Republicanism

Let’s not be too precious about using our national symbols

Happy Australia Day everyone.

Emblems can be a handy marketing prop, a means of identifying one’s heritage – and a cause of impassioned debate, write Richard White and Melissa Harper. Maude Wordsworth James was an enthusiastic ”patriot”. Her contribution to Australian nationalism was the promotion of ”cooee” as a patriotic symbol. One night in 1907, sleepless with family money worries, inspiration hit. She would sell the cooee as a national souvenir – patriotism for profit.

James designed cooee jewellery, wrote sentimental cooee songs, made up atrocious cooee jokes. She wanted all homes to have a cooee corner filled with her knick-knacks, including a cuckoo clock with a spear-carrying Aborigine emerging to ”cooee” the time.

She did quite nicely from her enterprise. But she went too far, registering ”cooee” as a trademark, patenting jewellery designs and copyrighting songs. She felt she owned the cooee. When the Heidelberg district volunteers’ farewell social committee struck cooee medallions in 1916 she demanded royalties.

Lawyers politely pointed out that she owned her cooee designs, not the cooee itself. As a national symbol, cooee belonged to everyone. Appropriated by the First Fleeters from Aboriginal people, it stood for Australia.

The rights to own and use national symbols are complicated. The public is prevented from using some symbols. It is, understandably, illegal to reproduce the national symbolism of banknotes indiscriminately and to misuse the coat of arms.

The word Anzac has been protected by regulation since 1921, and its commercial use still requires ministerial approval. Only in 1994 was a partial exception made for the sale of Anzac biscuits (though not Anzac cookies). In April an attempt by iTunes to market 50 Anzac songs and an ”Anzac Day sale” by Tiger Airways met with departmental disapproval.

When it comes to some national symbols some Australians regard themselves as more equal than others. In theory, all Australians have equal rights to use the flag but the Returned and Services League claims special privileges over how it should be used. The irony is that the flag Australian troops fought two world wars under was the Union flag, not the present Australian flag.

Commercial uses of national symbols raise other ownership problems. About 1901 a flurry of businesses used trademarks to identify themselves with Australiana. Billy tea acquired the rights to Waltzing Matilda, changing words to suit their image. Australians could buy Kangaroo bicycles, Boomerang explosives and Possum wines. Few of those trademarks survived. Among those that did, few are now Australian owned – Rosella tomato sauce is; Billy tea and Emu beer are not.

More of a problem occurs when an existing brand becomes an Australian symbol. Vegemite, Akubra, Holden and Foster’s all benefit from their national associations. Their images are carefully massaged. John Howard gave several a valuable prime ministerial plug as national symbols on his website (quietly dropped by Kevin Rudd).

But how far can the US company Kraft be said to ”own” Australians’ popular attachment to Vegemite? When we sought Kraft’s permission to use images of Vegemite in our book Symbols of Australia it wanted us to rewrite the chapter to conform to the corporate image. We refused.

The point is that in such an amorphous form of popular community ownership, normal forms of intellectual property rights based on commercial trade and individual possession do not work. We assume our national symbols are collectively owned by all Australians.

But national symbols are just as much the creation of people looking from outside as they are of those within. Foreigners, not Australians, made the Sydney Opera House an Australian symbol. In the 1960s and ’70s Australian politicians attacked it as an elitist white elephant; other states saw it as a Sydney plot; Barry Humphries branded it embarrassing kitsch.

Popular symbolism is uncontrollable, and that very messiness is part of the vitality of symbol making. Symbols depend on widespread acceptance but are promoted and contested by governments, commercial interests and odd – sometimes very odd – individuals.

There are plenty of symbols where ownership issues do not arise but proprietary battles have been fought over even seemingly innocent ”natural” symbols.

While some saw the gum tree as an aesthetic disaster, others proclaimed love of the gum a test of national loyalty. Last year the Advertising Standards Bureau received a complaint that Smith’s Crisps’ new ”BBQ coat of arms” flavour was offensive and degrading to kangaroos and emus. Smith’s countered it was ”celebrating our Australian heritage”.

The Southern Cross has been squabbled over ever since appearing on the flag designed by rebel miners at Eureka in 1854. It has been used: to promote the Communist Party, Catholic church, Builders Labourers Federation; by socialists, neo-Nazis, bikie gangs, fundamentalist Christians, rioters at Cronulla and ordinary Australians. It has been regarded as sufficiently inspirational and representative of Australia to name a motorway, a university, hotels and Melbourne’s swish new railway station.

