The Inspector-General of Misconception

by Frank Moorhouse

  So were the gun laws which John Howard pushed through the federal parliament and on to the states.

  The convening by Robert Hawke (our twenty-third) of non-partisan ‘summits’ on national issues was another example of the extended national leadership role of the PM.

  These examples and others like them stand out as exceptional but could be seen as a pointer to the evolution of the office and, at the same time, oddly, a harkening back to the earlier days of federal government.

  It is possible that the role of the Australian Prime Minister could be redefined back to what it was before ideological differences arose in the country; that is, before the socialism versus capitalism argument (although we are suffering a long hangover from that debate which still corrupts the civic discourse).

  It takes us back to before the existence of a tight party system.

  The parties, historically, despite their posturing, have never been that far apart in reality, and their policies and their behaviour were rarely predictable from the party platform.

  It has always been more accurate to label a government not by the party name but by the name of the PM – ‘The Whitlam government’, the ‘Keating government’, ‘the Howard government’.

  The early Prime Ministers of Australia were praised for what we would call ‘conflict resolution’ skills and their talents for innovative leadership.

  During the Depression, Lyons and three others defected from the Labor Party in response to the Leader of the Opposition, John Latham’s, call for bi-partisan government to cope with the economic crisis.

  Lyons tried for bi-partisan government but Labor Party suspicions and rancour frustrated this attempt.

  Lyons and others then formed a new party, the United Australia Party with Lyons as PM.

  Now, with the slow evaporation of ideological conflict, there is an absence of significant disagreement among the parties as to the nature of the economy and the society.

  All parties believe that a market economy needs supervision in areas of environment, working conditions, safety, urban planning, pricing and competition, oversight, corruption, and ‘national interest’.

  It is true that some people still see the parties as clans to which they must stick for life and for which we should be prepared to die – intellectually, at least – on the electoral battlefields.

  But, we suspect that along with the evolution of the Prime Ministership, parliament will change to being a more fluid political arena – that there will be more non-partisan bills, more referendums, more ‘free votes’ in parliament, more crossing of the floor, more abstentions, and more private member bills.

  Work occurs in committees and inquiries.

  Government will become more the politics of negotiated compromise or approximate consensus led by the PM.

  After all, most of the great issues during the life of a government arise after election and are not foreseen – the stolen children, gun laws, the East Timor crisis, the New Guinea crisis, the falling dollar, who comes into this country or doesn’t, Pauline Hanson’s rise, whatever.

  Most parties do not have thought-out policy or basic philosophy to meet these issues and nor are the answers to be found in their party handbook or in their ‘hallowed’ party traditions (which, anyhow, are usually rewritten to meet the issues of the day).

  Nor do voters have philosophies which give them push-button answers to political issues.

  If freed more from party constraint, the parliament would display a more accurate and flexible picture of the true preferences of members of parliament and their electorates than do their party affiliations. The American system is more flexible about party allegiances. Both Republicans and Democrats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives frequently vote with the other party.

  And there is a need for a new style of political opposition which goes beyond the debased idea of high school debating which characterises our politics now.

  High school debating has done much damage. It is training people in talking to win not to share, investigate, or negotiate.

  It would be one which has more understanding of the fog of government, will have a more sophisticated appreciation of human error and of the limitations of governmental intervention.

  The new opposition will form from those showing creativity and lateral thinking on social and international problems and it will develop a new repertoire of intellectual exchange with, hopefully, an abatement of political piety.

  We sense that we are slowly breaking out of the safety of the old bonding clichés and curses (while all conversational networks need bonding clichés let’s find some that are intellectually more respectable). Much of our demonology is stale.

  We suspect that this new opposition will take very little from the heritage of the Western Left.

  And who knows? We may see the idea of cabinets elected by the parliament-at-large or chosen by a dominant group from the parliament-at-large (as happened in earlier state parliaments).

  So cabinet selection would be based on talent not on party.

  At the time of Federation, this idea of parliament-elected ministries had much support.

  Although the American government is a different system, President Bush has a Democrat in his Republican cabinet.

  We don’t pretend that this style of government would be all sweetness and light. As Samuel Butler said in The Way of All Flesh (1903), ‘it is reasonable not to expect too much reason’.

  It could be a messier way of running government but it could also be a truer reflection of the state of opinion, come up with more creative solutions, be more open to reasoned negotiation (and, yes, yes, of course, at times open to unreasoned and venial negotiation also).

  We do not see the new style of government and Prime Ministership as being ‘presidential’ or ‘dictatorial’ – it is something distinctive which lies latent in the nature and history of our governmental system and is inherent in the art and mystique of Prime Ministership.

