Early colonial Australia changed when England started shipping Scottish, Irish and English seditionists to Australia . The Governor's of NSW and the local population had an hysterical and irrational fear of the political prisoners, especially the Irish. The late 1700s had seen the republican uprisings in the United State, France and Ireland, the former two being successful, while the latter was suppressed by the British military. The spilling of republican blood extended to Australia; the first martyr being, Mr Boston's pig.

The Scottish Martyrs

Jacobinism was a rising movement in England, which was seen as threat to the power of the English government. Unable to guarantee convictions of Jacobins in England, Scottish Jacobins were instead chosen to be the example trial, as juries more corrupt in Scotland. Thomas Muir was the first Scottish Martyr trailed. His crime was distributing Thomas Paine's Rights of Man . Muir was sent to Australia for fourteen years. Thomas Palmer helped publish and distribute a pamphlet titled, Address to the People . The pamphlet's main subject was parliamentary reform. Palmer got seven years.

Flush with the success of the convictions of the Muir and Palmer in Scotland, Lord Lauderdale pursued Scottish Jacobins active in England with the intention of having them tried for sedition in the stacked Scottish courts. A National Convention of British Reformers met in 1793; from there Maurice Margot, William Skirving and Joseph Gerrald were all arrested. Margot and Skirving received fourteen years, while Gerrald posted bail. Gerrald was not free for long, he was sent to Australia in 1794.

John Boston

John Boston was an Englishmen; an avowed Republican and Jacobin, who had come out to Australia to keep his good friend Thomas Palmer company. Boston carried a gem with him on the voyage; the colony's only encyclopaedia. Later Boston and Palmer used the book for economic advantage, teaching themselves how to brew beer, make soap and eventually ship building.

When Boston arrived in Australia he had desires of establishing himself as a merchant. This brought him into direct conflict with John MacArthur's Rum Corps, the military unit who controlled the police, judicial system and economy. Boston was further tainted by it having been alleged that on the voyage to Australia that he toasted a glass to the King's damnation.

Boston's livestock, including a pig, was penned near the livestock of Captain Joseph Foveaux of the Rum Corps. One of Boston's best pigs was found in Foveaux's pens and was shot by Marines. At the court hearing for the incident, Lieutenant McKeller denounced Boston as a radical republican who publicly drank to the murder of the King. The pig was also denounced as having no respect for boundaries. Mark McKenna writes;

McKeller also explained that the pig was shot 'not in malice or wantonness' but because it had destroyed the property of Captain Foveaux. 'Fences or fastenings were no security against the levelling practices of this animal, practices which I conclude are carefully and industriously inculcated in every part of the house of its master'.

McKenna identifies the use of the word leveller as indicating that McKeller saw the pig as republican. The term leveller in the English language of the day carried strong republican overtones and meaning. McKenna continues;

In the eyes of Lieutenant McKeller, the insidious pestilence of republicanism was even capable of converting farm animals into an active campaign of subversion. Loyalty to the crown was the framework within which all political activity took place in New South Wales. Any person (or pig) seen to be stepping outside those boundaries was branded as treasonous. The result was the shooting of Australia's first republican martyr - John Boston's pig.

Not much changed in the colonies, even with self-government. Compare the hysteria of the early colony to the "loyalty" meetings Henry Parkes held ninety years later.

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Mark McKenna has been the most prominent Australian Republican historian in the dead tree media during the last fifteen years. This book, Australian Republicanism: A Reader was edited by Mark and Wayne Hudson. It can be probably viewed as a primary source complement to his book, The Captive Republic .

I picked up my copy from the National Museum. The book is not new, having been published in 2003, but has a such a wealth of historical material in it, that it will not age, nor become out-dated quickly. The editors divide the book up into;

• A Deep Undercurrent of Republicanism that will Someday Burst Forth and Astonish the World (1788-1856)
• A Commonwealth for the British Race, a Commonwealth Under the Crown (1856-1901)
• Still Captive After All These Years: Imagining The Republic (1901-2001)

The first section contains wondrous sources such as Deniehy's Bunyip Aristocracy speech, Harpur's Tree of Liberty, Dunmore-Lang's Deceleration of Independence for Victoria, plus numerous other articles from newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and People's Advocate. I am a fan of Harpurian Republicanism, and this section contains much of the exuberance and hope of republicans who saw New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland making the transition from colony to Republic.

The Commonwealth Debate

The second section is dominated by the conflict between the loyalists and the republicans. Ultimately the loyalists enforced their views on Australia through the constitution in 1901 and effectively made the monarchy and Australian nationalism entwined. Often this was achieved through brutish and illiberal means .

Nationalism was often mixed with racial purity, especially to do with the Briton race. This period contains the nationalist writing of Henry Lawson, George Black and William Lane. For instance an article in the highly pro-republican and pro-nationalist Bulletin was titled, "A Republic Without The Chinese".

But this was not unique to the republicans, the monarchists and loyalists were just as heavily of the Briton view - one of the reasons the Australian Constitution does not have a Bill of Rights is so the government wasn't restricted constitutionally against discriminating against the Chinese.

This section also covers the republicanism in Queensland during the second half of the 1800s. In Charters Towers the firebrand Frederick Vosper ran the local labor newspaper. Queensland being provincial and independent minded even back then, had republicans in all walks of life, from workers, to writers, to judges. McKenna notes that Vosper's writing often made Eureka look tame;

The men [shearers strike of 1881] - they must either have BREAD or BLOOD - WOOL OR HEADS - and if the government be not careful they will have BOTH ... The government ought to know that in no country is revolution so easy as here; and once let the masses be roused, then good-bye to capitalistic domination and the sham royalty that is inflicted upon us now, and hurrah for the Republic.

