Wayne Hudson in an essay in "Crown and Castle" looks toward an Australian Republic being the basis for world governance. It has become obvious that the UN and the EU are not capable of fulfilling that role. The UN is not authoritative enough and the EU is a new kind of unelected appointed governance. I used to maintain, in the late 90s, that the two nations most likely to innovate in government were Australia and Iran. With the naked grabs of power by the theocracy in Iran, and the parking of the US military in Iraq, I suspect Iran's bid for democracy unmolested by a theocracy is on hold for a time. Australia is currently in the grip of the anglophiles, but hope springs eternal in both nations.

Hudson seeks an Australian Republic as the seed, and principle, toward a wider government that ultimately covers the planet. He calls this "Planetary Republicanism".

Planetary Republicanism

Hudson describes planetary republicanism as;

Planetary republicans postulate a planetary global order in which all individuals have legal rights and duties, whether they be persons, corporations, or states. They seek to promote the republican ideals of mixed government, universal access and distribution of power as approaches to global governance. To this end, they agitate for technical changes to inter alia international and national law, media practices and popular culture.

Hudson also argues for the removal of "feel good" aspects from traditional republican doctrine. This includes notions of popular sovereignty, active citizenship, participation, egalitarianism and popular democracy. Hudson argues instead for the promotion of process and procedure;

First it [planetary republicanism] would with the utopia of a single value system as a basis for a "good society" or a "just polity" and seek instead to promote procedures and process, requiring shared rhetoric but allowing significant, albeit not unlimited value diversity.

Hudson also requires that the geographic myths that nation-states use to nationalise their basis be discarded;

Second, a pluralist republicanism would break with geographic and spatial metaphors supposed to legitimate myths or origin or identity.

He admits that nation-states are going to be around for a fair time in the future still, but believes these innovations can be implemented at the nation-state level. A form of bubble up effect. Hudson also requires that a republic not be based on romantic nationalism. Instead he sees an individual as being part of a "moral cosmopolity", with each individual having "the status as a .. unit of international moral concern." Hudson recognizes that this too is utopian but notes systems are slowly devolving to adopt these global like structures.

It is a "dreaming" which generates technical proposals and utopian postulates, not a naive fantasy that global governance will offer an escape from the imperfection of temporal affairs, or itself from unintended consequences.

This is what Hudson calls "pessimistic utopianism".

Why?

Hudson sees planetary republicanism as being possible because of the advances in electronic communications. He sees this as dissolving the stronger aspects of nationalism to economics and politics. And why a global government? Hudson writes that the goal of global governance is imaginary but can be used as the driving force behind the wider adoption of planetary republican principles.

Planetary republicanists seek to identify and support global civilisation through specific technical changes to institutions, organisation forums, practices, manners and ethical processes.

What does Hudson's ideas for Republicanism have to do with Australian Republicanism? Hudson would like an Australian Republic to move the implementation of republicanism forwards and give Australians an outward looking political system with an eye toward global concerns, planetary citizenship and without the limiting nature of nation-state based nationalism.

To summarize .... in positive terms. Australian republicanism should seek to give our national institutions new ethical dimensions. It should attempt to lead the world towards a more pacific and cooperative world order, and not simply replay the tired rhetoric of anti-royalism which has a place, albeit a distinguished one, in Australia's past.

The essay is only five pages long, and very word dense - but a worthy read - if a little difficult to comprehend in one pass.

Transcendent Australia

I have long maintained that it isn't enough for Australia "just" to become a Republic, it must innovate the form of government, sufficiently so that Australia's change to a republic becomes the next 1787. The American Republic added explicit rights, a very enlightenment notion - Australia must add its own innovation to the republican model and doctrine.

A minimalist republic where the Queen is written out and the Governor-General or Prime Minister become the head of state will not do. Federation was a wasted chance which left us with a wet noodle of a constitution that is almost impervious to change. A century later we are fighting for a Republic when this issue should have been solved in the 1890s.

When Australia becomes a republic, it cannot waste the chance it had in 1901, a minimal republic will not be enough.

cam

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.

cam

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.