the difference, it may even be worded as 'do you want an Australian as head of state?' That would lift the roof off.
The next simple step would be to craft a question in the following referendum that would deliver the required result. How they would do this is a question still perculating in devious minds but having climbed this far up the ladder they can expected to be extremely cautious in avoiding the excruciating frustration of sliding back down a cold, slimy snake. As an insurance policy, an unrelenting barrage of propaganda will fill the space between the plebecite and the referendum. Crucially though, they are banking on the ignorance of the public; a poll conducted in recent years showed that a depressing forty five per cent of respondents didn't know that Australia had a constitution.
So what other advantages are there to being a republic which will come at the cost of millions of dollars in reprinted stationery alone - other than being able to kid ourselves that we would now be a truly independent nation? In a word, none. The constitution we have has proved to be work of genius, based as it is on the best of the British, American and Canadian constitutions with a nod to the Swiss model of amendment solely by referendum. In a world of instability, it has kept us as stable as an aircraft carrier in dry dock.
What are the disadvantages? Let us count the ways. On second thought we can't; they're unpredictable. As the Reverend Kameel Majdali puts it in Australia's Constitution, Crown and Future 'To tamper with a good constitution is like playing around with the foundations of a building; [if] disturbed, it can send cracks up the building walls ... or worse'.(http://www-personal.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/republic/kmajdali/majdali2.html) Oh look; here's Pandora's box. Let's see what's inside. Canada is a striking case in point. It is not outside the realms of possibility that some seemingly innocuous tinkering with its constitution may eventually lead to the disintegration of that country with Quebec leading the charge into the ruins.
By contrast, in spite of what the 'minimalist' crowd claim, the changes needed to convert Australia from a constitutional monarchy to a republic, will, instead of tinkering, result in whole sections being torn out. It will be nothing less than the most massive restructuring of the constitution in the history of Australian referenda.
These cold, hard fact have to be obscured from Australian eyes with the smoke and mirrors of obfuscation, diversion and distraction. In this, the Royal family become an easy target, as indeed it is for republicans in the UK. Obviously this particular family has had its problems but contrary to republican white-noise, the current royal family is NOT the monarchy or the Crown. The meaning of the Crown has evolved from being synonymous to the monarch. Again quoting Majdali, 'the constitutional emphasis is on the principle of the Crown, not the actual person who wears it.' And according to Walter Bagehot, whose English Constitution (1867)remains an evergreen, 'the Crown is an embodiment of people and state'. Moreover, 'the Crown is duty- bound to represent everybody, (italics mine) What a contrast this is to the duties of politicians and their parties to represent only like-minded sections of their constituencies.
The human faces are deliberately confused with the institution. British royal families, like others, have experienced their fair share of cretins, imbeciles and lunatics, a member of the latter category being seated on the throne (when not 'confined to bed') when Australia was claimed for Britain. However, just as Nixon, Clinton and George W have failed to put so much as a dent in the institution of the American presidency, the monarchical institution has not only survived but flourished.
Now here's the dirty little secret of why this revolution from above is being instigated: in a constitutional monarchy there is a power above the politicians, which, preferring to be supreme, they do not relish. To be sure, this 'reserve power' is something of a mystery. Like a frog lying dormant just below the surface of the desert waiting for a rainstorm that may never come, it sleeps peacefully. Some say that because the Queen has been remiss in not using these powers as the hereditary protector of the people in, for example, not standing against membership of the EU or mass third world immigration, these powers have become nullified by convention. But we simply do not know this. What we do know is that the Queen, has, if not real power, then de facto power. (Even the late Queen Mother, because of her immense popularity shared in this power) This could be demonstrated at any time if the Queen chose to vigorously oppose Parliament on any major issue, thereby creating a British politician's worse nightmare. Even though this is extremely unlikely, who is able to predict the character of a future monarch?
But enough said about the British royal family. We can rely on republicans to keep the spotlight relentlessly trained here, even though Australia once and for all ended forever any possible influence of the Queen or the British government or courts with the Australia Act of 1986 which ceased the possibility of any Australian court appealing to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Interestingly, if any further evidence is needed of Australia's complete independence from Britain, if the UK were to suddenly become a republic, Australia would be placed in the curious position of being a constitutional monarchy bereft of a monarch.
Our real concern here is with the Australian head of state. Isn't that the Queen? No. According to Sir David Smith who was secretary to no less than five governors general, Australia has two heads of state: the Queen is the symbolic head of state; the governor general is the constitutional head of state. Constitutional trumps symbolic in Politics 101 anywhere. Where did that rug just go out from under the feet of those droning on about wanting an Australian as head of state?
As the Australian representative of the Crown, remembering that the Crown in Australia, as in England, is the embodiment of the state and people, he or she, being above politics, acts as a kind of umpire in constitutional/political tussles. Whereas the reserve powers of Britain's head of state may have become a little dusty through lack of use, the reserve powers of the governor general were dramatically demonstrated in the constitutional crisis of 1975.
Ironically, an Australian president as proposed by the republicans would have identical powers to the governor general (who is deemed not to be an Australian head of state). The one stark and all important difference though would be that a president could not be apolitical, above the sordidness of politics. This would be the deadly joker in the pack.
There is one other dirty little, not so secret secret about the push for a republic. A quick look at some ALP election material will reveal it: 'Labor believes the monarchy no longer reflects either the fundamental democratic principles that underpin the Australian nation or its diversity.' (italics mine) Fundamental democratic principles! Like the fundamental democratic principles that saw the flooding of Australia with third world immigrants and the institutionalisation of multiculturalism against the will of the overwhelming majority of Australians. And a republic will be in the interests of beatified diversity - all those cranky ethnic groups who must be shown special treatment and to hell with the still seventy to seventy five per cent of real Australians of British stock who may be interested in retaining links with their history and heritage rather than see them dropped down the memory hole. This is exactly where republicanism and multiculturalism link arms.
Hard core multiculturalists are correct in ascertaining that Australia's multiculturalism is largely fictional; monoculturalism is still a monster whose heart needs a stake driven through it. This cannot be achieved while there are still vestiges of the institutions dear to those who used to be called Australians, but in the spirit of our brave new world are now called Anglo-Australians. True multiculturalism will not be achieved until all these symbols of a special claim have been eradicated and the descendents of the nation's creators have been relegated to the status of just another ethnic group. It apparently occurs not to the proponents of this vision that once this situation has been manufactured the country will be virtually unlivable - a jungle over-filled with murderously warring tribes.
The republicans are biding their time but are in a hurry. They say Australia's becoming a republic is inevitable but it still needs a little help in being brought to reality. These kind of contradictions are reminiscent of the now defunct old school Marxists who saw that the collapse of capitalism was inevitable but still needing a nudge to finish it off.
Death and taxes, as we are constantly reminded, are inevitable. So is the eventual dying of the sun. Not much else is. The Australian republic is certainly not. In constantly harping that it is, republicans are simply whistling in the dark - but not too loudly, just in case they awaken the Australian people.
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