The republican Senator Lee Rhiannon, who recently affirmed her allegiance to the Crown, has been in the news recently because of her position on the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.
Senator Rhiannon whose position on the issue today is consistent with that of today’s republican movement, remains a living link with our second republican movement. This was to turn Australia into a republic on the model of that which prevailed in Eastern Europe, named variously a People's Republic, a Democratic Republic or a Soviet Republic.
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There is a section on the second movement on the ACM site which can be seen here
Incidentally, the first movement was to create a racist republic on the lines of the southern states of the United States in the nineteenth century or the Boer republics in South Africa.
We have a section on this movement on the ACM site which can be seen here.
As one leading Republican historian has observed, there is no pantheon of Republican heroes in Australia. Pity the republican movement today – they are so ashamed of their predecessor movements they do not mention them
…. Sen Rhiannon provokes controversy….
In a letter in The Australian Douglas Kirsner, of Caulfield North in Victoria writes:
“What are Greens senator Lee Rhiannon's credentials for her claim that she regularly speaks out against human rights abuses (Letters, 2/9)?
“Did she boycott any communist countries when they were committing some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century?
"When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, did Rhiannon boycott the Soviets? No, she joined the Socialist Party of Australia, a pro-Soviet grouping that split from the Communist Party of Australia after the CPA abhorred the Soviet actions.
“Did she boycott the Soviet Union when it was administering psychiatric abuse such as electro-shocks to its dissidents? No, she led a delegation to Moscow. She even made an appearance in Soviet Woman.“Not even in the dying days of the Soviet dictatorship did she protest about human rights abuses.
“Rhiannon leads a movement that singles out Israel for boycott. Yet Rhiannon never boycotted or distanced herself from the communist regime she supported for decades”.