To be fair to Vosper, Horace Tozer enacted laws that allowed strike organisers to be shot on sight . Despite Tozer making the government of Queensland and the Squattocracy an easy target, Vosper had a revolutionaries zeal, he claimed to have been involved in two revolutions in Bolivia before coming to Australia. Despite this this, the journal he edited was distributed widely in Brisbane, and was met with approval by other Queensland republicans.

Inevitability

The third section contains the republicanism after the establishment of federation. It all became inevitable - an inevitability that is yet to be achieved. There is some source material from the first half of the century, and a good chunk from the 1999 referendum.

Great collection of source material. The only thing I would ask for is Mark McKenna to either set up his own website/blog or join an existing one (such as SSR) and start writing on Republican history for the internet as well as dead-tree media. His voice is needed on the internet.

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The Menzies government sought to define Australia in terms of a pre-WWII identity. It looked to Britain as the Empire, race and foundation of Australian nationalism. By the time Menzies retired and younger politicians such as Harold Holt and John Gorton took over, it was obvious that was no longer a description which could tie the polity together. It was in this environment that Donald Horne and Geoffrey Hutton wrote their arguments for an Australian Republic. Their call was fairly limited, and argued very little in change. It was mainly remove the Queen and Britain as the centre of Australian politics and nationalism. The Australian Republican Movement has adopted this same philosophy, but Republicanism is built on universal values of liberty and governance. The Dutton/Horne view of a Republic is too small for the Australian people to accept.

Single Issue Republicanism

Mark McKenna writes of the Republicanism of the 1960s;

... when Geoffrey Dutton and Donald Horne raised the question of a republic in 1963-64, the parameters of the modern republican debate were already evident. What Dutton and Horne said in the early 1960s did not differ greatly from what republicans would say in the 1990s.

That style of republicanism rested on;

• Australian nationality was not British, and Australia required an Australian head of state.
• The Queen was an obstacle to an Australian identity and perpetuated " a culture of political, economic and cultural dependence ".
• Australian and British foreign policy and economic interests were diverging. A British head of state weakened Australia's identity in these areas in Asia.

Mark McKenna also added the final point that republicans of the 60s and 90s agreed that; " The Australian Republic was inevitable ". Those points mimic exactly the message that the Australian Republican Movement took to the people prior to 1999 referendum. This is a pretty small view of Republicanism, and ignores much of the intellectual ground work done in Australia by Republicans such as Dunmore-Lang, Deniehy, Harpur, Vosper etc. It also ignores much of the development of Republicanism by international figures such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The ARM view of Republicanism suffers a poverty.

Universalism

Republicanism, both Australian and international, carries universal values. The most obvious of these is the absence of political and social privilege under government. A monarchy has no place in a Republic as it entrenches constitutionally the privilege of political and social position. The position of King or Queen is achieved without merit, or periodic popular vote. The main claim to a monarch's position is accident of birth.

With the entrenchment of political and social privilege often comes entitlement, impunity and soon after, tyranny. When Dan Deniehy fought against the bunyip aristocracy and squattocracy he was fighting for universalism, egalitarianism and merit. When Charles Harpur wrote his preface to the Tree of Liberty he was arguing for the universalism of individual virtue and how an unmeritorious political system filled with privilege can pollute that virtue.

Universalism is an Australian Republican value, for after all, Republicans are Democrats too. This principle has often guided the discussions on South Sea Republic. For instance; Avocadia's Bill of Rights does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, or more importantly; citizenship. Individuals under the jurisdiction of a government have universal rights that are a result of their being an individual. There is no privilege attached to being a member of a majority or minority. This is an intrinsic value .

Suffrage is another universal Republican value. I have edited the Electoral Act in a previous article to ensure Universal Enfranchisement . We are both an immigrant nation and diasporic people at the same time. Migrants are constantly coming to Australia and remaining, while at the same time Australians are leaving our shores in ever-increasing numbers to work and live overseas. Neither group should be denied suffrage due to geographic circumstances of birth, or present location.

Other Australian Republicans have argued for a more universal approach; Wayne Hudson argued for Planetary Republicanism while Peter Botsman wrote in the Great Constitutional Swindle that;

... it is important for Australia to make the leap towards a broader concept of citizenship. The global citizen must have roaming rights. He or she must be entitled to certain indivisible rights wherever they may be in the world: a vote of equal value, the right to stand for political office and to advocate a cause or a positions, the right to liberty, free speech, freedom of association and the right to basic social, economic and cultural living standards. If multiculturalism has a positive endpoint it is this one.

I disagree with this final rights to, they are better expressed in liberty, rather than a right to. For instance, you have the liberty to pursue your own social, economic and cultural interests. Rather than guaranteeing a living standard. But other than this, Botsman approaches the issues of the universality of an individual under any government in typical Australian Republican terms.

Head of State

Dunmore-Lang and numerous other Republicans railed against the divine-appointment with a monarch as Head of State. The Australian Head of State poses an issue because of the poor separation of powers in the Australian parliamentary system. Separation of powers is a strong Republican value which saw it expressed in utilitarian form by James Madison in the American Republic.

The Westminster style of embedding the Executive in the Legislature is hack, or a patch, to route around the Executive power of the monarch while maintaining their ceremonial power. It is entirely unnecessary in the Australian system to maintain the monarch, but some fluidity between the constitutional monarchy and republic will need to remain. The Australian Parliamentary system has also proved fairly stable. It would be unwise to throw it all away in a revolutionary moment, far more prudent to adopt an evolutionary approach.

Australians want to elect the Governor-General, but an individual appointed to that position by direct election might clash with the Prime Minister over who has ultimate Executive authority. Currently the Prime Minister advises the Governor-General, but this can lead to what software developers call a race condition. This was seen in 1975 when the Governor-General gazumped the Prime Minister and democratically elected government.

