A Bumper to Her Majesty

About twenty years ago I took a phone call from Tony Abbott, who at that time was CEO of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, a group that had been founded a few years previously by Michael Kirby and Lloyd Waddy. I had never met Tony, but we had a close mutual friend in the journalist Gary Scarrabelotti and I guess we felt we knew each other. Anyway, the reason for his call was to ask me to establish a branch of ACM in Tasmania. I agreed, assembled a committee in the days that followed, and got to work.

The next six years or so were fascinating in ways that I could never have foreseen. I was moved by the courtesy and chivalry of many of our opponents, but also disappointed and hurt by their occasional unfairness. One of the stalwarts of our committee was kindly and gentle Edward O’Farrell, Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot and private secretary to four Tasmanian governors. As the referendum approached, and our prospects looked grim, he used to cheer us up by telling us to “trust the people”. Events proved him right.

It was a time, it seems to me, when a kind of folie, an obsessive craziness, stalked the land. In saying that I do not mean to be hurtful to those who took a different view, many of whom were, as I said, chivalrous and generous opponents. But politicians particularly were caught up in the fervour, and we were treated to the extraordinary spectacle of men and women who could agree on nothing else uniting in their zeal for the Once and Future Republic that was supposed to herald a new dawn for Australian pride. In my own state of Tasmania I remember a full front-page spread in the Mercury featuring a photograph of almost all the state’s politicians standing shoulder to shoulder and urging us to vote Yes. No wonder we voted No. I think it was Amanda Vanstone (she may have been quoting someone else—the thought was common enough) urging us to vote Yes, rather than “break a nation’s heart” by voting No. For politicians of every ilk these were heady times. I’ve often wondered why.

Apart from politicians the other group that was head over heels in love with the Republic was the rich and the well-to-do. The Yes vote polled best in high-income electorates, while working-class suburbs showed scant interest, which is one of the reasons, I think, why Labor governments since that time have shown little appetite for revisiting the issue.

Twenty years on I hazard a guess that politicians and the rich have this in common, that they object very strongly to being answerable to anyone else. Every politician aspires to lead, and every leader prefers to exercise as much authority as possible, without the obligation to report to someone else. And rich people expect to be leaders in their communities, and hope that their children can follow in their footsteps—and beyond: the presidency is an attractive and reasonable goal for those who feel that the world is their oyster!
There is great irony in the fact that the Republic push failed for these very same reasons: the people wanted to elect their own president, but politicians wouldn’t countenance it.

I mentioned the strange mixture of courtesy and unfairness that I observed among our opponents. A single illustration will suffice to demonstrate it. Guy Barnett invited me to take part in a debate at a lunchtime meeting of the Liberal Lawyers group in Hobart. The “debate” took this form: somebody (it might have been Barnett himself, I can’t now recall) presented the case for the Republic, next I was called to argue the opposite case, then a third speaker summed up by concluding the case for the Republic. People were kind, sure, but unable to conceive that anybody could not think as they did. We were oddities. I encountered this kind of thing many times.

So here we are two decades down the track enjoying a kind of truce. Nobody repeats the old mantra “It’s inevitable” any more (we’re all back to believing that death and taxes alone qualify for that special status), nor do we hear people asserting, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” (although it was “our” slogan I’m sick of hearing it). The Queen is popular, remarkably so given the dire events since the annus horribilis. Australians are reasonably content to accept the governor-general as a sort of head of state and de facto president within the overarching and none-too-obtrusive monarchical firmament. But something’s missing.

When I was a kid, formal events often began with the Loyal Toast. Everybody drank the Queen’s health, quickly and briskly, before moving on to other toasts and other entertainments. Nowadays that’s getting harder to do. If you propose the Queen’s health (and I’ve essayed it on a number of occasions) there are always those who refuse to stand, or who cry out complainingly. I think this is rude, and it also ignores the incontrovertible fact that Australia currently has a Queen, whether we like it or not, and will continue to until or unless we change the Constitution. So mostly we take the easy way out and have no toast at all, and in neglecting that something important is lost, some reminder of the things we have in common, the shared culture and inheritance. I was once a guest at a lunch for the Colombian ambassador at Government House in Hobart. The Governor toasted “the President and People of the Republic of Colombia”; the ambassador responded by inviting us to drink to “the Queen and People of the Commonwealth of Australia”. I thought that was just right, and a model to follow. It recognised the realities: Australia has a Queen, and commonwealth is the English translation of a Latin phrase, res publica. A crowned republic we are, and so we were conceived to be.

So let’s drink a bumper to Her Majesty, while we have her, and to the people of the Commonwealth as well. For my part, if the people one day decide to have a republic, I promise not to head for the hills and take up arms as a rebel royalist. I shall accept the decision of the people and toast the President of Australia, even if it’s Eddie Maguire. No, especially if it’s Eddie Maguire.