But who owns it? Australians have laid special claim to it since the early 1800s, ignoring its appearance on the flags of Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and New Zealand.

We like to pretend it is Australian, but it belongs to the southern hemisphere. Perhaps the lesson is that national symbols are not even national – they belong to the world. Let’s not be too precious about them.

The historians Richard White of the University of Sydney and Melissa Harper of Queensland University are editors of Symbols of Australia.

The Royal Fart – just human

Like I have been saying for years, these people are just humans, like you and I. Their fart stinks like yours and mine.  

How guilty does the Duke of Edinburgh look? 

Ben Elton forced to apologise for royal rant

Daile Pepper

Ben Elton has been forced to apologise for his royal rant onGood News Week that enraged Brits this week.

The comedian and writer’s opinions on the monarchy, British sporting prowess and more disgusted the British, where newspapers ran outraged stories about his comments on the comedy show.

Elton is moving back to Fremantle from his base in London – and it seems the British public can’t wait to see the back of him.

Now his spokesman has said the comments were taken out of context and Elton simply made the comments against the monarchy when asked to play a word association game.

“He was making a joke about Australian republicanism, pointing out on a comedy show that the Queen and her family were far more reflective of the modern rainbow population they represented than any other,” the spokesman said.

Displaying his vitriolic wit and sarcasm on the comedy show, Elton made a series of comments regarding the UK, calling the Queen “a sad little old lady”, Prince Philip a “mad old bigot”, joking about sex with Margaret Thatcher and saying Prince Charles was just a “disillusioned ex-hippy”.

He said London had scored the 2012 Olympics in order to give Britons some chance at sporting success and because the rest of the world felt sorry for the British when it came to athletic prowess, and launched a royal rant against the Queen calling her “a sad little old lady who lives in state sponsored accommodation”.

On sex with Thatcher he said: “She sort of annoyed me because she would always want to smoke afterwards and I hated that because that was so dirty”.

Elton, born in Sussex, England, has divided his time between Fremantle and London for years. The writer and comedian has dual British and Australian citizenship and is married to Fremantle-based jazz saxophonist Sophie Gare.

Today the British press published stories outraged by the opinions the comedic writer displayed on the show on Monday night, with many readers also expressing their disgust.

“The Aussies are welcome to this loud mouthed self opinionated man,” wrote Col P of Ware, England on the Daily Mail website.

“Elton has left the building (er U.K) – and don’t come back – never liked him anyway, talentless, unfunny etc” wrote SOS.

“Good riddens (sic) to this new POM with his Sheila down-under . . . they’ve got real nasty reptiles there Ben!” commented P. Owen from Llandudno, UK.

“With an attitude like his North Korea would have been a more appropriate move. My sincere sympathies to the Australian readers,” wrote Phil from Canada.

Elton’s latest book, Meltdown, is a humorous look at the global financial crisis.

Elton and Gare are expected to move back to Fremantle next month so they can spend more time with the Australian half of their family.

Time for a new Republic debate – The prospect of an Australian republic remains alive

A decade after its defeat at the polls, the prospect of an Australian republic remains very much alive. The referendum loss on November 6, 1999, left many Australians dissatisfied. They had been denied a vote on their preferred model, and the proposal put to them had problems. For others, the arguments in favour of change have remained as strong as ever.

Things started to go wrong at the 1998 convention on the republic convened by John Howard, the prime minister. Only half of the delegates were elected by the people – the other half being MPs or government appointees.

In general the government appointees supported either the current monarchical system or minimal change. This undermined support at the convention for the direct election of a president. The appointed delegates skewed the result towards a more conservative outcome, with the model put at the subsequent referendum providing for the selection of a president by a two-thirds majority of Federal Parliament.

That the composition of the convention, rather than the merits of the models, proved decisive left prominent direct election republicans bitter and disillusioned. Some split from republican ranks to oppose the referendum in league with the monarchists. Together they gave life to the powerful ”no” argument that Australians should reject a ”politicians’ republic”.

It was always going to be a battle to win a majority ”yes” vote at a referendum, given Howard’s opposition. No referendum has ever succeeded in Australia without bipartisan support, let alone without the support of the prime minister.

These were not the only problems. Even the parliamentary appointment model put to the people by the Howard government had defects. The most significant was a mechanism by which the president could be dismissed unilaterally and without reason by the prime minister. Parliament would have been required to approve the dismissal, but could not overturn the decision, nor reinstate the president.

