Intriguing to see that Malcolm Turnbull is about the only Australian political figure who’s put Prince William’s visit into some sort of political context. Writing in The Times, the erstwhile Liberal leader puts his finger on a conception of Australian identity which is truly Republican:
A key element in Australia’s success has been that we do not define our nationhood by reference to a common religion, ethnicity or race. Our culture has always been very open to new ideas.
That’s in stark contrast to both Tony Abbott’s mishmash of Howardian themes and dire mutterings about “values”, and the apparent propensity of the current crop of Australian Labor leaders to avoid the question altogether, preferring to make sure they’re in frame for a right Royal photo-op. Turnbull’s articulation of an inclusive Australian identity will no doubt make an interesting contrast to the anticipated mawkish patriotic themes our ‘Fair Shake of The Sauce Bottle’ PM provides for our edification sometime or other over the next few days.
That is a great comment by Turnbull. Personally I am self descibed as a loyal Christian Sympathising Anglophile, who sees no point in changing one figure head with another. In my opinion the “President” brand is a higly devalued one, taking a quick glance around the world.
Hopefully Mark, the PM will rise above his speechwriters. Im living in daily hope.
Fascinated, I’ve heard it said that he actually doesn’t have a speechwriter per se, but prefers to write his material himself based on drafts. Which would explain a lot!
Rudd’s drafts would make rivetting reading. Instead of ‘I have a dream’ there’d be ‘Proposal for modification and furtherance of existing national resource use allocation for consideration of c’ttee convened …’ His visions are difference now to the one’s he had as a 7/8 PS. He used to have a calculator, a tape measure, a pencil and a scratch pad. Now he has advisers.
I knew there was a reason I didn’t care.
What’s this ‘us’ thing he has going? Wasn’t he dumped even by his own side? How dare he speak for me?
Prince Charming? The people’s prince How utterly cringeworthy …
Where’s a bucket when you need one?
If this is what republicanism is about then I’ll wait around for socialism thanks all the same.
‘…anticipated mawkish patriotic themes our ‘Fair Shake of The Sauce Bottle’ PM provides…’
Anticipated? Mark get with the program. Besides, at least that’s annual…so far.
It’s the weekly (daily?) St Dudd’s Sunday Sinjon E Pizzle that rocks our couch.
Anyhow, republican c’ttee dot point slash backnforth 123666 isn’t due to report until err…2050?
Fran, understand how you feel but I reckon he knows the sum of the parts of his audience, Republicans and all. Yes, a tad bucket worthy for some but he is acknowledging the obvious – PW is a charming young bloke. Malcolm (and Kev) know you don’t show disrespect to the punters if you want better odds.
If that’s simply realpolitik 2010 Fascinated, then so be it … but all that means is that the country isn’t ready for a republic, no?
Personally, Prince Whatsisname looks a total slack jawed turkey to me …
Whether he is or is not [and he is, so there!] is irrelevant, he has done nothing I haven’t done, cos I was born too, to deserve any of the cringeworthy [good word that] crap that is served up about him.
Python got it in one:
ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
Who’s castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we’re all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous
collective.
DENNIS: You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes–
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That’s what it’s all about if only people would–
ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
in that castle?
WOMAN: No one live there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,–
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: –but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more–
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh — who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical
aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power
just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that,
eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me,
you saw it didn’t you?
Alternatively – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0
Oh tyro rex, you’ve made my night. The next LP reminiscence spectacular should be how many Python skits you can recite by heart.
Wrt princes, a letter to the ed in the local rag today argues that Prince W would have fitted in well here in CQ. Can’t see it myself, unless he likes driving around in cars with the Australian flag flying, looking for minorities to bash.
Frankly, when Keating described the Senate as unrepresentative swill I thought he he had a point (but I could have played devil’s advocate.
But the monarchy? Very hard to resist that term there, and if it cannot be uttered …
Indeed – I am growing a bit weary of the Rudd Government dodging this issue. Action was promised – so let’s see some action already.
How about a nationwide rescreening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail? I’d rather concentrate on stopping the planet from dying.
