Leadership above politics sacrosanct.
By David Flint
King Charles III and Queen Camilla are in Australia just as a Sunday Telegraph poll predictably reveals that support for a republic has crashed to 33 percent.
Even before he landed, and graciously ignoring infantile insults about the cost of flights and staying in Government House, the King had to teach Australia’s republicans an elementary lesson about the constitutional monarchy. He explained, with great courtesy, that this is for his ministers and, in the final analysis, the Australian people.
The attachment of the Sovereign to this principle could be best illustrated by events in Fiji in 1987, when Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka organised a second coup and declared a republic. The late Queen Elizabeth II declared unequivocally that it was ‘sad to think the ending of Fijian allegiance to the Crown should have been brought about without the people of Fiji being given an opportunity to express their opinion on the proposal’.
It is still open to Major General and now Prime Minister Rabuka to offer to the Fijian people what the Australian people enjoyed in 1900 and affirmed in 1999, the right to determine how they shall be governed.
Let us hope our republicans at least now understand what they are trying to rip so carelessly from our constitutional system.
The republicans should also try to understand what few appreciate, that the King ensures, through his role in the constitution, that we enjoy what is unattainable in most of the world’s constitutions, that rare, indeed serene, quality of leadership above politics.
As constitutional monarch, he is a singular check and balance concerning the exercise of power under the letter of the constitution, viewed through the conventions which surround the throne, and remains a living example to his representatives, the viceroys. This subtle interplay ensures that the Westminster system is one of the great triumphs in civilised governance.
As to the King’s homecoming, the delightful term the Canadians use, this leads straight into the 25th anniversary of the republic referendum on 6 November 1999.
For all that time, despite the affirmation by Australians nationally, in every state, and in 72 per cent of electorates, a succession of politicians has been wasting funds and time advancing a republic that Australians had considered and wisely rejected.
And yet, these same politicians have never in those long 25 years had the courage to bring it all to a head with their threatened second referendum. This is no doubt because they know something that Malcolm Turnbull realised even well before the last referendum. He revealed this in that manifestly simple observation in his diary: ‘Nobody’s interested.’
He also admitted that Australia is already a republic. More precisely, we are a crowned republic with an Australian as head of state, at least according to the only law applicable here which defines a head of state, public international and not constitutional law.
Had Australia become a repubic, there would have been an avalanche of republicanism
David Flint
It may not be well realised that the Australian referendum represented a crucial moment within the Commonwealth of Nations. When I argued that the republicans had not ensured our membership of that great body was safe, Bob Hawke accused me of lying. That was until the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Anyaoku, confirmed that I was correct,
That aside, had the politicians’ republic not been defeated by the nationwide campaign devised by Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, this would have undoubtedly empowered various derivative movements in the other realms. They would have been more likely to have succeeded where an approving referendum was not necessary. Its absence explains how a republic was obtained in Barbados in 2021 despite the fact that an opinion poll revealed only 34 per cent support.
Probably the world’s best known Barbadian, cricketer Sir Gary Sobers, lamented this.
Although a referendum had been indicated to be part of the ‘reform’, it was abandoned by Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
Having seen what happened in another realm, St Vincent and the Grenadines, where a republic supported by the politicians was rejected in two referendums, the politicians were clearly determined that such an embarrassment not occur in Barbados.
However, before the republic was achieved, Ms Mottley curiously ensured her father be knighted to become Sir Elliott Motley KC, KCMG.
Her progressive credentials were soon recognised by being the first Barbadian featured on the cover of Time magazine as one of ‘The 100 Most Influential People of 2022’.
The Barbadian example follows the same experience as in Australia, where a significantly higher proportion of the political class, the media and other elites were republican than the general population.
Had Australia become what ACM dismissed accurately as a ‘politicians’ republic’ in 1999, there would have been an avalanche of republicanism across the realms.
In the meantime, the time wasted in Australia on constitutional adventurism, such as the politicians’ republic, and again recently, has allowed the centre to try to do what was never intended, to turn this vast continent into what it was not and could never be designed to be, a unitary state.
Australia is in a serious, indeed dangerous, state of constitutional dysfunction, a dysfunction which is impoverishing the country, seriously damaging education and leaving us defenceless.
As reported here, in terms of trade this century, Australia must be the world’s luckiest country. But in terms of political rulers Australians could be the unluckiest people.
Our federation does not divide power and taxes between the centre and the states as intended; the centre receives over twice the share that any comparable federation in the world receives.
With politics dominated by career politicians, Canberra runs amok constantly in state matters. Massive waste and confusion dominate while the centre neglects its duties, beginning with defence.
The ridiculous, 25-year attempt to impose a politicians’ republic is an example of the madness that has taken over too many in the ruling class, a madness that is seriously damaging, if not destroying, this country.
Published in the Spectator, October 2024