Australia Takes Steps To Sever Its Royal Ties
A new minister is ‘testing the waters’ for a republic.
MELBOURNE, Australia — For decades, many Australians have found it curious that the country’s head of state is a queen sitting on a distant English throne. Occasionally, in times of controversy, they have discussed cutting Australia’s final monarchical ties. But more pressing issues have inevitably prevailed.
Now, change is on the way. Kind of.
Anthony Albanese, the newly elected prime minister, is an avowed republican. He has appointed the country’s first ever “minister for the republic” — a position intended to begin the transition to an Australian head of state. Polling shows that a slim majority of Australians would support a republic.
But that does not mean that constitutional change on the republican front is near the top of
Mr. Albanese’s agenda. The new ministerial position — an assistant minister — is a comparatively minor one, and its role will be limited, at least for the near term.
Dennis Altman, a professorial fellow at La Trobe University in Melbourne and the author of “God Save the Queen: The Strange Persistence of Monarchies,” said that many Australians would like to see the country become a republic in the future, but that there is not much interest because “the system isn’t doing anyone any great harm.”
During Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee recently, there
was little celebration in Australia — and thus little to stir up republican passions.
Ben Wellings, a senior lecturer in international relations at Monash University in Melbourne, said the new assistant minister position is “a way of testing the waters. He’s got three years” — the time until the next federal election — “to see what sort of enthusiasm there would be for such a change.”
While the queen is technically the Australian head of state, she is represented in Australia by the governor-general, currently David Hurley. The governor-general’s role is largely ceremonial.
The Labor Party has said it will not seek a constitutional revision to make Australia a republic during its first term, meaning that change is unlikely before 2025.
Matt Thistlethwaite, a longtime Labor politician who is the new assistant minister of the republic, describes his role as “initially one of educating the Australian people about our current constitutional arrangement and the fact that we have the British monarch as our head of state, and explaining that we can have an Australian in this role.”
He attributes the lack of support for the idea in recent decades to a lack of political leadership. But the time is right to revive the debate, he said.
“As the queen comes to the twilight of her reign, Australians are naturally beginning to think, well, what comes next for us,” he said.