Republists

Anti-British sentiment fuels the Republican push.  This latest move is sure to fail because the majority of Australians like our Monarchy and our secure socio-political system.  However, popular opinion can be easily swayed.  An intense campaign by fanatical Republicans, “Republists”, could result in an irrevocable change to our lasting detriment.

Will there be a Cost-Benefit Analysis?  It is not mentioned with the expensive plebiscites and other costs, for no economic benefit and a major change that is supposedly just cosmetic.  In Canberra and throughout Australia everything printed will be renamed and then re-printed.

For the sake of ideological purity, the self-appointed intellectual leaders want to destroy something that gives a lot of people a lot of pleasure, far in excess of any alleged cost or harm.  Despite this issue bheing led by the Labor Party, most Labour voters support the Monarchy, as evidenced in the electorate call in the last referendum.  It is possibly those people with least of their own, and with the most unfortunate or miserable lives who derive the most pleasure from Royal News.  These are the people that the Labour Party purports to support, yet treats them with contempt on this issue.  Republicans always answer this point by claiming that there will be nothing to stop people reading about the British Royals, once they are reduced to just Monarchs of England, or even totally dethroned, but this is a dishonest response because the Queen and the Royal Family only have their celebrity status from being what they are.  There are thousands of pretenders to thrones that very few people know or care about.  You cannot, in this case, destroy your cake and eat it.  Republicans are mostly wowsers who care more for theory than for people.  

It is perhaps no coincidence that the Labor Party is resurrecting this stale issue right when the Constitutional question before everyone is the Recognition of Australia?s First Peoples in our Constitution, and ancillary matters.  Some of the people who are opposed to Recognition will use the Republic to derail their cause.  Others, by contrast might see more chance of success by coupling the two questions.  There are elements within Aboriginal Politics that oppose the Crown as the symbol of dispossession and want to see it banished.  “The Apology” came from a Prime Minister who did not have bipartisan support, and it is little wonder that after some decades it is now seen as a nice symbol, but with no lasting benefit.   Perhaps it would be more appropriate for an apology to come from Her Majesty, in the same way that Peace in Ireland was promoted by a Royal Visit and a few hand-shakes, something only the Queen could have done.    One might cynically argue that this issue is a perennial red herring to distract voters from Labor Party wrangling and from other matters, and perhaps its use as a political digression will ensure that it never succeeds, a roundabout way to protect our constitution.

There are no logical reasons to become a republic, just a passionate loathing of the medieval concept of totalitarian kingship that is totally out of date after centuries of development, fed by an equally passionate hatred for the British and a denial of the British origins of all our Socio-Political institutions.  There are a few sound reasons to retain our shared, British Crown.

Of all reasons, perhaps the most important is that it is the most egalitarian system of government, because we are all equally subjects of the Queen.  It is not a pattern for inequality, but the single, exception.  Also important is that we retain a constitutional system that we know works instead of changing to something simplistically expressed with unknown consequences.  Perhaps it is the prospect of endless, profitable legal disputes that have won so many of the legal profession to want a republic.   Least spoken of but very significant is the security consequences of change.  

We are not Sinophobes by being very wary of the Communist Government in Beijing.  Without care, Australia may end up like Tibet, where all the best jobs go to Han Chinese and the local people are second class citizens in their own country.  Anyone who wants Australia to shift its alliance from the Anglosphere to the Chinese will want us to change, because Australia’s security still relies on our Commonwealth connections, and they are not written in treaties.  Do we want to be fought over like the islands in the South China Sea?  

However, it would be better to bring on the question.  Let us get it out of the way for the next century.  We cannot go on with the endless sniping at our Constitution by Republicans.  We need to be united.  Our multi-cultural society and our vast distances mean we need a tried and tested socio-political system that can cope with diversity.