Opinion polls since 1999 have shown continuing strong support for a republic. Many continue to press for change to our constitution because it is at odds with our political and legal independence. They also rail against a system under which Australia’s head of state is the hereditary monarch of a foreign nation, chosen under a 1701 English statute that ranks men over women and rules Catholics ineligible. Sexism and religious discrimination are unacceptable tests for any position in modern Australia.

The Rudd Government came to office with a commitment to again put the issue of a republic to the people. This time things need to be different. There should be an initial popular vote on whether to move to a republic and, if yes, another on what type. Any referendum following these plebiscites should be on the model that people most prefer. Australians should not be asked to vote on a proposal that has been imposed upon them and that they regard as second best.

If the polls are right and the debate does not shift people’s views, this may result in a referendum on a republic in which our head of state is directly elected. I hold no fears about such a model, provided it is properly drafted.

The key would be to ensure that the powers of the new head of state are written down so the office cannot rival that of the prime minister. The failure of the current constitution to define the powers of Australia’s monarch and her representative, the governor general, represents a major fault in the system. In 1975 it meant Sir John Kerr could use powers that had not been known to exist to sack the Whitlam government.

Australians should have the chance to vote at a second referendum on the type of republic they most prefer. The next republic debate should not be driven by false fears. Instead, it should be about what sort of nation we aspire to live in, and how this can be reflected in the office of our head of state.

George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor of law at the University of NSW. He is a member of the national committee of the Australian Republican Movement.

On her own head

After 10 years in the wilderness, the republican movement is looking for a way out of the woods. David Marr reports.

On the day of her death, flags will be lowered around the globe to mark the passing of the most famous woman in the world. Obituaries will be published by the acre. Books will rattle down the assembly line appraising her long and apparently blameless reign. Though sad times, they will also be thrilling. The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of her heir – Charles III or William V – will be the most exciting thing to happen to the monarchy in half a century.

Yet republicans have pencilled this time in their diaries to start the next big push to get rid of the Crown. It’s not an obvious winning strategy. They are not proposing to have the constitutional machinery in place to allow a seamless transition from the Queen of Australia to a president. Instead, amid the archaic excitements of a coronation watched by billions, Australia is expected to muster the enthusiasm for conventions, a few rounds of plebiscites and hand-to-hand brawling with monarchists to stand, at last, on its own constitutional feet.

Since the defeat of the referendum 10 years ago next week, republicans have been living in a state of postponement. The political establishment has never been more republican, yet never more wedded to delay. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who seems never to have given a major speech on the republic, sidelined the 2020 summit’s overwhelming call to cut ties with the Crown and won’t even put a date on when he might turn his Government’s attention to the “inevitable” change; perhaps in his next term.

The old republican Malcolm Turnbull has done more than anyone to lodge in the public imagination the notion that we should let time do its work even if it takes another 20 years. “The actual end of the Queen’s reign will be such a watershed, an end of an era in every respect, that it will mean that many people will say that it is time to reconsider the status of the monarchy in Australia. So I stick to my view that after the end of her reign is the right time to reconsider the issue.”

His successor at the helm of the Australian Republican Movement, retired Major-General Mike Keating, is a more impatient man. “It’s just crazy to link a discussion and a possible vote on our national identity and our national future with some event – that is, her death or abdication – over which we have no control in a foreign country. It’s crazy to philosophically make that link. We may as well wait until the Dalai Lama attends Parramatta Eels footy club. It’s just about the same relevance.

“A lot of people think this will happen on a Tuesday and we’ll wake up on Wednesday and be a republic. Well, that isn’t the case.” He estimates that, at best, it would be three years from her death before we became a republic. “Perversely, if Charles and Camilla take over, the old Aussie ethos will say: he’s in there now and maybe he won’t be such a big dolt now that he’s the monarch; it’s only a fair thing to give the man a go …”

The 2005 engagement of the Prince of Wales – condemned so memorably by the Anglican Dean of Sydney Phillip Jensen as a “public adulterer” – provided the biggest spike in membership for the ARM since the referendum. Keating is coy about membership now. He talks of a “pretty solid base” of a few thousand. Like the republic movement itself, ARM is flatlining.

A decade’s polling provides no evidence that Australians are passionate republicans. To say the nation is split overstates the drama of the contest. The republic was, perversely, never more popular than in the weeks immediately after the failed referendum of 1999. But support soon fell from that high of about 57 per cent to bump along as it has for the past few years with 50 to 52 per cent for change, 30 to 40 per cent against and the rest of us bored, indifferent or undecided.

Time is not necessarily working in the republic’s favour. Figures revealed in May by UMR Research show that support for dumping the Crown rises with wealth and education as support usually does with liberal causes. The city is keener than the bush; men are more eager than women. But the republic is not a great cause of the young. It is a middle-age thing. The UMR figures suggest if you weren’t around in 1975, you don’t quite see the point.

