Let’s get rid of this embarrassing King’s Birthday holiday

Polar winds, rain and snow aside, most of Australia is going to appreciate today’s public holiday and give little thought to the reason behind it. I’m going to ruin that a bit by stating categorically that it is a ridiculous and embarrassing holiday.

While the US is approaching 250 years of independence, Australia still pauses to celebrate the birthday of a British king, flouncing around in ceremonial garb like the petulant George III in the Broadway hit Hamilton. Only he’s not singing “You’ll be back” because we never really left!

King Charles’ inherited superiority is the opposite of equality.Credit: AP

For a long time, supporters of an Australian republic spoke with dewy eyes of the day King Charles would finally supersede his mother – convinced that the very sight of the perpetual English prince as king would kick-start the movement once more, and propel Australia relentlessly away from its British colonial past. That has not occurred.

That was another time and place – when there was less to distract us from reality, and more vigorous debate about Australia’s history, values and future. Nowadays, any reference to national debate is condemned as elite tut-tutting.

On Australia Day this year, journalist David Penberthy condemned those who questioned the appropriateness of the date as “haranguing” the vast majority who just want to “sit around and have a couple of quiet ones”. He might be right, but what a half-hearted democracy that is: greedily grasping the freedom to celebrate – watching the footy or “burning a few snags with mates” – without ever turning our minds to how that celebration is generated.

How do we explain to the millions of migrants who come to call Australia home – the backbone of our nation – why it is so culturally important to celebrate a public holiday with mates and beers and snags, and so culturally inappropriate to enquire about the origin of the holiday?

Aussie as? King Charles and Queen Camilla during their visit to Sydney in 2024.Credit: Getty

Because, like it or not, today’s sleep-in comes courtesy of agreeing to keep an indulged English prince (as he was for 73 years) as your King. The position may be symbolic, ceremonial and relatively powerless. But however you spin it, he is our King, and he is the Australian head of state because of the privileges and status bestowed on him by his people.

Endorsing an unelected, hereditary figurehead clashes with how most Australians want to portray themselves; most importantly, it clashes with the quintessentially Australian idea that everyone is entitled to a fair go – our abbreviated and informal version of the US’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

Those distilled values – whether in the American or Australian vernacular – are shorthand ways of referring to the driving force of democracy; the fight for equality. As that greater observer of democracy Alexis de Tocqueville noted, equality is the basic theme that has maintained itself through the ages, that has prevailed through the obstacles and contradictions of Western intellectual history.

Equality doesn’t mean that some people don’t hold power or status. What it does mean is that power and status are earned – and that they can be taken away and exercised by someone else.

No matter what King Charles does, his reign will endure until he dies or abdicates, at which time it will be immediately embodied in another family member. This is incontestable, inherited superiority – the opposite of equality. Equality doesn’t mean sameness either – in fact, it means the freedom to be different.

Perhaps the growing supremacy of sport in Australian culture, and all that goes with it, is the reason behind Australia’s lack of interest in the source of our democratic freedoms. We don’t do difference very well any more. We were far more eccentric in the past. We shy away from discussions about politics or ideas, content with the distraction of betting on who kicks the next goal.

Patrick White might have been right when he predicted that “sport could sink us”.

The inclination to run away from political discussion is passed off as endearing Aussie nonchalance – “she’ll be right, mate”. But it’s not admirable – it’s a sign of privilege and immaturity. Every Australian should be able to explain what it means to be a democratic country, and how it aligns with our freedoms, including the freedom to celebrate the natural beauty, the clear skies and clean waters of our land.

Every Australian should recognise their freedom to observe, judge and criticise their nation – a marker of democracy. This includes a vigorous questioning of today’s celebration, and the right to wonder what the hell it means.

If our right to criticise were taken from us, we would certainly feel its loss. But would we even be able to articulate what went wrong?

As in the US, the greatest threat to our political freedoms may be indifference and lack of interest.

All new Australians are informed of what citizenship means; of the freedom that it bestows. Perhaps it will be these Australians – many from less democratic nations and more attuned to what democracy looks like – who will question the incongruity of a loudly egalitarian nation participating (however feebly) in the birthday party of an unelected figurehead – an elderly King on the other side of the world.

Let’s hope a new and inquisitive generation of Australians will reignite the flame of republicanism. Let’s hope sometime soon we’ll give the King his final birthday greetings, and tell him, finally, belatedly, to nick off.

Brigitte McLaughlin is a writer and librarian.

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