Judith Brett argues that the Liberal Party's political identity is predominantly nationalism and the subservience of the individual to the national cause. By comparison Labor's identity was derived from the working class and devoted to the economic and social equality of this group. But what of the identity politics of Australian Republicans? Charles Harpur has the answer.

Identity and Narrative

Judith Brett argues that the Liberal Party differentiated itself from Labor, and weaved a political narrative for its political legitimacy through a group or communal style of nationalism;

Liberals conceptualised people's political being first and foremost as citizens. This was a direct challenge to Labor's appeal to people's class consciousness and its understanding of relations between different social interests in terms of class conflict. Liberals set 'citizens', who entered the public world to promote the common good, against the 'workers', concerned only with the interests of a part. To act in politics other than a citizen was illegitimate. Liberals were citizens and they thought everyone else should be too.

Juduth Brett defines what is meant by citizenship though, as it is different to what is taken as the common meaning of the word today;

This meaning of citizenship is quite different from its contemporary use which refers almost exclusively to the individuals formal relationship to the state, and emphasises rights and entitlements conferred by the state, rather than duties and obligations of individuals to their political community.

All the major parties in Australia, Liberals, Labor, Greens and Democrats, construct a narrative in an attempt to create a political legitimacy for electoral appeal, and ultimately governance. What is the Republican identity? Charles Harpur gives insight in his notes to "The Tree of Liberty";

For the republican spirit of this and others, of not all of my national poems, I can offer no apology. Why, indeed, should I? Believing, as I do, that men progress as sequently from monarchial to republican ideas (when they do make any moral and social progress at all), as they do from fuedal and despotic ones to those of a limited monarchy. This is strikingly evident in the political tendencies of all modern colonies.

Let civilized men be but placed for a few generations beyond the direct action of courtly and aristocratical influences, and the idea of Equality becomes fundamental in their sense of political and social obligation. They are republicans, in short, and mostly democrats also, before they can render a definite reason, it may be, for the faith that is in them. And this results, I repeat it, from a moral and social progress purely natural to civilized men, though quickened by peculiar circumstances.

Republicanism is the path to human transcendence. It is constantly striving for the highest form of social and political organisation. This will lead to higher moral and ethical behaviour. Harpur's insight is that it is our political environment which leads to our moral, ethical and social decay. Whether it is Karl Rove, or Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor or their numerous followers and mimics; the moral and ethical has been removed from the political process.

This is exacerbated by the representative form of government effectively isolating the citizen's experience, values and beliefs from the political operations of government. The party marketeers claim to represent, or even embody, these values and beliefs, but this is just cynical, results driven marketing. The representative form of government is not only uncitizen, it often actively hostile to those who's power it embodies. This is why the necessity to secure political rights is paramount. The decay inherent in government cannot be the cause, or means to externalise that violence onto those under its jurisdiction.

Harpur believed that humanity contained within itself moral and ethical perfection; which is blunted by the necessity of having to live, survive and struggle under an imperfect political system. The flaws of the political system of the time, render the individual unable to display their moral and ethical perfection. Representative government has proven itself politically, morally, ethically and socially bankrupt. This is the current environment the individual must live in and the cost inferior and depraved political practice dumps on the polity.

Republicanism is the process of achieving the highest form of political organisation so that the intrusion of the ethical and moral values of individuals by the political process is minimised. Republicans are democrats too. The establishment of constitutional and statutory processes so that the negative passions of government and power politics is minimised is as a Republican goal. Since government skews the perfectibility of social, moral, ethical and cultural found in the people, any process must subsume the pyrimidical and isolated nature of present government. This means introducing the people to government directly.

cam

Charles Harpur was one of the first poets to start mixing in Australian language, fauna and southern identity into poetry. He was unusual in writing political notes before his poems to describe them. Often the note - or essay - was longer than the poem itself. This was true of the Tree of Liberty.

