An early electoral test of republican issue will come in February’s ACT election, following this week’s thinly disguised threat to Liberal leader Kate Carnell by constitutional monarchists.
The major parties federally will be able to see whether the issue carries much weight with voters. And republicans may get some joy out of the risky target the monarchists have chosen.
The chair of ACT council of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Alan Fitzgerald, wrote to Ms Carnell saying the council “”has a membership now approaching 750 persons (double that of the Liberal Party) each of whom, together with their adult family members, will be entitled to vote in the coming ACT elections.”
“”Our supporters will take advantage of the Hare Clark electoral system to vote only for those candidates who support the existing Australian Constitution, system of government and national flag,” he wrote.
He asked several questions about Ms Carnell’s position so he could prepare a newsletter for the council’s supporters, and, of course, the media.
The council has put out a newsletter, and the views of several MLAs on the issue have been canvassed in the media. Broadly, Ms Carnell is the most republican of the ACT Liberal candidates and various sitting Liberal MLAs, most of whom are avowed monarchists. All the views have been couched with the usual try-not-to-offend-anyone qualifications that goes naturally with political discourse these days.
However, Ms Carnell has offended Mr Fitzgerald’s group enough to the extent that a campaign against her personally is likely. Indeed, she is likely to be a bigger target than the Labor candidates.
The idea is that the monarchists will suggest to their members that if they want to vote Liberal they should put the other six Liberal candidates in Monaro first and Carnell last.
The idea is similar to the right-to-life movement’s campaigns in the early 1980s. The monarchists like the right-to-life movement see Liberals who oppose them as an “”enemy within” and therefore much more dangerous than Labor opponents who were that way anyway.
The right-to-life movement ran a campaign against sitting pro-choice Liberal Barry Simon in a marginal Victorian seat in 1980. Simon lost.
It is a Leninist approach; Lenin regarded social democrats far more dangerous enemies to his communism than staunch capitalists.
Like Leninism it is a very dogmatic and didactic approach.
In response to Fitzgerald, Carnell wrote: “”The problem with setting a Constitution in stone forever is twofold. Not only do the use and meaning of words change over time, aspirations and attitudes change as a society grows and matures.”
Fitzgerald would be aware of changing political attitudes.
For example, in the late 1960s he himself successfully stood for the ACT Advisory Council as a “”True Whig” candidate. As we know, the Whig party had its origins in the 17th century as a party of opposition to King Charles II. (Incidentally, the Whigs, in time, became the Liberals). In 1970 Fitzgerald stood as an Australia Party candidate in the ACT by-election. That party was avowedly Australian nationalist and at least republican in sentiment.
In some respects Carnell has to deal with the same difficulty as her federal counterparts. There is more opposition to her more pro-republic view in the ranks of the party than in the community at large, but the members of the party have great power for their small numbers (though there are somewhat more members than Fitzgerald suggests).
At least Carnell does not have the further difficulty that John Hewson suffered: opposition within the parliamentary party that required appeasing if he was to retain his job. Other Federal Liberals in safe seats toying with Republicanism have to worry more about pre-selection than election.
Carnell at least is in the fortunate position of not having to worry about retaining the leadership, pre-section or re-election to the Assembly.
For that reason, the monarchists have picked a risky target _ one who can stand her ground.
The target is also a bad choice because Carnell is likely to easily top the Liberal poll in Molonglo. And further, a campaign by constitutional monarchists against Carnell deliciously illustrates the monarchists’ conundrum: if the Liberals go republican, they have nowhere else to go, hence the determination to keep all Liberals on the straight and narrow.
Hare-Clark offers them some mileage in the ACT because monarchist voters can go to other Liberals, but in single-member sets nationally, they will hardly vote Labor. Unlike the right-to-life campaign, there are no Labor monarchists like there are Labor pro-lifers.
None the less, a test of monarchist feeling would be to match the total first preferences of all the Liberal candidates other than Carnell and see if they come anywhere near the level of first preferences for the non-leader Liberals in the last election. If they do not, Bill Stefaniak’s law-and-order campaign notwithstanding, there will not have been much of a monarchist drift.