[BRIEF NOTE] On republicanism in Australia and Canada

[rfmcdonald]

Mart Regg Cohn, a deputy editor for the Toronto Star, blames the Australians for the likelihood that Canada will retain the British monarchy, more specifically on the failure of the 1999 referendum in that country on establishing a republic.

Two-thirds of Australians told pollsters they wanted to bid adieu to Her Majesty. They just couldn't agree on how to do it – and got bogged down in a bitter, self-defeating fight over what would replace the monarchy.

Too bad, because if Australia had seen the light, New Zealand would surely have followed. And Canada might one day have joined them.

But Australians blew it. And any Canadian republican movement would almost certainly implode, falling victim to the same loaded question:

How would we choose Canada's next head of state?

In Australia, mainstream republicans wisely opted to avoid any drastic constitutional surgery. Under their existing rules (and ours), the governor general is appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the prime minister; the republicans merely tweaked that tradition by proposing any future head of state be elected by a two-thirds vote of Parliament.

But dissident republicans – aided and abetted by the monarchists – cried foul, insisting that a future head of state be elected directly by the people, much like an American or French president. That has an obvious populist appeal, but would radically alter the constitutional balance of power – for once a president has a direct mandate from the people, he will never content himself with being a figurehead. And that's a recipe for gridlock.

Australia's monarchists seized on these internal divisions to split the anti-monarchist vote, shrewdly pressing the buttons of republican populists. Rather than defend Queen Elizabeth, or rebut the rhetoric that made Prince Charles the butt of popular jokes, the monarchists attacked the mainstream republicans as elitists who wanted to appoint "one of their own" political hacks as president.

"If you want to vote for the president ... Vote No to the Politicians' Republic," proclaimed the hardball advertisements that played on public antipathy toward MPs. "The president won't be one of us, but one of them – a politician."

Much like the defeat of the Charlottetown accord in Canada, the Australian referendum unravelled thanks to an unlikely coalition of "antis" – elitist monarchists and republican populists.

Although Australian republicanism seems to be marked by Catholic-Protestant divides, the Catholics originally of Irish descent supporting the republic and the Protestants retaining their loyalty to the Crown, and urban areas tending to favour republicanism in contrast to rural ones, those divisions in a fairly homogeneous Australian federation are nothing compared to Canada's own internal divides, with the language division alone complicated by geography and the very separate histories--and interpretations of those histories--of the different federal units. In Canada, I'll additionally note, the idea of wide-ranging constitutional reform--because you know that such a big chance would act as a trigger--is decidedly unpopular, as ambivalent as Québec might be towards the monarchy. Would powers be disiirbuted in the same way as before? and what might the provinces and parties try to grab? As important as Canadian national identity might be, would it be worth so much fuss for what would at first seem like little change, the exchange of the Governor-General for a President? Let alone other burning political issues of the day.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently came out with an editorial supporting an Australian republic, in the wake of a proposal by Australia's Green Party. Moderate, considered, to me it points the way to Australia's transition to a republic of one sort or another.

Australian republicanism is not an act of disloyalty to the monarch, though many clearly see it that way. The Queen and her successors will still be head of the Commonwealth, of which Australia is a member.

Nor should a referendum or plebiscite be a popularity context by proxy for her or others in the royal family. Whether Charles is an able head of state - as he may well be - is a matter for Britain, not Australia. For Australians, the question is - as it has always been - should an Australian be Australia's head of state? The answer, clearly, is yes.

It is time to end the present anomaly of a foreign head of state, and the enforced national immaturity it symbolises. It is time to start on the groundwork towards a republic. The Greens' proposal for a plebiscite on the issue at the next federal election deserves support.

But Canada? As attractive-sounding as "Republic of Canada" and "République du Canada" sound, the confusion and disarray evidenced in Australia's case a decade ago would only be magnified in the case of its North American Commonwealth counterpart. We might have to wait for the United Kingdom itself to junk the institution.