Universalism demands a Bill of Rights which limits government's intrusion into individual liberties is present in a Republican Constitution. Any Parliamentary based Republican system also requires a firm separation of Executive responsibilities between the Governor-General and the Prime Minister. As a result, the Governor-General should be constitutionally required to defend individuals from laws which conflict with the Bill of Rights. The Governor-General becomes a Rights Referee .

This would stop the Governor-General and Prime Minister stepping on each other's Executive toes. It would give the Australian people the reason to vote for the Governor-general based on who will ensure their rights are protected (the GG however can only veto bills which directly contradict the Bill of Rights). The Governor-General becomes an elected representation of Republican and Universal virtue. This is a very positive role model and structure for liberty.

Opposing-isms

The universal values of Republicanism bring it into direct conflict with conservatism and nationalism. Both of which seek to use the legislature to entrench privilege for majorities and minorities that fly in the face of liberty.

One of the harder things to understand in Australian history is the almost pathological fear many had of republicanism. During the constitutional conventions of 1891 in Sydney, there was actually a debate over whether the word 'Commonwealth' was too Republican.

From April 1st, 1891 ;

Clause 1. This act may be cited as "The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia."

Mr. MUNRO: I think that a very important question arises here as to the title of the federated colonies. I do not think that the committee succeeded in securing a happy title. It is a title with which we are not familiar, and a title which historically raises rather serious questions-questions that suggests a good deal of controversy in the minds of many people. Without taking up the time of the Committee, I beg to move:

That the word "commonwealth" be omitted with a view to insert in lieu thereof the words federated states."

I think that that will answer our purpose very much better, and will be more easily understood.

Sir JOHN DOWNER: Say "Federation"!

Mr. MUNRO: "Federated States" will properly convey our meaning.

Sir JOHN DOWNER: So will "Federation"!

Mr. MUNRO: If you merely say "Federation," that does not convey our meaning. Our meaning is that we are to be federated states, and for that reason I move this amendment.

After they debated about working after dinner, Deakin chimed in with his support for Commonwealth and that it was in no way republican;

Mr. DEAKIN: The word proposed has, like every other word that can be suggested, some disadvantages; but in the opinion of a majority of the committee, it possessed more advantages than any other name that was suggested. In the first instance, it is a distinctly English word, and a well known word. It is a title which has a pacific signification which, from the tone that has been taken in regard to the defence proposals in the measure, is an advantage. It indicates that the state is formed for a pacific purpose-for the common good of its people, for their common-weal. It is a name which has not yet been applied. It is not open to the objections which may be urged to such combinations as "federal states" or "united states," titles which have already been employed in one part of the world or another. It is an old word, but it is a new name as applied to a state. There is no existing state which is known as a commonwealth, although Great Britain is frequently referred to both by orators and political writers as a commonwealth; and the word has been already applied on occasions when speaking of Australia as a whole. It is, therefore, a word which I fancy we are justified in appropriating, and I trust that the Convention will not lightly change a word which was adopted after very full consideration by a majority of the committee, and that even those who may have some sentiment against the name will take full time to consider the objections that can be urged to any other title.

Sir JOHN DOWNER: It is quite true that a majority of the committee arrived at the conclusion that it would be expedient to make this new departure, and adopted a term which has not been usual in countries under a sovereignty.

Mr. DEAKIN: Oh, yes, it is usual in countries under sovereignty!

Sir JOHN DOWNER: Commonwealth is a very nice word indeed, but it is very important to recollect, as the hon. member, Sir Henry Parkes, pointed out at a somewhat early stage of the proceedings, that we have to consider, not only the technical meaning of the law, but also the popular understanding of the law, and the popular understanding of the word "commonwealth" is certainly connected with republican times .

Mr. DEAKIN: No!

Sir JOHN DOWNER: It is, in my opinion, connected with republican times, and it is certainly disconnected with that loyalty which we all, I am sure, not only profess, but very honestly feel towards the Crown .

Emphasis in italics are mine.

Mark McKenna explains in The Captive Republic that the dispute was over whether the Commonwealth was sufficiently connected with England's glorious phase of history or whether it meant the exclusion of monarchy. As McKenna notes, between 1891 and 1897 the dominant colonies continued to debate the meaning of the word Commonwealth and whether it meant the acceptance of monarchism, Cromwellism or republicanism.

The discussion continued;

Mr. DEAKIN: The most glorious period of England's history!

Mr. CLARK: Hear, hear!

Dr. COCKBURN: Was it under the Crown?

Mr. DEAKIN: There was then no Crown!

Sir JOHN DOWNER: It may have been the most glorious period; but as my hon. friend, Mr. Baker, says, it certainly was not the union under the Crown, which we are all of us most desirous of bringing about at the present time. I do not think that in the initiation of this matter we should mix up two conflicting propositions-one that we are thoroughly loyal, and the other that we are going to adopt in our very initiation a title which is certainly connected with ideas other than those which are strictly loyal. I do not much like the word which has been proposed in the place of the word "commonwealth."

Despite Playford's attempts to describe Commonwealth as meaning common weal as described by Shakespeare, but Downer would have none of it. Wright then argued that Commonwealth was chosen for its aesthetic pleasure rather than its meaning;

Mr. WRIGHT: The hon. member, Mr. Deakin, in speaking just now, said the word "commonwealth" had a special signification. I agree with the hon. member; but I think it is anything but a savoury signification, and that it is, therefore, altogether an improper word to use. It appears to have been assented to by many members of the committee for aesthetic reasons rather than for any other.

Mr. PLAYFORD: The hon. member evidently believes in the glorious memory of Charles I!

Mr. WRIGHT: And it is possible that there are certain members who have in their mind's eye a future Oliver Cromwell, who would say, "Take away that bauble," meaning by the bauble the allegiance we owe to her Majesty the Queen and the United Kingdom of Great Britain. I think the question might be solved by striking out the word "Commonwealth," and by merely leaving the words "Constitution of Australia." We are proud to consider ourselves by birth or by adoption citizens of this great country, and I therefore think my suggestion would meet the views of a majority of members of the Convention.