  And it is not going to happen overnight (or is it?!). But the next generation of political leadership will increasingly have to face an urge for more non-partisan politics. (Already the Labor Party is beginning to detach itself from the trade union movement.)

  We would have loose ‘parties’ as major issues arose, more networks than parties.

  A Prediction: It is our hunch that the first Prime Minister who transforms the election night covenant to ‘govern for all Australians’ into a non-partisan and negotiated agenda will find a special kind of power, approval, and charisma in this changing Australian electorate.

  THE MAXIMUM REPUBLIC

  In all the debate about the coming of the republic, the one position that has been missing is that of the Maximum Republic.

  We have had Minimal Monarchy, Minimal Republic, Full Monarchy, no-change. But we haven’t heard it for the Total Republic.

  The republican options have all been oh-so-timid and aimed at not frightening the horses; they have been without the imaginative leap.

  It befalls this Office, therefore, to provide an outline of such a Maximum Republic.

  We put it forward not in the spirit of advocacy or partisanship but as a democratic intellectual duty.

  It is our position that there is a need for Australians to ‘reconfront’ their civitas.

  If we are to change such a core structural element in the constitution of a nation-state from constitutional monarchy to republic, it might be well to take advantage of the ‘legal act’ of change to engineer a complete change of mood; to look at everything which a republic means or could mean.

  To refurbish the whole of the state in a republican garb. To not half do the job.

  For the deeper meaning of a republic and its history carries a historical break with a kind of thinking as much as with a political arrangement.

  It is then perhaps time for Australia to reconfront itself and to carry through the republican mission; to avoid what the other so-called republics – France and the US, for ex
ample – have done. They have faltered, they lost their nerve somewhere back in their past.

  If we choose a through-going republic, we will have an opportunity to ‘clean our vision’.

  Where do we start?

  At its deepest, a republic is fundamentally a break with theocracy and this is where the other republics have failed.

  The monarch originally was either the representative of god, exercising the divine right of kings, or god’s servant.

  At least, the monarch was defender of the ‘faith’.

  The church crowns the monarch in the UK. The coronation is a religious service.

  It is held in a cathedral.

  That has to stop if you have a republic. The linkage with religion has to be cut.

  But more, it is no use doing away with the monarch if you leave intact all the trappings of the religious linkage. Someone’s ‘god’ will still rule.

  Unless we are thorough, we will have a religious ghost then hovering around our parliamentary and civic affairs.

  We will have a subversive divine presence infiltrated through the ceremonials and nomenclature of our proceedings.

  We cannot go on opening parliament with a prayer or a religiously-based oath of office. Within that prayer and oath is a claim that the parliament is an instrument of divine will or that it is divinely ordained. That is monarchical thinking.

  The whole basis of republicanism is that the only authority is the People. There is no other authority. Once you allow a supernatural fiction such as god or ‘nature’ to be the source of authority, then only those with access to this invented god or to the messages of nature can claim power.

  The philosophy of republicanism is that we are alone on the planet. There is no other source of inspiration or wisdom.

  As that great republican first in modern times, Thomas Jefferson showed, it goes through to the very detail of daily life. Even to the way you run a dinner party.

  For that’s when you abandon gods as the source of authority and turn instead to the people. For a start, you embrace egalitarianism and the proposition that the human is the measure of all things.

  The only argument that the monarchists have going for them is that it is sometimes fun to keep about us things which are ‘quaint’.

  Quaint names and quaint customs which are perhaps no longer representative of our understanding of the nature of things but which tickle us and make us different. To remain a constitutional monarchy with a foreign head of state is about as quaint as you can get.

  We are too quick to rename things such as state schools or regiments or whatever in this country. It is fun to be surrounded by some quaint things. We do not have enough quaintness.

  However, our task here is to argue the republic to the Max.

  By so doing, we do not intend to eliminate entirely the linkage with the British past but only to ‘sanction the future’; to permit a future to emerge cleanly and unimpeded by language and imagery of the exhausted past.

  We are happy for there to be one statue of Queen Victoria in Melbourne. The rest have to go.

  We see it also as ‘cleaning the fogged windows’ of our civic life to allow us to ‘see’ civically. So much of the process of law and government and its meaning and justification are now invisible.

  The republican dinner party

  Jefferson wrote a memorandum on the republican dinner party in 1802 when confronted by the demands of diplomatic precedence.

  The English Minister of State demanded to go to dinner first, after Jefferson, and that as was diplomatic protocol, Jefferson as President should take the arm of the English Minister’s wife.

  There were also demands about who should be seated on the left and right of Jefferson.

  Jefferson saw this as giving precedence to the ‘Crown’ and of course, through the Crown to God, and he would not adopt this practice.

  In his memorandum he wrote that his policies on dinner parties at the new White House were to be ‘Pell Mell’ and ‘Nearest the Door’.

