Last Monday ABC’s Q&A dedicated an entire show to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Ostensibly the program was an occasion for her to reflect on her prime ministership. However, the fact that the words “gender” and “misogyny” were mentioned no fewer than 25 and 11 times gives you an idea as to where this was headed.
According to host Hamish MacDonald, Western democratic female leaders “are the winners” in responding to the coronavirus. In response to a female audience member who cited gender as an impediment in entering Parliament, he asked “Did the experience that Julia Gillard went through as prime minister encourage you to pursue politics or discourage you”. For good measure, MacDonald played an excerpt from Gillard’s so-called misogyny speech.
“Are you surprised at the fact that it still has some kind of resonance, even now,” he asked Gillard.
Gillard faced only three questions that were critical of her. Two concerned Gillard’s cutting the single parent’s pension. The other was regarding her refusal to support same-sex marriage during her time in Parliament, a question that was prefaced by “I did and still do admire and respect you”.
There were no questions regarding the numerous failures of her administration, including the mass drownings of asylum-seekers, the botched “Captain’s Pick” of senator Nova Peris, the so-called “Malaysian Solution” struck down by the High Court, or the infamous carbon tax that Gillard promised would never eventuate. Even her government’s abrupt decision to ban live cattle exports to Indonesia in 2011 – a determination which last month a Federal Court found was unreasonable and invalid, thus leaving the Commonwealth liable for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars – did not rate a mention. Not even a question along the lines of “What on earth were you thinking with the ‘We are us” speech?”
Only a soft Q&A ride for some
Now compare this to former Prime Minister John Howard’s appearance on the same show in 2010. Host Tony Jones and audience members subjected him to numerous challenging questions (as former leaders should expect), including the decision to take part in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the leadership tensions between him and Deputy Liberal Leader Peter Costello, Tampa, and the “Children Overboard” affair.
But this went beyond normal scrutiny. One audience member was permitted to ask “Do you feel that cutting your teeth in politics during the White Australia policy contributed to your somewhat antiquated view of Indigenous Australians and refugees? To top it off Jones ambushed Howard with a pre-recorded video question from former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.
By comparison, this week’s Q&A episode was a puff piece. It was a reinforcement of the fictitious mantra that Gillard’s downfall had nothing to do with ineptitude and everything to do with her gender. An astute and objective host would have taken issue with Gillard’s denunciation of then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in 2012, especially her assertion that no other Prime Minister had faced demands she “make an honest woman of herself”.
Actually, some faced far worse accusations. In September 1984, Opposition Leader Andrew Peacock accused Prime Minister Bob Hawke of corruption. “I see that the little crook is running,” Peacock said as Hawke departed the chamber. “He is a crook, and he knows it. He is a crook, and he is running from the Parliament. He is running away from the enforcement of the law … This little crook is slowly being judged for what he is, a perverter of the law of this country and one who associates with criminals and takes his orders from those who direct those criminals.” Clearly some people have short memories. Or maybe they are just young and naive.
Still maintain this was one of the greatest moments in modern Australian history. https://t.co/nGcNFmZUxh
— Julia Baird (@bairdjulia) July 10, 2020
A great moment. Always worth remembering! https://t.co/VSUm2UDtXg
— Juanita Phillips (@Juanita_Phillip) June 24, 2020
As for this week’s other lost cause, step forward professor Jenny Hocking, as well as Sydney Morning Herald columnist and chair of the Australian Republic Movement, Peter FitzSimons. On Tuesday, the National Archives released correspondence between Queen Elizabeth II and then Governor-General Sir John Kerr, the contents of the letters having been keep secret since 1975.
Hocking – also an ardent republican and the leader of the campaign to release these documents – declared this week the exposé would reveal a “broken” system. “It will reflect upon how we feel having, as our head of state, a queen who is resident elsewhere and is not an Australian citizen,” she said, saying the repercussions would be “volcanic”. For many republicans, this would be the smoking gun, the proof the Queen was complicit in Kerr’s dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and ultimately the catalyst for Australia ditching the monarchy.
Republicans clutching at pearls
That was the expectation, this was the reality: “I decided to take the step I took without informing the Palace in advance because under the Constitution the responsibility is mine and I was of the opinion that it was better for Her Majesty not to know in advance,” wrote Kerr on the day of the dismissal to the Queen’s private secretary Sir Martin Charteris, “though it is, of course, my duty to tell her immediately.” Volcanic repercussions? Pfft.
“The Palace letters have proved to be every bit the bombshell they promised to be,” Hocking wrote on Tuesday, describing a noise about as loud as that of a pimple popping. “The damage this has done to the Queen, to Kerr, and the monarchy is incalculable.” She was not alone in the histrionics. “I am gobsmacked by the letters,” FitzSimons stated in his capacity as ARM chair. “In the days before Federation there was a Colonial Secretary deciding what would happen in the Australian colonies well before anyone in those colonies knew about or had any say in it. The palace letters bring to live (sic) precisely that kind of practice, still happening, courtesy of our colonial constitution.”
What a comedown from 2017, when FitzSimons wrote excitedly “Hocking’s analysis reveals that unelected British officials, and very likely the Queen herself, were aware that Australia’s democratically elected leader was likely going to be dismissed well before Gough himself, and – in the case of the officials at least – even took part in meetings that helped make it happen.” By the sounds of it, FitzSimons had expected the release would reveal a holographic image of the Queen telling Kerr to “Execute Order 66”.
We can expect the bush lawyers to rage for days on end, but to no avail. Professor Anne Twomey, one of Australia’s foremost constitutional law experts, said that the release of the letters had done nothing to advance the conspiracy theories. “So the Kerr-Palace letters, instead of showing that the Palace interfered in the dismissal of the Whitlam government,” she wrote, “showed that Whitlam sought palace interference, but didn’t get it. We are an independent country after all.”
Not surprisingly, FitzSimons has tried to spin this latest setback as an opportunity to argue the case for an Australian republic. His enthusiasm is admirable, his faith in his ability to achieve that is vastly exaggerated. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in January 1997 about a phone poll that revealed 34 per cent of British citizens were opposed to the monarchy, he was schadenfreude on steroids.
“It is going to be neither helpful nor productive to laugh at the Australian monarchists’ plight – Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! – like that, and all of us must resist the temptation to completely guffaw out loud, maybe like this – HA! HA! HA! HAW! HAW! HAW! – what must clearly be excruciating for them,” he wrote.
And in August 1999, three months before the republic referendum: “What the whole thing desperately needs to make it live is some lowbrow thunder, so as to even things up a bit, and as it happens I am just the man for the job,” he said. “Are you, or are you not, in favour of Australia remaining an international embarrassment by continuing to sniffle and cling onto the apron strings of Mother England,” he sneered.
What a logically sound and well considered argument. “Monarchists always love to portray republicans as elitist,” he continued “for some reason totally ignoring the fact that their very raison d’etre is to defend the power and privilege of Betty Windsor, who has never worked a day in her life …” For some inexplicable reason FitzSimons’s reasoned and measured appeal failed to win over voters.
Since becoming the ARM chair in 2015, he has continued to belittle monarchists and those undecided on the issue, referring to them as “Little Englanders”. No doubt this week they were resisting the temptation to guffaw at what must clearly be an excruciating time for FitzSimons.
As for the chances of Australia becoming a republic I will not speculate. But I am certain the one responsible for leading the charge is not the man for the job.
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