Barton then sums up the case for Commonwealth;

Mr. BARTON: I do not know that there is much necessity for me to address the Committee, because I am satisfied with all that the hon. member, Mr. Playford, has said. But I rise chiefly for the purpose of referring to the suggestion of the hon. member, Mr. Wright, that the title "Commonwealth" has an unsavoury signification.

How that can be I do not know.

If we are to be frightened away from the use of any proper word, or the expression of any proper idea, from the fact that it has been usurped or perhaps misused by others who have gone before us, we shall be deterred from doing a great deal we ought to do.

If there are those who think that, under the great Protector whose name, as we live longer to understand history, will always be more venerated among English-speaking people-the process of republicanism as associated with the title given to the English body politic under him was inimical to the common-weal, and who think that on that account we ought to depart from the title, I would remind them that it was a name inherent in the minds of Englishmen long before that time.

If any hon. member thinks, however, that such a reason should be sufficient to prohibit us from using a title which absolutely designates all that we desire to designate then as we go through this bill I am afraid we shall find ourselves rapidly denuding it of some of its best features.

There can be nothing unsavoury in a title which means, according to the best authority, "the nation, state, realm, the commonwealth"-the word being interposed between "realm" and "republic," showing that it is used to signify the common good and that it has that signification whether under a queen or a republic.

"Nation, state, realm, commonwealth, republic, commonweal, nationality." The words used by Roget as synonymous are among others "national" and "public." If these are the expressions associated by the highest authorities with the word commonwealth, why seek better?

Shall we take confederation or federation?

I will not give all the words which are stated as synonymous, because some of them express almost too much; but we find these, "league, alliance, coalition, confederacy, confederation." These are not altogether what we wish to express, because we know that although we have, embodied the operation of federal action in this commonwealth, still we seek to constitute a national government for national purposes.

Our purposes of government may be national while we preserve the utmost loyalty to the monarch whom the constitution sets over us. As the hon. member, Sir George Grey, has expressed it, we have constituted the Queen a member, and the highest member, of our parliament.

The association of the Queen with the action of the commonwealth is distinct, and is firmly embedded in the whole bill.

If that is done, there can be no association of the idea of republicanism with this bill.

However appropriate the name "commonwealth" may be to a republic, it has been clearly shown from the quotations made by the hon. member, Mr. Playford, from Shakespeare to be associated in the minds of Englishmen with government for the public good-with government for the people-and as it so expresses in itself the very essence of government for the good of the people, and because we cannot suggest anything else which expresses the idea in one word, I hope we shall retain this name, and I believe that if we do, we shall all live to be proud of it.

Again emphasis mine. The Ayes were 26 and the Noes numbered 13. The Ayes included Deakin, Barton, Griffiths, Parkes, Playford. The Noes included Downer, Munro, Wright and Dibbs.

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Peter Costello on an Australian Republic ; "I think in 2106 we will be a republic because I think in our minds and our imaginations we're already there - we think like that ... The question is how do you produce a legal and constitutional model which will win the acceptance of the Australian people."

The Inevitable Republic

Mark MacKenna in his book, The Captive Republic covers how political and public figures since the 1800s have claimed that a republic was inevitable. So inevitable in fact, we are still waiting for it, and Costello has now put that inevitability off until the twenty-second century.

Costello argues that a legal and constitutional model needs to be developed to win acceptance. One of the purposes of South Sea Republic is to create a wider republican doctrine that goes beyond constitutional issues and form a wider political framework.

In my opinion the republic in Australia has been undercut by what I call a 'boo' republic notion which is one of minimalism. Just change the name of the constitution to a republican one!

This is the path that Dutton and Horne took, as well as Turnbull and the ARM. It nearly worked in 1999 as Australians are republican by nature but the 'boo' or the yelling of 'republic' didn't get over the line.

The problem in my opinion is that there was no grounding for the political philosophy other than remove the Queen and change the name.

Republicanism is a set of philosophies, doctrines and practices which have been developed over the years. Rather than exporting these in ad-hoc and arbitrarily they need to be explored, developed, adapted and applied in a provincial Australian permutation to ensure the most efficient form of social organisation in the Australian federal and state forms of government.

However McKenna warns against enunciating it as a 'true' form of republicanism ;

In many ways, the history of Australian republicanism is the story of Australian politicians, journalists and political activists, drawing on these models [British, American and French] and often taking one set of associations - the 'true' republic, into the public domain.

As the Constitutional Fun Challenge on this site showed, Australian Republicans are starting to think beyond the British, American and French models.

In addition we are questioning those models and scrutinising them ever more closely for their benefits, weaknesses and faults.

The 'bearded men' wrote a poor constitution that is static to change except in the hands of the High Court. It is an inferior constitutional model.

The challenge for sites such as this is create a fourth republican model, an Australian one, which captures the public imagination, and acceptance. One which is rooted in the republican philosophies in the past, but advances those doctrines to modern technology and needs - serving as the platform for on-going maximum liberty and prosperity.

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John Ley in 1921 makes a curious statement in a parliamentary debate about foreign policy. It is essentially dated but it equates a pre-modern form of the great and powerful friends doctrine of foreign policy as being constitutionally restricted.

From Mark McKenna's Australian Republicanism: A reader , Ley is quoted;

The next thing I want to point out is that in addition to breaking the constitutional tie, the platform of the Labor Party goes further. It says, "All bills passed by Parliament to receive assent on advice of Australian ministers only."

That means that an Australian parliament should govern our foreign policy, quite apart from England, and it is a constitutional departure of very considerable importance.

If that is carried out, it stands for the separation of Australia from the Empire.

Obviously Australia and Australian politicians out-grew that notion that Australian parliament should not be responsible for making foreign policy but is points to a mentality of the time.