Was having an interesting conversation this morning re democracy (the tyranny of the majority) vs inclusion (which can result in the tyranny of the minority). It’s interesting to contrast Australia’s attempts at an ‘inclusive democracy’ with those of European countries such as France and Switzerland which prefer in some ways a ‘purer’ democracy whereby the values and preferences of the majority effectively suppress the sensibilities of minorities (see the burqa debate in France, and the minaret debate in Switzerland).
It’s an interesting discussion to have given that such an attitude of cultural supremacy (usual taken to be ‘white’ culture) in Australia is inevitably heralded with cries of racism. As an expat in Germany with French friends it’s something I’ve never previously thought about – the difficulty in explaining the Australian line of an inclusive democracy (largely a result of our immigrant history preventing any defense of a moral/cultural ‘norm’ to hold as the ultimate ‘Australian values’ to which people should either conform to or leave) and why the French or Swiss stances seem to me inherently racist unpalatable.
Just a thought…
K
… should read of course ‘racist and unpalatable’. All these big words on a Saturday
K
#16 on democracy
Crikey – thats a bit deep!
I liked his description of the Aussie spirit….”have a go, give it your best shot and if you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and have another go.”
A bit of projection there? And will he?
Patricia, I suspect he is already having a go.
Fran, why do I see you in ten years or so writing about how it’s a brilliant thing that King Charles (if he doesn’t style himself George VII) has a social conscience, believes in fighting global warming, etc?
I don’t think I’m getting too far ahead of myself to ask: you would be a direct electionist, no?
Yep, a lot of boastful people disappointed in the messy realities of changing things will feel right at home under good old King Charles/George. I call it the Ben Elton effect (“He’s just a lovable old disillusioned hippy.”)
NickWS suggested:
I don’t believe I could explain that without consulting the classics of psychoanalysis, but the argument would be tendentious.
Perhaps you would be in a better position to offer a theory.
Course I don’t bear them any ill-will as people. But the whole pageant is like a live-action museum diorama.
Can we just install them to rule over the QM2 and the forthcoming re-launched Queen Elizabeth? Grand, charming, Over There, all at sea and nothing to do with us?
They’re descended from a very rich Newcastle coal mining magnate. Mary Bowes-Lyon, Diana Spencer, and soon, Kate Middleton. All brought in to get rid of that haemophiliac strain inherited by Queen Victoria, improving the bloodline and all that, wot?
The Bowes-Lyon line is more interesting than that!
Just a bit of pop-history to set some context:
Around this time last century, the popular mood of the British people themselves was that the monarchy was an anachronism, aloof, out-of-touch, not really “for us” etc.
That sentiment reflected the pre-WWI zeitgeist: here we are in a new, modern, shiny century, why are we kow-towing to the ghost of Victoria and her aging son Edward? They’re a museum piece! And they’re bloody Germans (anti-German sentiment was rife in London a decade before WWI even began to think about casting a shadow).
But the new Monarch George V turned this sentiment around. He gave the German-sounding family a distinctly English name: Windsor.
He pioneered the ‘getting out among the people’ format we now see as “traditional” but was in its day revolutionary. Hand-shaking with commoners, baby-kissing, receiving flowers. At the time, this was a popular “revolution” in the way monarchy related to the commons. Wow! The King came by in a new-fangled horseless carriage, got out, smiled, waved and shook hands with us! It was the prototype of modern 20th Century PR: a concession to the need to be seen as in-touch and up-with-the-times.
But that format is 100 years old now, and showing its age. When a passing parade of royals pop by in motorcades and planes, smiling and waving like their great-grandparents, they are invoking a ritual that was effective 100 years ago in restoring popular faith in the monarchy; but now seems as quaint as Victoria’s aloof reclusion after the death of Albert.
How could they do it now? Maybe Wills needs a FB group? He could be a real wigger, ‘Hangin’ wid da Fresh Prince’?
Oh, why I am giving them hints?! I’ve said too much…
Katz @ 25.
Good one!
AN@4: “Rudd’s drafts would make rivetting reading” … for a peek at a real-time trace readout of the Ruddbot text heuristics engine output, check out the facsimile of the handwritten drafts of the Sorry Speech
@25
Yes, that is why we will always need the monarchy. How else can we be expected to produce macabre stories of that calibre, with which to while away the long winter evenings?
Guess I was wrong about that attempt to keep the bloodline pure.
