USUALLY you get Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Or Beethoven’s Fur Elise. But not when you phone the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.
There, the on-hold tune is Greensleeves, widely reputed, but perhaps wrongly, to have been composed by Henry VIII. Now there’s a man who knew something about constitutional change Henry VIII.
But he is also a prime illustration of a point the constitutional monarchists are trying to make: the republican-monarchy debate is not about the personalities of the Royal family, but about the what they call the integrity of the Australian Constitution, the apex of which is the Australian Crown.
Tony Abbott, the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy’s first full-time employee, says, “”There have been good kings and bad kings.”
He argues that the Australian system is even better than the British constitutional monarchy because[JU]break “”we have been able to put the monarch at one remove”.
“”The Governor-General, who for all practical purposes is head of state, has in every instance been an extremely distinguished person, whereas sometimes there have been kings who are good or not so good,” he says.
Even so, a misbehaving Royal could do nothing to prejudice the British Government, and even less so to the Australian Government.
Australians for Constitutional Monarchy work out of small offices in Sydney, tripping over each other for telephones and word-processing equipment.
Abbott is its only full-time employee. Volunteers answer the phone, answer queries and organise conferences.
Abbott points out an inconsistency here. The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, has announced a republican advisory committee and that there will be a referendum, though the timing is not certain.
“”If you look at the legislation on electoral funding and referendum funding, both sides have to be funded by the Government,” he Abbott says.
“”In this debate only the republican side is getting any money. There does appear to be a basic unfairness.” Nonetheless, Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy is a proudly voluntary organisation, he says.
The organisation works from cramped offices in Phillip Street in Sydney, in lawyers’ heartland “”all the energy and squalor of a busy and exciting office”.
It has about 2500 members who are not required to pay a subscription, but only to sign the charter and donate what they can.
Foundation member Lloyd Waddy, QC, says membership has doubled in the past month “”and we’ve only just started.” His aim? “”About 5.3 million would see the thing through,” he says with a laugh.
Abbott says they come from all walks of life: the well-connected and humble; the rich and the poor and from different ethnic backgrounds.
The founder charter signatories include the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian Neville Bonner, NSW Member of the Legislative Council Helen Sham-Ho, educationist Margaret Valadian, Vahoi Naufahu and solicitor Angelo Hatsatouris. The organisation has a fair swag of QCs and judges, too, including a former chairman of the Federal Law Reform Commission and now President of the NSW Court of Appeal, Justice Michael Kirby, former Australian Chief Justice Sir Harry Gibbs, Lloyd Waddy, QC, and Barry O’Keefe, QC.
The charter’s central point is to defend the place of the Crown in the Constitution. Beyond that the charter attempts to make as many people as possible feel as comfortable as possible.
“”We hold different political views,” it says. “”We come from different ethnic origins. We speak for different generations. We have had different experiences in life…. Some of us support the system of constitutional monarchy in a parliamentary democracy, as such…the least imperfect form of government yet devised. Some of us, whilst willing to contemplate the possibility of a different form of government at some future time, oppose the attempt to raise such a debate at this time…there are other issues facing Australia now which have greater urgency: reconciliation with Aboriginal Australians, unemployment…. Some of us believe that Australia is already a form of republic under the Crown…. Some of us simply admire Her Majesty the Queen.”
The charter asserts that monarchists are no less patriotic or Australian than republicans. It says Australia long ago achieved full independence. The system of government works well and should not be changed.
Until recently, constitutional monarchists in Australia have not had to bother much with defending the Crown, on two counts. Until the past couple of years, opinion polls generally indicated the majority were happy with the present system., and only since Paul Keating became Prime Minister in December 1991 has the republican cause had any concerted push from the Federal Government.
Changes in those two arenas have stirred the constitutional monarchists into forming their group which is getting larger and more organised.
Abbott, a former Rhodes scholar, is executive director of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy. He was a journalist on The Australian and the Bulletin and worked for the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, for three years.
Abbott is worried the republicans have had too much of the coverage and objects to what he calls their slurs on the patriotism of constitutional monarchists.
“”I’m the sort of bloke who gets a lump in my throat on Anzac Day,” he says. “”Australia is a fantastic country and I don’t like anything that appears to do violence to what we are.” He rejects the republicans identity argument.
“”The Currency lads and lasses nearly 200 years ago drew a distinction between themselves and those born in England,” he says. “”The Anzacs knew who they were. I knew who I was as a Rhodes scholar in England. And the Poms knew where I came from.”[EP] Abbott uses the Australian “”mate” frequently in conversation. At one stage he was referring to a British journalist and said, “”He spells his name is a funny Pommy way.”
The argument, he says, is not about ties with Britain or the Royal family, but about the Australian Constitution.
“”If there’s a referendum, people won’t be voting on the Royal family or whether Charlie is a good bloke, but whether we should give the pollies in Canberra more power,” he says. “”When people see that, it will be overwhelmingly defeated.”
The debate would be about “”our own Australian-made Constitution and part of that is the Australian Crown and the Queen of Australia”.
“”There is no relation juridically between the Queen of Australia and the Queen of Great Britain,” he says. Dame Leonie Kramer has taken up the point. She calls it “”the persistent confusion between our political system and the lives and behaviour of members of the Royal family”.
“”The astounding hypocrisy of censoriousness on this matter in an age of extreme permissiveness is itself an interesting cultural phenomenon,” she says, referring to the “sensational, intrusive and uncharitable reporting of the Royal family which appeals to the worst in people”.