When modern Republicans point to the positives, the negatives, the faults and the flagrant problems with the Australian Constitution, it is important to point out the prevailing mentality that it was created and ratified under, and how different the modern Australian identity is in comparison to that.

That Australian foreign policy would be considered to be vested in the constitution monarchy as dependent on Britain is farcical in 2006. However it was taken seriously by Thomas Ley that foreign policy was a constitutional issue that lay in the domain of Britain - not Australia.

Legislative independence came slowly to Australia, and it was the mind-set of the likes of Ley that prolonged it. Independence is hard to define, but a strict definition of political independence is being able to make laws that are repugnant to other constitutions and legislative bodies.

In Australia's case this means being able to make laws that are repugnant to British Parliament. Despite the constitutional monarchical system, the monarch is a constitutional one, and must take advice of the Prime Minister through the Governor-General.

As George V was when Joe Scullin recommended that Isaac Isaacs become Governor-General, the first Australian born to hold that post. The King and British Parliament were not happy about Scullin's recommendation and sought to dissuade him. Scullin's stance was simple, he would call an election on the issue if the King did not approve Isaacs.

The Governor-General (not in council) retains implied reserve powers and this is where the hole in our constitutional system is. Through this a despotic King can wield influence if they desire. An explicit reading of the constitutional gives the Governor-General the ability to run the Armed Forces, to appoint and remove cabinet members, dissolve parliament and arbitrarily hold parliamentary sessions.

Consequently it is difficult to determine when Australia did become independent from Britain constitutionally and legislatively. At Versailles when Billy Hughes got a seat at the table? Or the Statute of Westminster which was not ratified by Curtin until 1942 despite being enacted in London in 1931?

Or maybe the Australia Act of 1986 which severed all ties between the Australian legislative and judicature with Britain (ie Privy Council).

It has been a slow process and not because the constitutional and legislative tools aren't there but also because of the Australian mentality such as Ley's persisting. Britain has not been tyrannous toward us, so it has been easy to tolerate the less than optimal arrangements.

Australia has also prospered as a nation and rarely been torn by internal strife and dissent which makes a people look inward at drastic improvements; politically and economically.

By the same token Australia has been extremely innovative democratically outside of the constitutional system in areas of electoral technology such as the secret ballot, female suffrage and proportional/preference voting.

Australians are a republican and democratic people. They will continue the on-going process of political improvement - of which the constitution is one aspect requiring modernisation.

William Lane was a prominent Republican in Queensland who wrote through a succession of Labor focused newspapers during the 1880s and 1890s. This is the transcript of his One-man-one-vote article which appeared in The Worker in 1891.

William Lane was an Englishman who came to Queensland via Canada and America in 1885. He worked as a journalist before starting The Boomerang. Audrey Oldfield in the Great Republic of the Southern Seas writes that the Boomerang; "preached socialism, white Australia, women's rights and republicanism". Mark McKenna in a Captive Republic writes that Lane's form of Republicanism was not too far different from The Bulletin's;

In certain respects, Lane's vision of a republic was not too dissimilar to that of the Bulletin. Monarchy was seen as a 'remnant of barbarism' and the British sovereign was a 'worthless brainless individual' who did 'nothing but draw a big salary'.

This was familiar rhetoric, but Lane though more critically than the Bulletin or Sydney Republicans. He frequently reminded his readers that a republic would not be a panacea and that Australians had to be just as careful of monopolists in a republic as under a monarchy.

For Lane, a republic was nothing if it did not include the nationalisation of land, women's rights, electoral reform, free education and the expulsion of all alien races. ...

Like Harpur and Lang, Lane saw republicanism as the symbol of a modern enlightened and progressive society.

The Boomerang became the Brisbane Worker before finally becoming The Worker . The latter being notable for helping to establish what would become the Queensland Labor Party. Queensland was a radical hotbed of conflicting politics in the 1880s and 1890s. The Shearer's Strike and its breaking led directly to the modern day Labor Party and National Party. The political environment also left the way open for polemicists such as William Lane and Frederick Vosper. The latter who was charged with treason, and later acquitted, for advocating a Republican revolution during the Shearer's Strike.

In 1893 Lane managed to convince 220 others to sail to Paraguay to establish a utopia. By 1899 Lane was back in New Zealand writing in a conservative manner.

One man one vote was published under the pseudonym John Miller and appeared in The Worker in June 1891. I personally find applying ret-con to Lane much harder because of the race-based and socialist rhetoric.

One Man, One Vote

As a natural result of common school education the common man is beginning to have opinions and to criticise institutions. In every country where common through is thus started its first encounter is with the customs which give one man authority over the other men regardless of the consent of those others.

If there is an absolute dictator men ask by what right John dictates to Tom. If there is a despotic emperor men ask who William is that Peter should be born to stand up or lie down as William directs. And if there is so-called representative government through which a a quarter of the community puts a ring in the nose of the other three quarters, the common men whose noses are ringed inquire energetically why this is thusly.

Here in Queensland, as in other parts of the world, we have found out that our noses are ringed by gross electoral inequalities; here, a small minority of squatters and land-grabbers have hold of the legislative rope with which they haul us about as much as they like.

One man, one vote means equal voice in law-making for all men, thereby giving the men of Queensland opportunity to be the rulers of Queensland and effectively snapping the ring-in-the-nose wherewith the propertied classes now control us for their own selfish purposes.

Based Upon General Principles

If we reason upon general principles, if we take into consideration accepted ideas of Freedom and Justice, particularly if we supposed that it is right to do to others as we would have others do to us, there can be no two answers about one man, one vote.

Free states are manifestly those in which government is by the will and with the consent of the governed, in which every man stands equal before the law. And it is manifestly unjust for one man or one set of men to make laws for others who are allowed no opportunity to take part in the making of such laws as it is manifestly necessary for men associated in a state to recognise some equitable method of arriving at a mutually authorative decision upon disputed points.

