For King or Country?
For King or Country?
The government and media were focused on the strange protocols of a hereditary interregnum, highlighting the need to have a conversation about who we are as Australians
The world had time to prepare for the death of Queen Elizabeth II, in her ninety sixth year, not long removed from her husband Philip. She did what many elderly people do at such an age; she passed on, hopefully ready to go as most ninety-six-year-olds would think, happy and content after a long and eventful life. And as instantaneous and automatic as you could possibly imagine, we all stumbled into the reign of King Charles III.
The channels switched suddenly within a few hours. All the graphics and postures and black clad journalists, pundits and ‘Royal Experts’ stretched from Womans Day to the flagships of the national broadcaster. A comms team in the government whipped up a typeset and font for the occasion. Protocol demanded a 15 day period of mourning, weird requirements of the much misunderstood ‘Black Rod’, and an ad-hoc public holiday jammed in to allow for a national day of grief. Meanwhile, the Governer General was ever present to ensure the conventional degustation was ingested in the correct order by an Australian population reeling from compounding real time crises.
They also took 15 days off in Canberra in the shortest of sitting years, amid the hardest of living circumstances developing in a generation. While the tabloid press made a silken bed of condolence with all hands on deck, the ABC joined them and scrambled twenty-seven staff to try and contribute unnecessary observations to an overpowered BBC broadcast. Is it reasonable to be sending Raf Epstien or Virginia Trioli off on a taxpayer-funded business class junket, to stand off to the side of the well-rehearsed pageantry of the British monarchy?
The entire political and media class rolled around weeping for our head of state, before quickly drying their eyes to blindly entertain a hereditary replacement, in unison, on every medium available. Our Governor General transcended through his recent transgressions and proclaimed the new regent on the steps of parliament, draped in the untouchable firmament of the divine right of kings. Next to him, Anthony Albanese declared undying allegiance. On the same day, in the other dominions, Antigua and Barbuda respectfully flagged the day of Charles III’s coronation as the trigger for their own republican journey, and many other former colonies stirred into lively and necessary discussion.
Outside Australia, the same conversation was happening from #IrishTwitter out to the distant colonies. Even the Welsh had things to say. The difference in opinion was respected in some corners and hotly debated in others. Back here, the different forms of government made sure we put our porch lights on, held a minutes silence in every possible space, hung weird hatchments, and publicly arrested those who spoke against the absolute strangeness of it all, or banned black female rugby players who dared speak as Aboriginals against the grain of the blind acceptance of this divisive situation.
Major party politicians offered public buildings with existing Aboriginal names to be renamed for her Majesty, and another public square - to go along with all the other buildings, the chunks of Antarctica, the islands in Canberra, the statues, the fountains, and the coins that go into them. Uncle Jack Charles and Archie Roach miss out this time. Now are we to keep calm and carry on, to await the commissioned artifacts, buildings, sculptures and train stations to to be named after the new King?
The little individual pieces of convention that hold the Union together, like so much papier-mache, look starkly juxtaposed in the butterfly effects of the distant protocols in and around our Asia-Pacific nation. The Great Hall in Canberra filled up, Hurley called her “My Queen”, and they all sang “God Save the King” with a choir clad in black and a grotto of wattle flower, portrait on the empty stage.
The total observance of archaic and unnecessary protocol around this interregnum by the media and political class has robbed people the space to define another form of grievance - - the grievance of our history, the Indigenous people across the country that need to express their sorrow and pain at the scars that they carry as a result of colonial actions meted out in the name of the Crown, and the need for the nation to join them in interpreting that grief to understand who we truly are as a country together.
When asked what place Indigenous views should have in the discussion, and what message he had for First Nations People who may be in a different frame of mind about the death of the Queen, Albanese reassured us that we should recognise the “range of views amongst indigenous Australians” that the Queen was a “source of much mourning” and "we should not underestimate the importance of sorry business and respect". Stan Grant wrote an evocative piece speaking to ‘sorry business’ with a different interpretation, noting how something like this, observing the “ritual mourning”, that there is a real “chasm between us”.
We should also not underestimate the importance of a leader opening up the pathway to a national discussion, nor underestimate the damage of a lopsided silence that doubles down into a distant King of a tiny, troubled island, proclaimed by a controversial hereditary right. How can sorry business be acknowledged when no one is reporting on it?
To allow a transfer of power to a foreign hereditary king without any challenge is a wasted opportunity for the nation to have a respectful discussion on an important future. The new government, lacking imagination, forges ahead into the uninspiring realm of overly embracing the process, taking the knee for a new King without question, hiding uninspiring ideas behind rusty convention, whilst many of the other former colonies are choosing to respectfully bow instead and indicate their exit plans. And rightfully so.
Elizabeth II was a great monarch, as the disjointed concept of monarchy goes. For all the pitfalls and avenues for exploitation in the ambiguous relationship between the Crown, the parliament and the masses, she did a sterling job. Charles III is not like his mother, famously meddling in affairs of the state on several occasions and holding strong opinions on issues that range from climate change to matters of statecraft and military operations. We are a nation far away, with a profoundly different set of national interests. We must be allowed to have as robust a conversation as our Commonwealth neighbours are having.
After Brexit and Boris Johnson, in the midst of recessions, energy crises and a plummeting pound, with Charles and Liz Truss meeting weekly to have a nice cup of tea, the sun is truly setting on the British Empire. Do we want to pretend otherwise, with a new King working with one of the most contrarian British political figures in the country as PM, and members of his Union having serious debates about their own independence, or do we want to imagine how we can be a country without him? It is the duty of a government that claims to believe in a republic to begin articulating how that could look to the Australian people, rather than hiding a new ministerial portfolio in a dusty drawer somewhere on the condition we vote for them in again in the future.
I think you will find that Charles will not pursue his pet political hobbies. And this restraint is part of the tradition of the English crown as it has developed over centuries. Obviously it is possible for Australia to become a republic, and this will have to happen if such a change is endorsed by a referendum. But I also say there is no doubt that since 1788, and despite the harms done to aboriginal people, the Australian national project has been a success. Refugees across the whole world have Australia in the top handful of countries in which they would like to settle. This is no accident, and there is no doubt that the political structure brought to this land in the late 18th century is an important cause of Australia's abiding welfare.
Australia's affection for, and subservience to, Britain's Royal Family defy sober reasoning. The idea that Australia should belatedly achieve maturity and full independence had widespread support until John Howard (with eager support from many of his media pals) cunningly manipulated the referendum on the republic. Somehow, the republican movement was left divided and weakened, and a large chunk of Australians were persuaded they they wanted and needed to retain those tired old ties to the British Crown.
One of many ways in which the Lying Rodent left Australia a diminished nation, compared to how it was when he first took office.