  He felt that any arrangement of placement based on diplomacy as it was then practised would involve him and his nation in deferring to the Crown and then by extension, kneeling to Strange Gods.

  Bully for Jefferson.

  Jefferson ran the best dinner table in the US at that time. He had a French chef and imported wines from France.

  He had lived in France for four years, and had advanced gastronomic aspirations.

  We think that is republican also.

  To eat ‘like a king’ is a way of appropriating and taking to the people all that kings once held as their divine right.

  Republics should study gastronomy. In fact, the amazing growth of interest in wine and food in Australia, the wine and food festivals, the emergence of fine restaurants, is in itself a republican impulse. We are beginning to ‘live like kings’.

  As the French revolution understood, ‘We conceive of nothing except by images.’

  We must reclaim the images of our social and political world and rewrite them afresh.

  This is not necessarily a solemn or onerous business; it can be a lot of fun.

  Republican dress

  Any robes and gowns which derive from the Crown must go.

  So must the usage ‘Crown of the hat’.

  We should redesign the robes of office in a republican style.

  No suggestion should be made by judges or priests or Sergeants at Arms in parliament that they are ordained or carry, by virtue of their robes of office, any feudal rank.

  Feudal rank itself derived from the ‘god’ through the monarchy.

  Republican calendar

  The clock and the calendar are the key daily reminders of ultimate change – that is the movement towards death.

  As the daily or hourly proclamations of existential change, they could be conscripted to serve as a reminder that we, by proclaiming a republic, a new ‘state of civic being’, have changed ourselves in a fundamental way.

  If we are not to entirely change the calendar even though the present calendar did come from Pope Gregory and the names of the days and months contain theological and superstitious meanings, we must do something with it.

  The French did change the names of the days and months for a while but the Church ultimately prevailed.

  But while keeping the old calendar of day-month-year, we suggest that we incorporate in all Australian calendars a notation of the beginning of the republic so it would read day-month-year but have added to it a notation proclaiming the year of the beginning of the republic; that is Year One of the Australian Republic would be denoted R1, R2 etc. 25 April, 2002 R1.

  There has to be in the calendar a daily reminder of our cleansing and affirmation of the fact that something has changed and something new is beginning.

  Street names

  We do not propose wholesale changing of street names. That would be a nuisance.

  We do propose, however, that in each city, town and village a symbolic street be renamed Boulevard of the Republic – the obvious candidates for renaming being all streets called King or Queen or Prince or Princess.

  We are not a-historical vandals. We believe that street names do embody history and that the flavour of that history should emanate from the streets we live in. Even if the residents do not always know the origin of their street names, there is an emanation from the very words used and, of course, historical detail in some cases.

  However, nothing is lost if we rename the Royalty Streets aforementioned (they could remain in brackets and smaller lettering underneath the new name).

  Pledging ceremonies

  There will have to be pledging ceremonies of loyalty to the republic, beginning with the highest officials and the armed forces and then the school children.

  Royalists who choose not to pledge to the republic will be given two years to think about it.

  They will not receive passports after that time.

  The coat of arms can go along with feudal relics such as the Or
der of Australia.

  Playing cards

  The Jack, Queen, King should be replaced by republican images. The French did this.

  The royal flush will be the republican flush.

  Gays

  Gays will have to drop the expression ‘queen’.

  Authors’ royalties

  The payments which creators receive for their work are called royalties because Queen Anne introduced them. They will be republicities.

  And as a celebration of creativity, they will, by law, be doubled.

  Currency and stamps

  It goes without saying that this will change to reflect the republican spirit.

  The letter

  This has nothing to do with the republic but there is something unsatisfactory about the mode of address and conclusion of the letter – ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ and ‘Yours faithfully’ or ‘Yours sincerely’. The fax and the email have brought home to us that these quaint forms of address should go.

  Just felt it was a good time to get that fixed up while we were at it.

  The names of the states

  Only Queensland and Victoria would need to change their names.

  Although while we’re at it, couldn’t we find something more imaginative than South Australia, Wesern Australia and the Northern Territory?

  It must have been a dull day in the Office of Names when they came up with those.

  No presidents

  Sadly, the whole idea of having a president or a titular head comes directly from monarchical thinking. Ideally, there should be no titular head, no president. We could have a National Master of Ceremonies and a National Clown. But no ‘heads of state’.

  The thing to remember is that the ‘physicals’ – the structures and styles and visible parts of civic life – always incorporate within them the ‘philosophicals’. There is a philosophical or ideological justification or authority residing in everything in civic life, including street names and so on.

  To change these is to see this. For those living through these changes, it is a chance briefly not only to change these but to see the civic skeleton if you like; to see, however briefly, a cat-scan of our very civic life and its rationale.