This Time: Australia's Republican Past and Future

By Benjamin T. Jones and Peter FitzSimons

To propose an Australian should be our head of state doesn’t seem revolutionary. ‘Isn’t that already the case?” some may even ask. Flip a coin and you’ll have your answer.

In This Time, Benjamin T. Jones charts a path to an independent future. He reveals the fascinating early history of the Australian republican movement of the 1850s and its larger-than-life characters. He shows why we need a new model for a transformed, multicultural nation, and discusses the best way to choose an Australian head of state. With republicans leading every government around the nation, the time is ripe for change.

‘Powerful and compelling. This is the book we’ve been waiting for. Jones has written the most passionate and coherent argument for an Australian republic in decades.’ —Mark McKenna, author of An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark

‘This is an important Australian book about an important Australian campaign. Benjamin T. Jones tells the republican story as it should be told - as the story of Australia’s long journey towards its own best self.’ —Michael Cooney, national director of the Australian Republic Movement

‘This Time takes us to the high ground of political argument. His republic is one that institutionalises and promotes the values of democracy, meritocracy and community not just in our constitution but also in the many symbols we need to unite and inspire our citizens, including our flag, our coins and our national anthem.’ —Geoff Gallop, former premier of Western Australia

‘If you want to think, for the very first time, about why Australia needs an Australian Head of State, this is the book for you. Passionate, provocative and patriotic, this is the book we all need for the Republic we have to have.’ –Clare Wright, historian

‘Thought it would be good. Didn’t think it would be one of the best and most fascinating books I have read for years. Benjamin T. Jones for PM! Stuff that – Benjamin T. Jones FOR PRESIDENT!’ —Catherine Deveny

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Jan 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781743820186

Benjamin T. Jones

Benjamin T. Jones is a Research Fellow in the School of History, ANU. His other books include Republicanism and Responsible Government and Project Republic (as co-editor). He is a regular guest on ABC Radio National and contributor to The Conversation.

Book preview

PRAISE FOR THIS TIME

‘Benjamin T. Jones’ This Time takes us to the high ground of political argument. His republic is one that institutionalises and promotes the values of democracy, meritocracy and community not just in our constitution but also in the many symbols we need to unite and inspire our citizens, including our flag, our coins and our national anthem.’

—GEOFF GALLOP, former premier of Western Australia

‘If you want to think, for the very first time, about why Australia needs an Australian head of state, this is the book for you. Passionate, provocative and patriotic, this is the book we all need for the republic we have to have.’

—CLARE WRIGHT, historian

‘Powerful and compelling. This is the book we’ve been waiting for. Jones has written the most passionate and coherent argument for an Australian republic in decades.’

—MARK MCKENNA, historian

‘This is an important Australian book about an important Australian campaign. Benjamin T. Jones tells the republican story as it should be told – the story of Australia’s long journey towards its own best self.’

—MICHAEL COONEY, national director of the Australian Republican Movement

‘Thought it would be good. Didn’t think it would be one of the best and most fascinating books I have read for years. Benjamin T. Jones for PM! Stuff that, Benjamin T. Jones FOR PRESIDENT!’

—CATHERINE DEVENY

Published by Redback,

an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

Level 1, 221 Drummond Street

Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

[e-mail]

www.blackincbooks.com.au

Copyright © Benjamin T. Jones 2018

Benjamin T. Jones asserts his right to be known as the author of this work.

9781760640347 (paperback)

9781743820186 (ebook)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

Cover design by Peter Long

Typesetting by Marilyn de Castro

Portrait of John Dunmore Land on page 45 courtesy of State Library of Queensland.

Convict Uprising on page 24 courtesy of National Library of Australia.

Cartoon from Tribune courtesy of National Library of Australia.

Dedicated to the memory of John Hirst, historian, republican, friend

CONTENTS

Foreword by Peter FitzSimons

INTRODUCTION

Australia is Hamlet

THE PAST

CHAPTER 1

Radical Roots

CHAPTER 2

1850: The First Republican Campaign

CHAPTER 3

Old and New Australia

CHAPTER 4

How to Lose a Referendum: The Lesson of 1999

THE FUTURE

CHAPTER 5

Why Do We Want a Republic Anyway? (A Preamble for Australia)

CHAPTER 6

Muddled Monarchists

CHAPTER 7

Symbols Matter

CHAPTER 8

A Way Forward: The Hybrid Model

CONCLUSION

It’s Time … for Passion

Acknowledgements

Notes

FOREWORD

PETER FITZSIMONS

That great Australian author John O’Grady was bloody well right. We Australians really are a weird mob.