Turnbull failed to get us a republic because he insisted on a model that effectively made no practical difference to the way the country operated and difference from what the polls were telling us the people wanted. (I didn’t agree with the elected president concept at the time because it hadn’t been thought through properly and it looked like we would end up with Kylie Mynogue.
I would start to get interested in the republic debate if there was serious questioning of the the dangers of depending on the Westminster system to guide us through the future.
The rebublic will probably never get up. The politicians will never give the people the model they want, and the people will never vote for the model the politicians want. Kylie Minogue? Shit, man, we could’ve ended up with Pauline Hanson.
Besides, rather than wasting our time on a third order issue, we should be concentrating on dealing effectively with climate change, lessening the atrocious gap between rich and poor, ending homelessness, giving the Aborigines true equality, not his ertsatz bullshit we’re fobbing them off with at the moment, etc., etc., etc.,
Now listen here Paul Burns I like what you see nearly all the time but I want you know that I can chew gum and walk [slowly] at the same time.
So I can concentrate [within my limits] on “climate change, lessening the atrocious gap between rich and poor, ending homelessness, giving the Aborigines true equality, not his ertsatz bullshit we’re fobbing them off with at the moment, etc., etc., etc” and have a go at the anti democratic concept of monarchy simultaneously almost at the same time.
And so can you.
So there.
The monarchical structure of Australia’s constitution in no way limits the substantive governance of Australia.
However, it should be recognised that the form of monarchial government established by the Australian constitution and adjusted by subsequent legislation and governmental practice is dangerously unpredictable and unstable.
The system looks stable when there is no governmental crisis but governmental crisis may quickly become constitutional crisis at times when the nation most needs predictability and stability.
In this sense the nature of Australian sovereignty is very much a first-order issue.
Oh, goodness me. I’m not a monarchist. With my socialist/anarchist beliefs it would be impossible. To me the republic issue really comes down to the question whether we can risk giving the political ruling classes more power, (which is what they get, regardless of which model of republic you choose). The answer to that is a big fat no! I don’t trust them with the power they have not to abuse it eg strange little man now not to be taken too seriously known as Ratty. I’m certainly not into giving them anymore. (And I’d feel that way even if they were a genuine socialist government.)
Paul Burns said:
This is a bit of a tangle.
If we had a genuine socialist government, then by definition, the current ruling class would have no power and indeed, there would be no ruling class.
The notion of a socialist government is probably an oxymoron, in the sense that the realisation of socialism presumes the approaching dissolution of class society and class rule and thus the absence of a state with a class character.
Used more loosely to refer to a regime seeking the above end, the “ruling class” would be the the producer class so their politicasl power is, ipso facto not only legitimate but the very thing for which socialists strive.
Both the major parties are controlled by the corporate elites.Through the media they decide who will be the next PM.
Malcolm is a hypocrite since he plays both sides of the fence.He was willing to sign away our sovereignty at Copenhagen to a facist World Govt financed by our carbon taxes,yet make noises about a phoney republic? Both Malcolm and Kevin should be held to account.Our consitution does not classify this betrayal as treason,but under the Russian constitution they would be.
We need a decent constitution in this country that reflects the common good.
Arjay,
Facist world government (sic), Russian constitution? Phoney republic? Corporate elites?
You don’t represent the CEC by any chance? Or the Watchtower people?
Sooner or later we will become a republic.
Arjay, I’ve got a tinfoil helmet going cheap if you’re interested. Never been used, brand new.
I’d give you my email but I suspect you already know where I live.
Email is part of the system Blue Dog. It’s how the fascist world government finds you. Arjay’s waaaay too clever to fall for that bait.
Around my way, we use smoke signals to communicate the important stuff. Oh yes, when the FDA come for us with their compulsory H1N1 vaccinations, we’ll be ready…
Sorry for the derail, Mark.
OK, back on topic…
We are Australians! The Queen is there occupying a position to stop dictators getting in. Get rid of that position and it would be the end f Australia as we know it. When a Monarch died, the flag never comes down as the position is immediately filled. Interesting.
Raptor, the Queen is there sort of like Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas?
Geez, glad having monarchs always stops people from getting dictators.
