‘Romeos’ of the republic must keep the dream alive

Federal parliamentary women, from all political parties, show their support for the Yes vote in the republic referendum.

And so the republic, much like Shakespeare’s Juliet Capulet, has been put into a deep coma after consuming a death-imitating drug, delivered by our own government. And all we Romeos of that fair dream are condemned to see her in mortal coma and simply get over it.

Instead, we’re left to worry about prices and the cost of living. And dear heaven, there’s lots to worry about out there.

But we republicans, we Romeos, hungry in our grief, running from behind, understand that the game has always been rigged against us. Of course, daily bread is an issue.

Imagine, though, if we said the Olympics were pure symbolism in the face of inflation and decided not to field a team in Paris later this year. Because, let’s remember, the Olympics are merely symbolic, too. In fact, there is no “merely symbolic”; don’t forget, we live and die and are remembered by that stuff as well. Man does not live by bread alone, though bread is a bloody good start!

Symbols are the stuff of human dreaming. And besides, this isn’t symbolic. It’s harder. It’s constitutional.

When I initiated the Australian Republican Movement back in 1991, the monarchy was a very public presence in daily life. All civic buildings had a portrait of the monarch, you could attend no public dinner without drinking a loyal toast, the image was on our money as well as our walls, and state governors and the governor-general actively reminded us of the existence of the monarchy.

Since the referendum on the monarchy we have seen a complete reversal, in that few of our oaths mention it, and at public events there is not the same ongoing and relentless reference to the monarch as there was in those days.

So what monarchy are we talking about now? It doesn’t impinge on our lives greatly, as it did then. John Howard should be at least elevated to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, the ceremonial position Robert Menzies was appointed to, as a reward for reducing the target of the monarchy and letting it be hidden by the current of Australian life. As if that current wasn’t a fake, and as if we were a real fair dinkum country instead of a secondary entity, as is the truth.

Tom Keneally

I found myself dragged along to St James’s Palace once for my first and probably last chance to meet Queen Camilla. I had avoided such events at home in Australia. It was Australian writer Kathy Lette, who couldn’t be argued with, and who really does seem to know everyone in Britain.

The then Duchess of Cornwall talked to us about recent books so knowledgeably and pleasantly that I asked myself, “What’s a bloke got to do to get sent to the Tower these days?” Afterwards what all people wanted to know was, was I charmed by her, and I said yes.

But every charming Englishwoman, of whom there are legions, does not automatically become the target of the vows, fealty and ultimate identity of Australians.

Mind you, it is not improbable to see a future in which a British demagogue – God knows they have a few – abolishes the Crown for its opposition to King Charles III, and the monarch and his wife seek asylum in Australia, and reign on in the Antipodes as Australian king and queen, while they remain a mere memory in England. But at least then they could credibly speak for us.

Then Prince Charles and Camilla wave farewell in Perth as they depart Australia in 2015. Picture: AFP.

Alexander Downer and Tom Keneally debate the republic in August 1992

The ARM needs a mechanism now to move the issue along, just as urgent matters to do with prices and interest rates are moved along ultimately by the people. I have some plans for public events that could potentially move us along without discourtesy to that splendid reader, Queen Camilla, and her spouse.

But the best hope of Australian republicans is the fact every one of us, including children born today, breaking towards the light, are subjects of a king thousands of miles off shore, and that in the end we’ll see this as the screwy set-up it is.

It’s not the King’s fault. Remember he has told us, and genially so, that if the day ever comes, he would bow to the wishes of the Australian majority. The fault is our own.

There will come a day when there is assent on this issue across parties, and when the nonsense will, by our own consent, be lifted from us. Until then we are a pretend nation, of pretend allegiances, a secondary entity to the primary Westminster and United Kingdom.

Queen Elizabeth and Robert Menzies

John Howard

Our swimmers and our tennis players will never save us from this ridiculousness of not being a dinkum people unto ourselves. For our children have no right to identify with an Australian head of state in Canberra, but owe allegiance to a British king.

And in the face of demagogues, of whom Britain has an oversupply, we could welcome Charles and Camilla Windsor, I hope, as ex-monarchs and honest retirees of Port Macquarie or Lorne or the Adelaide Hills. And how welcome they should be.

In the meantime, and I in no way expect he’ll be put off his breakfast, I withhold my allegiance from the King and publicly state I owe him no more than courtesy as the United Kingdom’s head of state. But in the end only a direct vote, as the ARM now proposes, will make me legal – or so I hope even at 88.

And watch out! Juliet will awake.

Tom Keneally was the founding chairman of the Australian Republic Movement, 1991-93. He won the Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark 42 years ago and has been shortlisted three more times.