The death of a monarch doesn’t necessarily portend a new era of social and political change. But it can act as a beacon, a signpost, for later perspectives when documenting the grand sweep of human endeavour. Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1952 didn’t change the trajectory of Britain and the Commonwealth but it did coincide with an end to the many privations, including rationing, of the post-war years. What lay ahead was a new world of peace, opportunity and aspiration – particularly in Australia, where the American ideal of a car-based suburbia flourished. Out with the dark and congested inner city, in with the light, space and modernity of a separate house on a separate block of land.
In this post-war Elizabethan age Australia industrialised with the arrival of global enterprises that built alumina smelters and car manufacturing plants. The iron ore deposits of the Pilbara were first harnessed in these golden years. Australia’s export base widened to include iron ore, coal and later gas. We prospered mightily as a consequence.
Meanwhile, the advent of large-scale immigration expanded the workforce and the tax base. Every year during the 1960s more Baby Boomer workers entered the workforce than Great War diggers entered retirement. All of a sudden, a different world was possible, including social welfare programs and signature infrastructure projects such as Sydney Opera House. Entire new cities emerged, like the Gold Coast, based on the novel concept of an extended retirement.
By the 1970s, the women’s movement lifted workforce participation and injected greater spending power into the Australian home. The home changed as a consequence. Out with separate kitchen and dining rooms, in with a single but expansive kitchen-family-TV room. Everyday life was transformed by the rising spending power of women.
It is fair to ask whether Queen Elizabeth contributed by example to this greater movement. And what might a change of sovereign mean for the future? The early 2020s, much like the post-war years, is an era of political and social change. At some time after World War II America’s dominance was going to be challenged. And it was only a matter of time before a deadly “local” virus spread globally, given the scale of aviation movements. Elizabeth’s passing merely affirms these years as an era of transition. We are now more or less untethered from the generation that remembered the Great Depression, that lived through World War II and helped rebuild what they considered to be a better world in the post-war era.
The age of Elizabeth also neatly coincides with the rise and fall of the Baby Boomer generation. It’s now time for the Millennials to bloom, to build communities, to care for elders, to protect, to defend and maybe to reshape the institutions and the protocols they have inherited.
The world that lies ahead is ours to shape. We can be fearful of change, of having the established order of things thoughtlessly or even recklessly unravelled, of being placed in invidious positions, of having to make impossible choices. Or we can be confident that whatever the challenges ahead, we have the resources, the skills and the determination to prevail. It is the role of leadership, at all levels, to ensure that these attributes are supported and cultivated. Indeed it is qualities like resourcefulness, selflessness and kindness that will get Australia through these turbulent transition years, whatever they may hold.
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