The change in our head of state changes nothing about Australia’s constitution. And King Charles III presents a vexed dilemma for the Albanese government as it proceeds with the referendum to enshrine an Indigenous voice in the constitution, writes Mark Sawyer.
Once they had absorbed the shocking but not surprising news that Queen Elizabeth II had died, Australians waking on Friday to the ABC’s beautifully prepared coverage quickly became aware that a decision had been made for us a long way away. As we slept, we were bequeathed a new head of state. Just like that.
Charles Philip Arthur George, our new sovereign (not yet crowned) presents to many of us as a pretty unimpressive figure. We are now saddled with a monarch who gloated over the dismissal of a prime minister by his mother’s unelected representative. In 1976 Charles wrote to governor-general John Kerr expressing his support in the face of criticism from Australians outraged by Kerr’s sacking of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government.
The Queen is dead. Long live the King. Some of us might prefer what The Smiths sang in 1986: ‘’The Queen is dead – and it’s so lonely on a limb.’’ That could apply to the nation of Australia – and those of us who chafe under the continuation of the constitutional monarchy.
The Voice comes first
There is a much more urgent constitutional change than a republic demanding the attention of the Albanese government: the enshrinement in the Constitution of an Indigenous voice to parliament. Labor will need a second, even third, term to get the republic going again – and only if it passes the Voice first.
The Australian republic is already the ultimate slow burn. Labor may have harboured republican hopes in the 1970s, but Gough Whitlam’s government entrenched Elizabeth as Queen of Australia. Paul Keating made another push in the 1990s, but perhaps unwittingly set it up for failure. His successor John Howard put up the referendum in 1999, and a split in the ranks of republicans between minimalists and direct electionists killed it.
Many of the Australians who voted to reject the republic in 1999 did so because there was no option for direct election of the republican head of state. They assumed that voting no would eventually generate a model that would allow direct election of the president. It’s 23 years since then, and the political class still shows no appetite for direct election. Many of those diehards went to their graves under Queen Elizabeth II or will do so under King Charles III.
Imagine. Labor has shepherded one successful referendum in 23 attempts, and that was 76 years ago. Can the Albanese government, with a base support of a third of the population, push through the Voice and simultaneously bring on a republic? It cannot. The Voice, which is being sold to voters as an overdue improvement to the Constitution, not an overhaul, will be a tough task despite the general goodwill it has attracted.
And there remains a risk that if the Albanese government doesn’t get the Voice referendum over the line in its first term, demands will grow that it be folded in to a republic that repudiates all vestiges of the British colonial heritage and much of the Westminster structure of governing. Everything, even the existence of the states, would be on the table.
When Australians voted in 1999, monarchists described a republic as a second-order issue. Ironically, because of the commitment to the Voice referendum, the republic is again a second-order issue. Young Australians will grow into maturity as a monarchy.
Elizabeth, despite her protestations that the issue is solely up to Australians to decide, might be smiling.
The Crown lives on
The Crown must always win. That was the crucial quote from Elizabeth’s grandmother Queen Mary in Netflix’s The Crown (which will be binged like crazy this weekend). Coins featuring the head of King Charles are already being struck. Anthony Albanese is off to the funeral, with Governor-General David Hurley. It will be a welcome respite for the latter.
Albanese spoke with respect and affection but perhaps a little distance, emphasising the loss to the people of Britain. He misattributed to the Queen the quote that ‘’grief is the price we pay for love’’. Bill Clinton used that quote years ago.
Canada’s Justin Trudeau sounded more heartfelt, calling the Queen one of his favourite people in the world, but he met her when he was a child. Australia’s political class has certainly moved on from Robert Menzies, who famously made the Queen grimace when he said in 1963: ‘’I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die.’’
Having a lovely time
On Friday the ABC took us back to 1954, to the Queen’s first tour of Australia. She was here for two months. We were different. She was different. The Queen sounded like cut glass and said: ‘’I thank you awl, God bless you awl’’. Aussie men spoke out of the corner of their mouths to keep the flies out. And women went wild for the Queen. A couple of them among the throng at Sydney Cove in 1954 were immortalised in the ABC archives.