The broadest and the narrowest conceptions of Freedom, Justice, Right, Fair Dealing, both imply this; That laws shall be mutually agreed upon by those who by act of citizenship have agreed not only to keep for themselves but to maintain against attack all constitutional regulations instituted for the common well being.

A More Equitable Method of Government

One man, one vote is an attempt to reach a more equitable method of governance; it is a protest against the usurpation of governance which reached its climax under kingcraft and has been passed along from autocrat to aristocrat, from aristocrat to plutocrat, until it nearly confronts the democrat whom it has so long wronged.

The term one man, one vote expresses a principle which appeals to the hearts of all who desire a better world and higher civilisation, for it means that Man himself is to be recognised as the unit in the State, that at the ballot box Humanity alone shall be known, that as far as the law can do it every man shall enter the polling booth a simple citizen and no more.

The Truth That Man Is Equal

Blind fools may laugh at idealism all the like, but idealism, the recognition of Truths, is what moves mankind up the ladder of progress. And this has been one divine truth, known and loved and preserved for out betterance, through ages of darkness and degradation, that in spite of his inequalities Man is equal.

We have had the world bowing enslaved before an Alexander. We have had Russian boyars puddling their feet in the gutted entrails of human foot warmers. We have had French lords claiming the droit de seigneur , taking the peasants bride for the bridal-night. And among our own people we have seen and see still millions upon millions living like imbruted beasts.

But all the time the ideal has lived, enshrined in religions that sprung form the aching heart of the common people. At the Judgment-seat of God was Equality, there the robes of the king and the rags of the beggar fell to the ground together and each man stood naked as he was born and as he died. This is the ideal conception of Justice, that men in themselves are equal - and we want Justice to be with us a little for it is only through Justice that good can come.

The Right Of The Citizen

It is clearly Just and Right that all those who are citizens of a state should have equal voice in the making of the laws which all citizens are equally bound not only to obey, but to maintain.

The alien - that is the citizen of another state who enters our state as a visitor on suffrance only and who is not part and parcel of our community - may justly have demanded of him that while he is with us he should, without having a voice in the making, submit to our laws and conform to our regulations; his interests are not our common interests, he may be and often is more interested in weakening our social organisation than strengthening it, like the Chinaman his only object is generally to get wealth wherewith to return again to his own people; the claims of the citizen to recognition naturally do not apply to the alien.

Nor can the minors, the children, and the insane, those who are not yet grown to years of discretion or who are regarded by the laws very differently from adults, be presumed to rank as full citizens, as independent electors. But the adult members of any community , whether men or women, can in Justice demand an equal voice with any other member in the making of laws which each and every one of them must commonly obey and maintain.

Women Should Have Justice Too!

One man one vote has this weakness, this failing, that it does not include the women. Not a single principle can be advanced in support of the rights of men which does not apply with equal force to the rights of women. Our mothers, our wives, our sisters and our daughters are as essentially citizens of the State as any man of us.

They must obey all laws, they suffer from unjust laws, they benefit by good laws, equally with the rest of us. We men deserve to have Justice denied us if we deny Justice to our women.

But there is this about one man one vote agitation that it does not deny the rights of women. It simply deals with one part of an Injustice, leaving another part of the same Injustice to be dealt with in the future. And of this we may be sure and certain that the men of Queensland or of any other state, as a mass, will be far more inclined to secure for the womenfolk the same Justice which they have managed to secure for themselves than will any propertied selection which wields authority in defiance of all Justice and in antagonism to all conception of free and equal government.

Class Government is Usurpation

For this we must never lose sight of: class governance is a usurpation, a tyranny which has its root in the ages when armed robbers, military castes, ground the peaceful tillers of the soil into slavery. Our parliamentary system, of which the very opponents of one man one vote profess to be so proud, is only a degenerated survival of the assembly at which in primitive times our Teutonic forefathers gathered, free and equal, to make for themselves laws for their common governance.

And it is because of the countless generations the race we come of governed itself thus, knowing neither king nor landlord nor rank nor wealth nor place nor privilege in its tremendous march from Central Asia to the Atlantic Coast that the desire for self governance is so instinctive in us today.

It is told of these fathers of ours that, when the burst upon the rotten Empire of Rome, a band of Goths stormed and took a Roman town. Their chief, a man elected by his fellows to lead them to war, saw among the plunder a beautiful porcelain vase and set it aside for himself. "Why is that apart?" asked an old warrior. "It is the chief's" said a young one. Down came the old Goth's battle-axe, smashing the porcelain into atoms. "The Goths are equal", he cried "next time he steals let him look to his head."

So much for the privilege in the old Teutonic day, but wrong begot wrong and those who began by plundering others ended up being plundered themselves. The chiefs stole and stole and there were none left to break their heads and finally it came to that the common lands and the common cattle and the common law-making and the common liberties, the free conditions, which gave our race its brains and its vigour and its courage and its contempt for danger and its respect for women and hatred of lying and all that is good and true and loyal and brave in us, were all stolen away from us and we are what we are.

To win back our liberties is our duty.

We have a right to have them back and to govern ourselves for our own good in our own way. One man one vote is simply self-governance, a right list indeed by the crimes of some and the follies of others and the weakness of all, but still our right when we can get it for truths live always and Justice never dies.

The Plea of The Usurpers

The classes which have usurped government, which make pretense of representative authority while controlling the laws and domineering over the community by means of plural voting for themselves, whole disenfranchisement of the workers, unequal electoral districts and nominee chambers, have certain specious arguments against one man one vote with which they seek to lull their own consciences and to delude and bewilder us.

They ask if the drunken and the sober, the industrious and the idle, the ignorant and the intelligent, and so on through a whole catalogue of opposites, are to be equal at the ballot box. What do they really mean?