Apparently Harpur has under-gone greater recognition recently as one of the most significant of the colonial poets. This is his poem from 1850, Tree of Liberty;

We'll plant a Tree of Liberty
In the centre of the land,
And round it ranged as guardians be,
A vowed and trusty band;

And sages bold and mighty soul'd
Shall dress it day by day:
But woe unto the traitor who
Would break one branch away.

Then sing the Tree of Liberty
For the vow that we have made;
May it so flourish that when we
Are buried in its shade,
Fair Womanhood and Love and Good,
All pilgrims pure shall go
Its growth to bless for happiness -
O may it flourish so!

Till felled by gold as bards have told,
In the Old World once it grew,
But there its fruits were ever sold
And only to the Few:
But here at last, uncurs'd by caste,
Each man at Nature's call
Shall pluck as well what none may sell,
The fruit that blooms for All.

By gold 'twas felled as bards have held
In the Old World where it grew,
But here the power that there dispelled
Its life shall be its dew:
The evil bout of Time is out,
And gold no more a thrall,
Shall here but build for Truth and gild
The fruit that blooms for All.

Then sing the Tree of Liberty,
And the men who shall defend
Its glorious future righteously
For this all-glorious end --
That happiness all men to bless
Out with its growth may grow --
Our Southern Tree of Liberty
Shall flourish even so!

The note that prefaced the Tree of Liberty in People's Advocate swamps the poem itself for size. It is this political essay from which "for the faith that is in them" comes from;

For the republican spirit of this and others, of not all of my national poems, I can offer no apology. Why, indeed, should I? Believing, as I do, that men progress as sequently from monarchical to republican ideas (when they do make any moral and social progress at all), as they do from fuedal and despotic ones to those of a limited monarchy. This is strikingly evident in the political tendencies of all modern colonies.

Let civilized men be but placed for a few generations beyond the direct action of courtly and aristocratical influences, and the idea of Equality becomes fundamental in their sense of political and social obligation. They are republicans, in short, and mostly democrats also, before they can render a definite reason, it may be, for the faith that is in them. And this results, I repeat it, from a moral and social progress purely natural to civilized men, though quickened by peculiar circumstances.

The empires, the kingdoms, and aristocracies of Europe were founded either in military dictation, or piece-meal conquest by provincial combinations, during the barbarous, or semi-barbourous ttimes, and have been perpetuated by force and craft, either despotic or legal - by state debts and unequal taxes (as in England), which stipend and favour the wealthy, while they grind the poor into abjectness; or by imperial warcraft, and the not less imperial knout (as in Russia), which brutalize men into hordes of bloodhounds; and they neither would have originated in enlightened times, nor could have obtained over communities previously civilised, in any rational and rightly applied sense of the term.

But although utterly Republican in my politics, speculatively, I yet believe that it will be best for Australia to continue during the present century (at the very least) a part of the British monarchy. For even the state-botches of Downing Street are full fifty years in advance of our present half-educated wool-kings; and such forms of government, therefore, as they may from time to time fabricate for us, though upon the most threadbare models, will be altogether preferable to any things of the kind which the latter would or could tinker up in the event of premature separation. And hence I have called the poem, parenthetically in the heading - A Song for the Future.

But the mere form of a government is, after all, a question of only secondary importance. With out prime moral and intellectual rights thoroughly - that is, constitutionally secured to us; namely, the right of all free men to pursue together upon political and social terms of perfect equality, both their own individual happiness and their country's welfare; to discuss publicly any and every public matter; and to dissent openly from any system of religion. or conform unmolestedly to any mode of worship, however peculiar; with these great rights thus secured, the mere official machinery of a government were, in fact, but a progressive testing and development of the best modes of inter-municipal combination for the general good and security of the state.

And thus simplified, its places - being conferative of onerous honour rather than of pecuniary emolument or political patronage - would no longer be gambled and scrambled for, as hitherto, by countryless lawyers and unprincipled men of talent; nor would they be convertible, as heretofore, into baits and bribes for furthering the worst designs of the self-begodding ambitionist.