A republic, Indigenous recognition and a gutful of Zoom. Peter Cosgrove is not shy in retirement

For a man who has enjoyed a picnic lunch with the royal family at Balmoral Castle, General Sir Peter Cosgrove has spent a fair bit of time thinking about how Australia might work as a republic.

The former governor-general, chief of the defence force and knight who felt the tap of the Queen’s sword on his shoulder can see the potential for an Australian president. But he can also see the risks.

General Sir Peter Cosgrove at McMahons Point in Sydney.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“How do we get a president? I'm thinking that it needs to be in, if you like, concert with this principle of parliamentary democracy. It needs to be the will of the parliament,” Cosgrove says.

Reducing his thoughts to a pithy line is difficult, and he devotes a chapter to the republic question in his new memoir, You Shouldn’t Have Joined … , which touches on being a soldier in Vietnam and East Timor, military leadership and years in the business world before delving into his time in Yarralumla. Yet he is animated about possible republican scenarios.

“I don’t actually like the idea that the prime minister says, ‘Bill Smith, you’re the governor-general’ because Bill Smith might say, ‘if I’m governor-general, I might have to sack you one day’. I’d like there to be a little bit of an umbrella over that.”

He is clear there would be more involved than simply deleting “governor-general” and inserting “president” in the constitution and carrying on. Cosgrove appears warm to the idea of an advisory council of eminent Australians playing a role, perhaps coming up with a name for the prime minister and parliament to endorse. He is cooler about an elected president: “What happens to the Westminster system?”

Cosgrove expects agitation near the end of Governor-General David Hurley’s term and understands there is a desire for a system that “emphatically emphasises our independence”. But he regards other matters as more pressing, including constitutional recognition for Indigenous people.

“I don’t think there’s any nation in the world that thinks we’re creeping around London trying to find out what we should do next – nobody thinks that. As many people who say it’s antiquated, as many people say the historical ties are part of who we are.

Peter Cosgrove meets the Queen in 2017.

“Move away from that, what’s more important? Mucking around with that or fixing up or taking another large step towards resolving issues between a 60,000-year-old civilisation of First Australians and the more recent arrivals? Who knows whether it would be fixed by Recognise, but work’s still on the table.”

The crash course in constitutional law comes upstairs at Piato, where the staff know him well and give him a gentle ribbing about the pictures of him as a younger man on the book’s back cover. (On the front, he’s “covered in stuff” and he loves the contrast with the fresh-faced Duntroon cadets.) It’s a regular haunt for Sir Peter and Lady Lynne in McMahons Point, and he needs little encouragement to get out and see people.

“I’ve had a gutful of Zoom,” he says. “I understand that it’s better to do that than not do it, but I so much more appreciate the personal contact.”

At 73 and with a third grandchild born early this year, “the dance card fills up” as people think he has more time in retirement. He also finds it hard to say no, which is why he led the Cyclone Larry taskforce in 2006 during his first retirement and how he ended up in charge of the Business Council’s bushfire recovery program. He hesitated when then prime minister Tony Abbott phoned to offer him the role of governor-general, but only because others were within earshot.

“It would be disingenuous of me to say that I'd never, ever thought of it before,” Cosgrove says. He would tell people “with faux humility” he paid no attention to speculation he was in line for the job, but he looked at the market on Sportsbet and saw his odds were at $1.30.

His tenure was such a politically turbulent time that Government House might have benefited from revolving doors, with three prime ministers — Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. Was he never tempted to sack any of them?

“Absolutely not,” Cosgrove says. “I think I make it plain in the book that I got on very well with them all. Being a close observer who is in no way politically aligned, it was fascinating to have that five-and-a-bit years observing at close hand the trials and tribulations of the exercise of our parliamentary democracy.

“I deliberately set out to be friendly, understanding that one shouldn’t be a friend. There should be that relationship separation because the constitution expects you to be vigilant to all the events that are happening, interfering in almost none.”

The former governor-general shares his thoughts on everything from the Dismissal to a republic in his new memoir, but keeps mum on private conversations.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Almost. Cosgrove has also written about Sir John Kerr’s decision to sack Gough Whitlam nearly 45 years ago, and wonders how history might have been different if the prime minister had been warned. What might have been said, Cosgrove-style? Find a quick solution or “we will be having a different conversation, I think you know what I mean”.

In 1975, he was a company commander at Holsworthy Barracks and watched the constitutional crisis with great interest. However, he had little time for rumours that the government would call in the military or that soldiers would rise up and demand to be paid.

“Neither of those had even the remotest possibility of happening,” Cosgrove says. “The government knew it would be a very difficult order for the military to swallow, and the thought that the soldiers would break out of barracks and go to Canberra, that’s ridiculous. Ridiculous.”

By then, he had already served as aide-de-camp to governor-general Sir Paul Hasluck and been among the first army officers to fly into Darwin after the Cyclone Tracy disaster. He had also seen combat in Vietnam, for which he was awarded the Military Cross.

From Tracy to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and today’s bushfire recovery, disasters have featured prominently in Cosgrove’s career. But he first caught national attention as commander of the United Nations taskforce for East Timor, Interfet, in 1999 and early 2000.

After an initial struggle to fit in, Cosgrove discovered early in his career he could do his job and stay professional in terrible circumstances.

“It always struck me, my equanimity. I’m not boasting about this, every person is different. I feel hugely for first responders who see it day after day. The nature of combat is you will see some terrible scenes, you may even cause some terrible scenes. But you’re not doing that day after day like a policeman or an ambo or a fireman.”

As chief of the defence force, he was conscious of being “like a man from Mars” to most soldiers, sailors and airmen. He would be in uncle mode and talk about leave or sport, while “the blokes who are tap dancing in front of your desk are service chiefs”.

“Morph into being governor-general, for a start you’re not around to give other people rockets. You are there to hear from them. The hearing-to-speaking ratio is two or three to one. You can’t turn up as governor-general to a gathering and not say anything, they want to hear from you. But if you’re there an hour, it’ll be 50 minutes of listening.”

Peter Cosgrove is keeping busy in retirement.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Avuncular and gregarious in person and in print, he says his memoir could be “a form of travelogue with some sermonising interspersed” as the Cosgroves visited about 40 countries between 2014 and 2019. He makes it clear the book is not about settling any political scores.

Cosgrove never came close to warning a prime minister, but he did offer encouragement and “as a bloke who wasn’t after their job” would not be shy about telling them they were looking haggard or in need of a holiday. “That’s how I saw that encouragement. I never saw that ever as ‘do you think you should do more on such and such a policy issue?’. I couldn’t do that, that’s not the role of the G-G.”

Just as he will keep prime ministerial confidences, quoting the Queen is not the done thing. Cosgrove reports she is a wizard at lively conversation and he was touched to be invited to a picnic lunch on their last visit. The Queen played mother.

“It was evident that Lynne and I enjoyed her goodwill,” he says. “It made every conversation – and they built upon each other because we saw them a lot — into a very convivial occasion. We cherished them.

“And the last time we saw the Queen, which was in 2019 in August sometime, it was a little sad. We knew that we would not see her in an official capacity again. We would have no expectation of saying ‘we’re in the UK, we’d like to see the Queen’. A lot of people might like to do that.”

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