On the one hand, since the days of the convicts we have had an innate desire to beat the Poms at everything, starting with the Ashes, ’cos it proves we are better, hardier and stronger than they are.

On the other hand, we persist with a system of government whereby the only person good enough to be the Australian Head of State must come from a particular family of English aristocrats, living in a palace in London – even while reserving the primary place on our flag for their flag.

As if that isn’t odd enough, we pride ourselves on being the anti-snobs – good, gritty, down-to-earth folk whose primary value is egalitarianism, exulting in the notion that we are all equal beneath the Southern Cross. Yet we insist that if you are the first-born of that particular family of aristocrats, and wear a sparkly hat, you must be better than any one of us.

A weird mob, I say!

In the 1890s, our people were hardy enough and strong enough to overcome the worst depression and worst drought of the century, and to accomplish the colossal task of forming a Federation. In the 1940s, our troops were the first to stop the German Army in the Second World War, beating the brutes senseless at Tobruk, before returning to our own neck of the woods to be the first to stop the Japanese Army at Milne Bay, and then Kokoda. But right now, well into the twenty-first century, we still have a huge chunk of the population who insist that taking the garden shears to the last of our ties to England and making the snip is a task completely beyond us.

WEIRD.

And it goes on …

We fancy ourselves as go-it-alone types, believing that in our natural state we are independent, can-do characters. But 250 years after Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay, we still have not mustered the wherewithal to have our own free-standing government – of Australians, for Australians, overseen by an Australian.

We’ve produced people smart enough to invent the likes of penicillin and wi-fi, but we have other people –even highly regarded ones – who insist that we are a ‘crowned republic’, which to me sounds like a ‘red-meat vegetarian’ or a ‘religious atheist’ – completely nonsensical.

How to explain all this, these two central but opposed strands of our national character? The obsequious Uriah Heep, on the one hand, always seeking favour from our superiors, and Dennis Lillee on the other, steaming in from the Randwick end to knock their bloody blocks off as we roar for more?

Enter This Time, Benjamin T. Jones’ wonderful book in which he takes us back through the evolution of these twin identities. This Time traces the history of our earliest colonial republicans, the search for Australian identity in the twentieth century, and the saga of the 1999 referendum. Jones describes not just our republican past, but what our republican future might look like – complete with a proposed preamble and republican model. Whether you agree or disagree with the particulars, this book is a discussion-starter. What should our republic look like?

In the end, it will be for we, the people, to decide which part of our national character is the dominant one. If the Australian Republic Movement has anything to do with it – and we do! – we will soon have a referendum on that very subject. This book makes our case stronger.

As the decades have rolled on, our dependence on England has waned and the sense of our own, entirely separate identity has surged. We just need that one last push to get there, to be finally free-standing beneath the Southern Cross!

While reserving the right to do my own book on the evolution of the Australian identity, I warmly commend Dr Jones on his book and – unlike me when it comes to another Australian author – I hope it sells its socks off!

PETER FITZSIMONS AM

Chair, Australian Republican Movement

Neutral Bay

26 October 2017

INTRODUCTION

AUSTRALIA IS HAMLET

‘Australia was born in chains and is not yet fully free.’¹ With these words, the eminent historian John Hirst began his 1994 book, A Republican Manifesto. Some may cringe at the implications. Australia’s human history did not begin when shackled white feet took their first steps around Sydney Harbour in the late eighteenth century, but over fifty thousand years earlier, at the conclusion of an epic journey over land bridges and open seas from Africa. But what of freedom? Even if Australian history is measured only from British colonisation to the present day, surely the nation’s evolution from penal settlement to democratic society is complete? Not exactly.

Here’s a riddle: if a slave is offered freedom but rejects it, is that rejection an act of freedom? From a constitutional perspective, Australia is far from free. That great edifice of democracy, the federal parliament, operates (technically, at least) only at Her Majesty’s pleasure. This is the paradox of Australian freedom. It has already been won but sits rejected. In the heated republican debates of the 1990s, few noted the irony that the proposed constitutional changes would require royal assent. The point was largely moot, however, as the Queen agreed to sign off on the republican project if the referendum carried.

Accurate or not, Hirst’s words were powerful. They still are. They speak of a nation still looking for its ‘republican moment’, and still seeking new symbols, songs and laws, to replace an old identity that has, as Carlyle might phrase it, ‘altogether vanished like a dream’.