The Inequality of Intellect

This specious and pretentious argument against one man one vote is used by opponents so often that it necessitates notice otherwise undeserved. "You cannot make men equal," they say. "There will always be the intellectual and the foolish and some who will exert a personal influence not only over a whole people but for all time." Just so! We cannot make men equal where they are not equal but we can maintain the equality of men where it exists, as it does exist where it is now denied.

In our individuality, in our personality, in ourselves, as Men, we are all equal - and the only true inequality as in the influence which one personality wields over other personalities. For what to do with men like Sir George Grey, like Griffith, like McIllwraith, want more votes that the humblest when by their personally power they move hundreds and thousands, Sir George Grey hundreds of thousand, of minds?

Is there a single man of superior intellect in Queensland, or in Australia, or in the world, who does not affect somewhat the individuality of all who come within his sphere, no matter what he may be? And will one man one vote impede this influence of superior intellects, will it not rather strengthen and enlarge it in every way? For as things are, power is given not to the more intellectual, through a desirable influence on others, but to pickers-up of corner allotments, grabbers of squatting land, holders of various properties, whatever their intellectuality may be. This is absurd.

Morality As Qualification

As a matter of fact sobriety, industriousness, intelligence and general virtuousness are not intended by the usurping classes to the tests of electoral rights. Drunkenness is too usual among the working mass but is even more frequently seen among the rich and well to do. The Queensland Assembly of today, the meeting place of legislators who do not represent the people of Queensland, is often no better than the lobby of a pot-house and witnesses scenes which would not be tolerated for an instant in any friendly society of trade union meeting.

As for industriousness, it is only by the industry of the labouring people, so largely disenfranchised, that wealth exists at all. While as for intelligence, that is similarly not an attribute peculiar to those who by inheritance, luck, skin-flinting, or profit-mongering shrewdness have got to possess the property which is supposed to induce them with prerogative of ruling over their poorer fellow men.

If we were to set up a standard of morality as the qualification for those who would claim full citizenship, then we should have to disfranchise a very considerable percentage of plural voters and to admit to the franchise the vast majority of those now denied any share in the governance of their country. This twaddle about sobriety, industry, intellect and so forth is worthless sophistry, used only by those who for another reason desire to withhold from the people the inborn right of self-governance.

The Real Cause of Opposition

What is this other reason, the real reason, why one man one vote is opposed? It is opposed only by the propertied classes in their own selfish self-interest, by the great land monopolists, by the great mine-monopolists, by the importing and trading monopolists, by the banks, the syndicates, the employer's associations, and the hundred and one cringing dependents of these high priests of the great god Mammon.

They oppose it for this reason only, that the masses are intelligent enough, sober enough, earnest enough, to that Society Just, that government as we have it is a farce which is exerted for the advantage of Capitalism regardless of the well-being of the People at large. They fear that if one man one vote is secured by the common people, the labourers who toil and have nothing, the masses who are worse off amid all the luxury and flitter of our Christian civilisation than ever savages were in so-called heathen lands, that the first use made of that power will be legislative 'interference' with existing industrial conditions.

They are afraid of Eight Hour Bills and Factory Bills and Lien Bills, of the abolition of imprisonment for 'absconding' labourors, of resumption of the squatter-lands and reform of land laws generally, of work being found for the unemployed and of the refusal of popular parliaments to let workmen be shot down like dogs at the bidding of tyrannical Capitalism.

They object to Reform: that is the only reason for this opposition to one man one vote.

The Enemy Of The People

The man who opposes one man one vote is the enemy of the people. Whoever he is, wherever he is, no matter what he is, he would defraud his fellow men of their political rights solely in order to maintain the iniquitous laws and unbearable industrial conditions which every thoughtful man must see and which every honest man must admit to be wrong.

We may not all agree as to the best way to right these wrongs, we may differ utterly but honestly as to the unhappy inequalities which cause world-wide misery and discontent, but we must agree, if we are honest, that peaceful remedy can only come by the untrammeled play of that self-governance which is based upon Justice and ignores class and privilege.

It is not from the squatter and land-grabber, the syndicator and speculator that we can look for help. We must look to ourselves. And how can we look to ourselves so long as we are so disfranchised and handicapped while these gentry vote and count over and over again.

Our Duty To Ourselves

We must have one man one vote. We know now that we owe no duty to a law which usurpers impose upon us, that the government which denies rights to any people is a tyranny and that our duty to ourselves and to our fellows and to our children and to all Humanity is to make such tyranny impossible.

We know also that his usurpation of government by the classes over the masses is the great barrier to the changes which are absolutely necessary if Civilisation, with all that it implies, is not to pieces under our feet.

We want to get the ballot box, free and equal, and they are trying to prevent us. The employers' associations are organised to prevent us. Griffith quibbles when he is asked his intentions. The Government, the magistracy, the whole machinery of Capitalism, is doing everything in its power to bar the common man from the polling booth, to conserve the privileges of the favoured few.

And then they rave at us about "law and order". Have we not been as tolerant of their "law and order" as ever people could be who had the faintest inkling of what Justice was and who know that the laws have been deliberately designed to oppress the people by the privileged classes who have usurped lawmaking and now defend their usurpation against the one man one vote?

There has to be. The taxonomy of Republicanism is wide enough that it is not one hardcore strand of ultra-rationalists. One of Charles Harpur's insights was that until the time of moral perfection, there will be some role for the state, which inevitably lets in the 'political' into any form of social organisation. So what political narrative can Australian Republicanism adopt that is consistent with its view of liberty, political equality and moral improvement?

Despite ten years of pro status-quo government, it was only recently that popular support for a republic dropped below fifty percent to forty-nine percent. This suggests that republican sentiment runs across political, social, cultural and economic lines - the end result being a pluralist view of just what republicanism means.

