Issue of our future

IT’S the debate that never goes away: Should Australia become a republic?

It has raised its head again with federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten saying he will hold a referendum on the issue in his first term should Labor win the next election.

This is a very clever piece of strategic mischief-making by Mr Shorten designed to discomfort the PM (who led the republican push last referendum), split him from the royalists in his ranks, and generally fuel the perception Mr Turnbull is an ideological husk of his former self.

But beyond the political theatre it is just as likely to be an albatross around a first-term PM Shorten’s neck.

Years ago when Paul Keating was making republican noises crime figure Chopper Read said it was a Labor Party distraction plot — a case of ‘no food in the fridge so let’s paint the house’.

The dead gangster was no political expert but you get the sense that Chopper was on to something: the republic is a cause that excites certain types and is regarded by others as a suspect and irrelevant academic issue.

That will be heightened this time now that identity and symbolic politics are so prized by some politicians it is amazing anything tangible ever gets done.

So while a losing republic referendum for a first term Shorten government would be likely, there is still much merit to our young nation cutting the apron strings from Mother England. (A minimalist McGarvie model — which was not what we got to vote on last time — should assuage fears we would be dumping a working system for an experiment.)

We have a lot of affection for the quiet, dignified way the queen has performed her duties over the decades. And similar affection for the princes, William and Harry who have weathered the personal hardship of losing their mother 20 years ago this month. But the next Australian monarch will be King Charles.

We should thank England for our inheritance and proceed to stand on our own two feet.