For the convener of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, David Flint, the overthrow of the Whitlam government was a feather in the cap for the Crown. He also enthusiastically endorses the 1932 vice-regal sacking of the NSW premier, Jack Lang – although it saddens him that risk of another such crisis means no member of the royal family can ever inhabit Yarralumla. “They would need a guarantee and that is impossible to give.”

An hour spent with this man shooting the breeze about monarchy is never wasted. Professor Flint regrets the fall of the Nepalese house; chides America for the “serious error” of not restoring King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan; would rather like to see the Habsburgs (“They weren’t evil people”) back in business; and is sure a Bourbon restoration would benefit France. “They’ve never been able to get a constitution that works in moments of stress. It collapses. It’s a peculiar mix. It’s doomed to failure.”

Are monarchs different from you and me, I asked Flint over coffee at the Wentworth Sofitel. “No. Except that they are trained. Constitutional monarchs in a good system are trained from their early years to take the position.” Anybody can be trained. “If, for example, the Queen had adopted a child, and that had been accepted, I can’t see why that adopted person couldn’t fulfil the function.” They’re not inherently more caring or intelligent? “Reasonable intelligence is required. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to be a monarch. Indeed, it may be undesirable.”

That the Canberra A-team is no longer protecting the monarchy means, on the one hand, republicans can’t blame John Howard for their troubles any more. But, on the other, the monarchists have lost significant parliamentary firepower. The leading monarchists left in Canberra are Tony Abbott and senators Nick Minchin, Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Cory Bernardi and George Brandis.

Here’s something strange: Brandis to one side, they are all global-warming sceptics. Flint is one, too. In Australia, devotion to the Crown and blaming sunspots go hand in hand. This puts them seriously out of sync with the Mountbatten-Windsors who are as green as royal families get. In Brazil in March, the Prince of Wales declared global warming the “greatest and most critical challenge” facing the world.

Commemorations of the 10th anniversary of the referendum next week are muted. John Howard will dance a little jig on the grave of the republic by addressing monarchists at Sydney’s Tattersalls Club on Thursday. His subject: A Crowned Republic. The following day, a number of republican groups including the ARM will attempt to present a joint, formal letter to Turnbull, Rudd and Bob Brown urging the party leaders “to get beyond party politics” and reinvigorate the republican cause.

“When push comes to shove, you can’t get this on the agenda unless politicians want it on the agenda,” says Mike Keating. ”If they can’t summon the political will to overcome what may be called our timidity, or our apathy or the cringe factor, nothing will happen. It isn’t going to happen inevitably. Therefore, we need a spark.”

A referendum cannot even begin without a bill passing Parliament. It cannot succeed unless, as Turnbull says, it faces “almost no opposition” from the nation’s political leaders, state and federal. But the republic Australians want is the one they are determined we don’t get.

This fundamental conundrum is the focus of the only real passion in an otherwise bloodless contest. Eighty per cent or more of us insist that if there is to be a republic, its president must be directly elected. The figure hasn’t budged for a decade. Direct election is the overwhelming choice of all Australians, including monarchists. Once the dust settles, electing the president would bring all sides together.

A decade down the track, the people and the politicians still find themselves at loggerheads. So here’s the question republicans are facing: why would politicians reinvigorate an almost comatose movement to deliver a result they don’t really want? Until one side gives ground here, dumping the monarchy looks a very distant prospect.

Meanwhile, Prince Edward, Earl of Essex, president of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Scheme, was in Sydney this week working for what his family calls the Firm. He turned up at St Mary’s Cathedral School in a couple of Audis and a Ford van, attended by presentable NSW cops in suits with wiggly wires sticking in their ears. By prior arrangement, he waved to the crew from Kyle and Jackie O’s breakfast radio show broadcasting live from the footpath.

“Hello, hello,” he says as he moves around the room doing what royals do: showing interest. “Very good. Yep. Great.” He has big teeth and a comb-over. When he points, cameras flash. Every joke wins a chuckle. One of the boys has the job of presenting Edward with a gift. With a Sydney accent he stands up straight and says, “Your royal highness …”

The teachers I talked to were all republicans, but the Prince’s presence had effortlessly generated excitement. “There is a romance about them,” says Flint with a faraway look in his eye. “They certainly have an impact. Australians like royalty. I often say to members of the ACM, ‘never stand between Australians and visiting royalty – even minor members of European royalty – because you will be knocked over in the rush’.”