The dominant form of republicanism in the 20thC has been the Identity Republicans. This was kicked of by Geoffrey Dutton and Donald Horne in the 1960s. It described Australia as an independent republic that ha kicked off the immaturity of its reliance on Britain and a monarch - it was largely a constitutional name change than anything else - but one which would bring political, social and cultural benefits through this new nationalist and patriotic awareness of Australian uniqueness. Consequently, this form of republicanism continued the tradition of avoiding and ignoring the political.

This was the same tactic and approach that the Australian Republican Movement [ARM] adopted in the 1990s during the run up to the referendum. Mark McKenna writes:

Australia in the 1990s seemed to have produced the first republican movement in history without a political platform. Pandering to the populist disdain for all things political, the leaders of the republican movement insisted constantly that the republican movement was not a 'political movement'.

They gave this novel approach a name - minimalism.

The minimalist republic (a variation on the well-worn, small-target strategy) was, if nothing else, patriotic. Like many other republicans, I could not understand how limiting the vision of an Australian republic to the nationality of the head of state would prove to be an effective political strategy.

Telling the people that republicans wanted minimal change may have made the republic appear less threatening, but it also made it less interesting. Minimalism was not only an awful word, it was uninspiring and dull politics.

I tried to argue that the late 19thC period of Australian republicanism focused sufficiently on the individual that it repudiated the political enough that it looked to the technologies of republicanism to create an administrative structure, rather than political, in which the individual's moral progress could flower and grow.

McKenna is arguing that reforming or modifying the constitution is inevitably a political act, and consequently any republican stance must adopt a political narrative for the present and future. Consequently republicanism in a constitutional monarchic system must have a 'political' where it describes itself in the abstract terms of values, issues and policy.

I am comfortable with that. The earlier incarnation of this site, partly inspired by McKenna's writings, took to the task of establishing an Australian Republican doctrine that could inform policy as well as constitutional structure.

Additionally, if the users on this site had to choose one modification they would make to the Australian political system - there is a high probability that it would be a Bill of Rights: probably unanimously. While it may appear an administrative and technological change to protect the individual from the tyranny of the state - because it involves the state, and the state is a political structure, it is a political issue and requires a political narrative.

Many moons ago before SSR existed I wrote a diary on k5 that contained a section with the heading Greater Australia . Like many things I have written, my views have changed slightly as I have learnt and been exposed to more knowledge, but the sentiment is right.

Greater Australia is about casting off any last vestiges of political, social, cultural and economic cringe. Australia becomes a great power, not through military might, or political hegemony, but through moral, cultural, economic and technological advance.

This inevitably means constitutional and political improvement as well. An important technology in Greater Australia becomes Engagement. In the same way that sovereignty is in the people in a liberal democratic system; under Greater Australia the people become the active arbiters and developers of Australian 'clout' through their moral (liberty), social, cultural, economic and technological improvement. This place the political narrative within the potential of globalisation and the realities of immigration and the Australian Diaspora in a globalised world.

Yes it becomes a national project, and it requires some sacrifice - for instance getting the Australian economy as large as Germany's, Britain's or France's will require increased immigration and less of a reliance on the sheep's back or quarry Australia - but the possibilities are massive, for not only transforming and progressing Australia morally, but through cosmopolitanism, globalisation and the diaspora - progressing the world forward.

This requires the complete embrace of Australian republicanism: constitutionally, technologically, politically and globally. Now there is a narrative! Which incidentally, is very easily, and quickly, achievable for Australia.

Something for modern republicans to ponder, in This Country , Mark McKenna writes that monarchists have cast the Governor-General as being a position that represents the people, giving it republican-like legitimacy. But republicanism is more than just removing the monarchy or having an Australian head-of-state, it is a whole series of constitutional and governance principles from entrenched rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, a representative legislative, legal equality, political equality, etc etc.

McKenna writes:

While republicans continue to stress the need for an Australian head of state, monarchists seek cleverly to further entrench the crowned republic by casting the prevailing system as the property of 'the people' - a strategy which, in spite of its deceit, at least acknowledges rhetorically the degree of voter alienation from the political system. This alienation is something that the republic has been unable to address.At the moment, republicans have not found a way to communicate any urgency or passion in their cause.

McKenna argues that two people and periods in Australian history amplify that. He discusses John Dunmore-Lang in the 1850s which is one of the most interesting decades, constitutionally, in Australian history. This site tends to focus far more on Dunmore-Lang's contemporaries, Charles Harpur and Dan Deniehy. McKenna writes that Dunmore-Lang saw republicanism in all politics and every political issue. He was able to articulate republican principles through each and every political issue of the day. I think it is fair to argue that South Sea Republic sees politics in a similar manner and has used republican principles to articulate policy responses to many political issues of the last three years.

This site has not been able to transmit any urgency to a wider republican audience, but I don't think that was South Sea Republic's intention anyway; one of the purposes to go into detail into the history, philosophies and doctrines of Australian Republicanism was to give it greater grounding, so that political issues could be answered and derived from a republican framework. This, IMO, should give Australian Republicanism a solid contemporary foundation rather than the 'boo' republic of the 1990s where Australian Republican leaders said 'republic' and Australians, being a republican people, nearly agreed with them on that alone.

The other historical persona McKenna draws on is Robert Menzies who managed to cast the decentralised and independent structure of Federation inside the history of the monarchy. This is conservative view of Australia, as without the history of Britain and the monarchy the conservatives are deprived of antiquity and would be forced to embrace a liberal future. This is the problem American Conservatives face as the US Republic was created through a liberal and rationalistic leap.

McKenna argues that Australian Republicans have not offered a civic ideal of Australia that has successfully countered the mystique of the crown. In my opinion the leap will have to come through liberalism, as the rationalism - or idea for the sake of it - will be an over-riding factor. Any conservative approach to a republic inevitably gives conservatism and obstruction an advantage, and this will mean all the errors, spaghetti code and failures through omission in our present constitution will continue to live on and produce inferior political outcomes.