‘’I’m having a lovely time. I’ve been waiting for her for years and years,’’ one tells ABC reporter Keith Smith. When he asks her ‘’how long have you been waiting’’, she is lost for words and breaks out into giggles.
Smith captured another woman at a truly glorious moment. He remembered her as ‘’about 30 standing on a fruit box, with her mother and other relatives around her.’’
‘’What a lovely view, look at her, Val, isn’t she lovely, say, isn’t she nice!’’ gushed the lady on the fruit box.
The nation simply went gaga. Luckily, we are so sophisticated now, right? ‘’Wind plays tricks with Queen’s hat,’’ The Sydney Morning Herald reported with due solemnity. The first monarch to grace our shores went everywhere except the Northern Territory, country towns hung bunting and local dignitaries wore their tweedy, woollen best suits and floral frocks in the brutal heat.
Australia has changed all right. Those small towns have got shuttered shops. Their politicians are deplored as climate destroyers. In the Australia of 1954, a man named Turnbull represented Victoria’s arid far west in Federal Parliament, and sat in the same party room as the member for Wentworth. In 2022, the members for Wentworth and Warringah, and Kooyong and Curtin – Australia’s wealthiest people, in general – don’t share a party room with people from beyond the black stump, and may never again.
Elizabeth the feminist
A lot has been written and will be written about the late Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. But one aspect of her legacy could use airing. As Australia’s head of state for 70 years, she was the most prominent woman in Australian life and the only woman in our consciousness who wielded anything remotely resembling authority. Not a single woman was elected to the House of Representatives at the election of 1977, the year of Elizabeth’s silver jubilee. Nobody in local politics could touch her until the rise of Julia Gillard.
In fact, she was the most prominent woman on the world stage, challenged sporadically by Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton. Say what you like about the anachronism of monarchy, she was a 25-year-old woman thrust to the pinnacle of a patriarchal system. Say what you like about the privilege she enjoyed, she was constantly being reminded of her status, even as head of state, as a woman and therefore a second-class citizen (at least if we believe Netflix’s The Crown.) Millions of women of her generation, and not only in the English-speaking world, charted her milestones. Anne Frank put a magazine picture of Princess Elizabeth on the wall of her family’s hideout.
In her 1966 Christmas message, the Queen sounded a bit like a feminist:
This year I should like to speak especially to women. In many countries custom has decreed that women should play a minor part in public affairs.
It is difficult to realise that it was less than fifty years ago that women in Britain were first given the vote, but Parliament was first asked to grant this one hundred years ago.
Yet, in spite of these disabilities, it has been women who have breathed gentleness and care into the harsh progress of mankind.
The struggles against inhuman prejudice, against squalor, ignorance, and disease, have always owed a great deal to the determination and tenacity of women.
The devotion of nuns and nurses, the care of mothers and wives, the service of teachers, and the conviction of reformers are the real and enduring presents which women have always given.
In the modern world the opportunities for women to give something of value to the human family are greater than ever, because, through their own efforts, they are now beginning to play their full part in public life.
Attention to detail
In 1954, Elizabeth stood at Farm Cove in Sydney, where Captain Arthur Phillip landed in 1788, and celebrated it as the birthplace of the nation. Our consciousness has changed. The Queen saw Australia as a young nation. Now we boast of the oldest continuing occupation by a people.
The crowds got smaller and less voluble with every visit, but Elizabeth cemented the monarchy over the years. If it was not only showmanship, it was attention to detail. John Cain, Victorian premier 1982-90, met her during celebrations for 150 years of Victorian statehood in 1984. ‘’I knew your father,’’ she told him. That was John Cain senior, premier 1952-55. A young monarch might have had other things on her mind. Mind like a steel trap.
King Charles III is an underwhelming prospect for Australians. He is 73, but he could go 20 years. His mother would have ignored many a gentle hint (she was apparently a bit sniffy whenever a European queen would abdicate).
There will be another referendum on a republic, but when?
Mark Sawyer is a journalist with extensive experience in print and digital media in Sydney, Melbourne and rural Australia.