Patrick Carlyon: TV interview no basis for republic push

A fresh push by Aussie republicans is inspired by nothing less than Oprah and a TV performance by an American actor.

Those pesky republicans never went away. Think rebels without a pause.

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull has been out and about, spruiking. It’s about “independence”, he says, as if our country must be freed from oppression.

The Australian Republican Movement is touting a new model for later this year.

The renewed push — for nothing less, mind, than reinventing the political system of one of the world’s safest democracies — is inspired by a TV performance by an American actor and her adoring husband.

The reviews are in. The royals are “out of touch” and a “family in crisis”, it’s said, as if the royals being out of touch and in crisis is something new.

These scandals are held to be unlike any other time in the royal household, despite the institution’s longer history of executions and infidelities, and shorter history of narcissism and entitlement.

A father screening calls? A closet racist? Prospective sisters-in-law slamming doors? It sounds more like a Home and Away script.

Yet the republicans have massed in response. The time is nigh. Dear Queen Elizabeth is ageing and won’t be there forever. Her replacement, Prince Charles, has been dastardly towards his son, and wasn’t he so mean to Princess Di?

Queen Elizabeth and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Picture: AFP

It’s true that the republican idea is unfinished business for many Australians. It sits like that Ikea flatpack you bought all those years ago.

The purchase made sense at the time, but only until you glimpsed the misery and confusion that lay between the vision and the reality. So you dumped the flatpack in the shed, unopened, and pretended it wasn’t there.

The symbolism of a republic sounds like a good idea, much like helping a child with year 10 trigonometry, and discovering that aspiration and execution are sometimes mutually exclusive.

The problem for republicans is not what’s wrong with the current model, but what’s right.

They are rebels against the prevailing line. Only a third of Australians supported a republic in a recent survey. Support has been stymied by all those Australians who rushed to read the instruction booklet all those years ago, and then wisely decided it was too hard.

Younger Australians may be more enthusiastic than those who lived through those fevered calls for change.

But republican reform faces the same obstacles of last millennium. No one will ever agree. An accepted model is as vexed now as it was for the failed 1999 referendum.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: NCA NewsWire

A model would have to pass parliament, then the people. In parliament, there are advocates for radical reform, and advocates for tinkering. Their support for reform will fragment as soon as a concrete proposal is put.

Add a vague sense of suspicion. Rewriting a political system is fraught. Very few people understand the details. Many countries have suffered for unintended consequences of constitutional change.

There is something jarring about republic speak when it is not promoted for the people, by the people, but (as in 1999) by the likes of Turnbull. He may own a leather jacket, but he seems as out of touch with Australian aspirations as poor Prince Philip.

There is no lever for action here. Sentiment and reason do not unite. The future of the country does not depend on a republic, much as spirited debate about changing the national anthem or flag ends up feeling like too much trouble.

Republic or not, tomorrow will be much like today, and it will make no difference to whether Richmond beats Carlton next Thursday night.

Anyway, we do have Australian citizens as our leaders, despite the rhetoric. From Billy Hughes in 1919 to Scott Morrison in 2021, Australia has a proud heritage of extolling Australian values in telling other countries to get over themselves.

The royals did not intervene when Australia’s John Curtin told Britain’s Winston Churchill to get nicked in 1942. Or when Whitlam was dismissed in 1975.

It’s not what the royals do.

They are ornaments to a system which thrives on autonomy. They are not working parts. If young people are shocked to hear about the Queen’s titular perch, it is probably because she never has and never will invoke her notional powers.

You don’t need to be a monarchist to shy from a republic. Australia is built on independence, resilience, mateship and humour. It does not bend to the carping of royals, as it does not yield to grandiose failures of 1999.

There are sound reasons why that flatpack of republicanism has laid in the shed, unopened and forgotten, for more than 20 years.

It should stay there.

Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist

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