Dreary republicans, not monarchists, are the reason we’re not a republic today

Wednesday, 25th November 2009

Australians are snobs when it comes to the republic, and they are conservative about constitutional change — but there’s nothing wrong with that, says John Heard

Ten years ago next month, Australian republicans will mark their signal defeat. On 6 November 1999, 54.87 per cent of voters rejected the ‘politicians’ republic’. Around the world, and at home, it was viewed as an emphatic, paradoxical rebuff. How could a nation of decidedly and historically republican sentiment vote No, and so overwhelmingly?

Since before Federation, an Australian republic has seemed inevitable. As John Warhurst and Malcolm Mackerras noted in their book Constitutional Politics: The Republic Referendum and the Future, as early as 1891, during the Constitutional Conventions, George Dibbs (a former Premier of New South Wales) called the republic of Australia ‘the inevitable destiny of the people of this great country’. Almost exactly a century later, that sentiment, described by Dibbs as a ‘republican tinge’, had grown into a full blush. Labor made the republic a permanent part of the ALP platform.

At the time, Bob Hawke looked like the natural Prime Minister of Australia. By May 1993, however, Paul Keating was establishing a Republic Advisory Committee, which apparently did not even bother to consult with monarchists, and which delivered its report — recommending a republic — later that same year. While Labor stumbled, Australia looked set to go republican in time for the centenary of Federation in 2001. Not even the election of John Howard, a principled and outspoken constitutional monarchist, would interrupt the push. By 1996, the ALP was vanquished, but the republic was still surging.

Yet, on referendum night, just three years later, not a single state crossed the line. Only Victoria came close.

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