Seems to me that having monarchs is a prelude to getting dictators.
Reading this article by Turnbull, I am even more convinced that the Libs have shot themselves in the foot by dumping him.
RaptorG, a practical question for you.
What do you imagine might happen to the Australian constitution if Britain declared itself to be a republic?
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, you know…
I suspect that would never happen under the Russian constitution either. Those Ruskies, they have everything don’t they? Good vodka, good tennis players, working constitutions. Were that I could be Russian for just a day.
Okay.
I like Malcolm Turnbull. Well, let me qualify that. I’m sure he’d stretch my liking of him if I actually knew him personally. But I think Malcolm’s public record and his choice of causes by which he chose to politically live and die, suggests has had the nation’s interests at heart, at least some of the time. When he became Opposition Leader, I thought it would be a good thing for the country. Wouldn’t it be good, I thought, if we could have some kind of consensus on climate change from both parties and they could get on with the business of hammering each other with other stuff that parties are wont to hammer each other with. Unfortunately half the Liberal Party didn’t agree. Shame.
Which got me to thinking:
There was once a Liberal Party which had a small but influential left faction which operated to influence the right wing on matters of importance like social policy. Take Greg Barns and his disendorsement by Howard over Tampa. Or Peter Baume and the work he did with Atsic. People like that. Okay they were a bit elitist, mostly came from Melbourne, were more Armani than Versace, but they had a lefty kind of vibe going. People don’t much believe me when I suggest it, in fact they look at me all askance, but Malcolm belongs to that tradition. Malcolm sacrificed his leadership on a principle not so long ago. Now maybe the thought he could swing it. But even so, Liberals don’t much do that anymore, take chances like that. I do hope Malcolm keeps writing on issues of national importance from the back benches. Even though in his evocation of the ‘Australian identity’ we have a call to that egalitarian, classless arcadia – an evocation I would still question as real or ideal. Still, it’s an exploration of identity, an exercise in itself, that has long lain dormant. The question of identity and the republic are inextricably tied. In raising these issues, I sincerely hope Malcolm continues to also raise the ghost of that decimated, incapacitated and ghostly figure of the Moderate Liberal, by writing pieces such as these in the face of the Abbott’s Odes to Whiteness. I hope Malcolm continues to remind his party of what it needs, to become relevant to the Australian electorate again. Or I hope he leaves and starts another party which addresses these issues – issues on which both Liberal and Labor seem quite happy to ignore.
Tyro Rex @ 10, Exactly!!! Funny but true.
Actually I’m totally over all the nonsense of genuflecting to royalty, and giving them automatic right to run the show. Wills is a nice young lad, as far as one can judge from the fawning media reports, but he is a product of the English aristocracy. We don’t need to continue importing that ruling class nonsense into Australia.
PatriciaWA @19, I reckon you are right on the money!
Turnbull seems like a much underestimated man, so far, who has more interesting ideas than Rudd on many issues. He is certainly much more coherent and consistent in his ideas and outlook than Abbott.
Incidentally, it is hard to imagine a shallow-minded, snooty silvertail taking holidays in Peru, Argentina and Cuba. That choice speaks more of an interesting and open mind, and a willingness to “rough it” a bit. Not a typical silvertail holiday like Paris, Vienna, Prague, museums, opera and ballet.
Hannah’s dad @33, totally agree that Aussies can walk and chew gum, if we feel inclined. ‘Bout time we did so, and all…
Agree with Katz @34 and @43 that the current system is rediculous, and nonsensical in the long term.
Surely, sooner or later Aussies will wake up, wipe the sleep from their eyes, and think “what are we doing, hanging onto this archaic arrangement?”
Casey @ 44, only pic I could find of NSW Liberal Senator Chris Pulpick on the web – but a goodie – on campaign flyer with Andrew Peacock from 1990, promising to cut greenhouse gases by 20% by the Year 2000 amongst other environmental policies.
Those were the days…when JWH was just that “frakkin little $^#&@” – quoteth Jeff to Andrew.
Double click the flyer to see close up – it could be a Green’s flyer…but cannae see if Chris’s tie was Versace but. Fletcher Jones?
http://www.crikey.com.au/Election-2007/20071116-Andrew-Peacock-was-a-greenie.html