Republic push not well timed

IN the days leading up to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the newly installed Albanese government announced NSW Labor senator Matt Thistlethwaite would serve on its first frontbench as Assistant Minister for the Republic.

Some conservatives, such as discredited Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith, bemoaned the timing of all this as a tasteless outrage.

I am sure the Queen wouldn’t mind. One of the many good things she has done as head of the Commonwealth for seven decades is respect the right of member nations to chart their own constitutional path. Indeed, 34 of the 54 Commonwealth nations are republics with their own head of state, so we are in something of a minority as things stand.

As far as tastelessness goes, I have always struggled with the idea of pinning renewed discussion of our constitutional arrangements to the moment of the Queen’s retirement or passing. It has been framed around a flawed tactical belief that the moment Her Majesty shuffles off this mortal coil, Australians will be up for an immediate discussion about our constitutional arrangements.

There are problems with this mindset that go beyond its craven overtones. The first is it confuses the personnel in the royal family with the system by which they provide countries such as ours with a head of state. If the republic is a good idea of itself, and constitutional monarchy such an innate affront to our independence, it seems weird to argue it should only be pursued when a less popular figure is heading the royal family.

I followed this recent election campaign fairly closely and at no stage did I get the sense the Labor Party was running on a front-and-centre promise of revisiting the republic question. I can’t remember a policy launch devoted to the subject. If

Labor is to pursue this question again, it has to grapple with two big questions.

Our new Prime Minister is wise to the first one, as is the Australian Republic Movement, and that is the need to deal first with the question of constitutional change to implement the Uluru Statement creating an Indigenous Voice to parliament.

We interviewed the PM on Friday and he made it absolutely clear winning a consensus for Uluru and then holding a referendum must take precedence over any republic push.

I also spoke to ARM chairman Peter FitzSimons, who agreed with that position but said he personally hoped if the Voice referendum were to succeed, it could be used as an example as to why constitutional change could be a good thing for the nation.

If I were an Indigenous Australian, I would be wanting the maximum distance placed between a Voice referendum and any discussion of a renewed republic push.

The key reason Paul Keating lost to John Howard in 1996 was that voters were experiencing what could be described as reform fatigue.

Keating’s big picture ended up being blown apart by the deliberate modesty of Howard, with his vision of a “comfortable and relaxed” Australia.

For this, Howard was derided by the trendies as having a visionless vision. Meanwhile, in suburbia and the regions, voters were tripping over themselves at the ballot box to back the guy.

I might be Australia’s lamest republic supporter, as deep down I really believe we had our chance in 1999 and blew it, in no small part because of the elitist tone of the Yes campaign.

Republic supporters should remember one of the things that killed it dead in 1999 was that while actors in Balmain and retired politicians who lived in Kooyong were hailing the idea as irresistible, many blue-collar and regional voters were scratching their heads and asking what was the point and how much would it cost.

The biggest danger in trying to argue for constitutional change over the next few years – be it the Voice alone, or with the added difficulty of a concurrent or looming push to get the republic back on the table – is that the No.1 issue people really care about right now is their hip pocket.

With petrol tipped to stay above $2 a litre, power prices surging and supply under threat, the prospect of recession in China (and therefore potentially globally), the new government cannot risk looking unfocused on bread-and-butter issues.

The recent federal election showed a class-based gulf has emerged in Australia that is comparable to the switch in the support base for the US Republicans and Democrats, particularly with the rise of Donald Trump. The US voter base has switched almost entirely, where the Democrats’ old blue-collar base swung to Trump while the coastal middle-class on either side of the US are now largely Dems.

The same thing is happening here, with the Liberal vote collapsing in its former middle-class strongholds as soft-left candidates swept their way to office.

With new Liberal leader Peter Dutton targeting middle Australia as his path to office, Labor had better be careful it doesn’t hand him any ammo at a time when people want a steely focus on bread-andbutter challenges.