Sovereignty Burns in the Diluted Great National Project

Megan Davis packs multiple punches in her Monthly essay on Rethinking the Republic. Viewing the proposed change nearly 20 years from her own standpoint and that of our First Peoples – as opposed to mainstream republican exponents who today offer the same old stuff as they did in 1999 behind the timid camouflage of minimalism – her challenge is obvious. She demonstrates that without meaningful and effective Indigenous recognition in the form sought at Uluru (see News Update 26 May 2017), there is no basis for an Australian Republic and it cannot be achieved until this unfinished business is dealt with. She describes the question of Aboriginal sovereignty as: “the least glamorous part of Australian republicanism” – you can say that again in WfaAR’s opinion given that most republicans pale at the prospect. Her view of the referendum landscape over the last 40 years from an Indigenous perspective is confronting. If Uluru: “showed how out of touch the political elite were with the Indigenous demos“, WfaAR adds their current republic offerings/behaviour shows how out of touch they are with the rest of the demos. Her well-founded fear is: “we run the very real risk of a republic that renders the First Peoples invisible in the same way as constitutional monarchy did”. She also usefully reveals: “The Crown, the monarch, a republic and Aboriginal sovereignty were all issues raised by Uluru participants” and concludes: “The republic is an Aboriginal issue”. As such, it is not enough, she says, to come up with an Aboriginal word as the name for the Head of State nor to put dots on new flag. WfaAR likes this approach. It’s bold, in your face and right on the money. We note this incisiveness comes from women republicans. The second commentary in Rethinking the Republic, traversing the thinking of a political insider in the early days of 1990s Keating republicanism, is equally compelling for different reasons. Don Watson asks whether the cause, the great national project of the 1990s, is still worth pursuing and whether the remaining, true believer republicans can “know what the cause is” in a daily sea of compromised national principles and widespread environmental degradation of which no one takes much notice, let alone does anything about. Todays concept of “republic” has no discernible purpose is his conclusion. Both essays are well worth a read, stopping just short of despair but all the more illuminating for that reason. [“One Burning Question” by Megan Davis; “A Great National Project Diluted” by Don Watson in The Monthly, April 2018]