To propose that an Australian should be Australia’s head of state does not appear revolutionary or incendiary. If anything, it seems rather banal and obvious. ‘Isn’t that already the case?’ some may even ask. Flip an Australian coin and you’ll have your answer. Under Australia’s Westminster parliamentary democracy, the head of state is distinct from the head of government (the prime minister). The head of state is a symbolic but important role. She or he represents the country, embodies its national ideals, celebrates its triumphs and mourns its tragedies. In the twenty-first century, few would argue that a crowned head in a British palace really epitomises modern Australia. It would be downright peculiar to claim that members of the House of Windsor possess some magical element in their DNA that makes them superior to any Australian who might aspire to high office. If the country were founded today, to suggest that the head of state should be an Australian would be no more than common sense.

In the revolutionary northern winter of 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the famous pamphlet that did much to spark the American Revolution. In it Paine insisted that the distinction between royal and common was bunk, and that all men were equal. It would take over a century for the sentiment to be expanded to include women and people of colour, but his concept of the essential equality of all humanity was nevertheless etched into the American national psyche. It is simply common sense. In modern Australia, it is common sense also. And yet, unlike in the United States, here the heredity birthright of monarchy is still constitutionally valid. A nation that prides itself on democracy, meritocracy and community relies on undemocratic means to appoint a non-citizen to the highest civic office. A former prime minister, Paul Keating, once claimed that a European monarch presiding over an Australian democracy was an ‘accident of history’. Indeed, it is to history we must turn to understand how Australia’s national identity and symbols evolved, and why it is still waiting for its republican moment.

To be or not to be an independent Australian republic. From the dispossession of the traditional owners to the centenary of Federation, the question has not been whether but when Australia might become a full and free member of the family of nations. The arrival of Europeans in Australia was preceded by the United States’ Declaration of Independence in 1776 and succeeded by the French Revolution in 1789. These world-changing events augured well for an Australian Republic. It was seen by many colonial Australians, and many Australians today – incorrectly – as inevitable. In 1807 the Scottish jurist and politician Sir James Mackintosh visited Botany Bay and warned that this ‘unmixed community of ruffians’ would throw off the English yoke within fifty years and form a ‘republic of pirates, the most formidable that ever roamed the seas’.² Had he lived long enough to see it, the gunfire of Eureka may have (even temporarily) appeared to fulfil this prophecy. But the hard lesson of the United States had been learned by the bureaucrats of empire. Australian independence was still seen as inevitable, but with democratic concessions granted there was no need to press the issue.

The designation of inevitability can be a poisoned chalice. It at once legitimises the cause while robbing it of impetus. When colonial republicans made the case for an Australian republic in the mid-nineteenth century, the response was: ‘Let’s first secure responsible government.’ As the century came to a close, the republican voice rose again. ‘Not now,’ came the answer; ‘we should federate first.’ A century later – with the British Empire a distant memory, with a federal policy of multiculturalism having replaced White Australia, with all legal connection to the British parliament severed, with the chance to host the world at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and at the dawn of the ‘Asian century’ – an opportunity finally arose for the nation to become fully independent, with a constitution that would not require the assistance of a foreign monarch. Surely this was to be Australia’s republican moment. As fate would have it, the Australian men’s rugby team contested the final of the World Cup in the United Kingdom on the same day as the 1999 referendum. The Wallabies were victorious; the republicans were not. Australia stumbled at this final hurdle and was left to repent at its leisure.

Did the 1999 referendum fail because Australians truly see themselves as members of a glorious British race, just as many of their ancestors did in 1901? Do Australians really believe in the divine right of kings? That hereditary monarchy is a fair and reasonable way for a democracy to select a head of state? Some may, but most do not. Gripped by indecision, Australia has repeatedly erred on the side of caution. Perhaps this is not the right time. Perhaps this is not the right model. A republic is inevitable, after all, so there is no need to rush, no need for urgency, no need for passion.

Two crucial factors ensured that the 1999 referendum failed. The first was that, early in 1996, Australia’s first openly republican prime minister, Paul Keating, had been replaced by a devout monarchist, John Howard. Howard used all of his sizeable political influence and cunning to derail the movement. Referendums in Australia rarely pass (just eight out of forty-four), and never has one carried without strong support from the prime minister. The other crucial factor was simply that many republicans voted No. The official No team included not only monarchists but self-described ‘real republicans’, who wanted a direct-election model. In the end they decided that they would prefer to remain under the British monarchy indefinitely than have a minimal-change republican model.