WfaAR National Convenor, Sarah Brasch, was invited to address the Republic Day gathering of Republic UK members over Zoom. This well-attended event was bursting with enthusiasm and youth, an impressive turn-out as the UK Republic movement goes from strength to strength and is a constant presence in the streets outside royal events and visits.
Sarah talked for about 20 minutes about why she is a republican, why a Republic is necessary for Australia and why its continuation doesn’t make sense, how the aims of the Australian republican movement differ from our UK fellow-travellers (we don’t, for instance, need to abolish the monarchy, rather we can just vote them out of our Constitution). She also highlighted how Australia must fulfil its destiny, how the current constitutional monarchy doesn’t match what it means to be a modern democratic state and a parliamentary democracy and how it doesn’t speak to us or for us. She concluded by saying that Australia didn’t need to traverse much new ground to be successful because there is already an excellent model of a directly elected President for us to follow in the Republic of Ireland, also a former British Dominion. The only substantial difference to be dealt with is the position of the States in a federal Republic. This was well received and added to an enjoyable and interesting mornings events and talks to kick off the day.
