No Kings: The republican debate Australia won’t have

While America rallies against tyranny, Australia stays silent under a foreign crown. It's time to reignite the republican debate, writes GJ Burchill.

WHERE, PRAY, are all the No Kings protests in Australia?

America is gearing itself up for another round of demonstrations to call out President Trump for donning a leftover pageant crown and declaiming like a divine ruler, a super-supreme head of state.

But in the Australian Free State, which sadly suffers under the real, awful deal — not a whimper.

Lest we forget: Australia is just another piece of property to this unelected “king” cove and his inbred, dysfunctional family. To dismiss this parasitic clan as cute and “ceremonial” is to forget that to the one-third of Australians with overseas birth or parentage, this “tradition” is totally alien.

It’s to forget that 23 per cent of Australia’s land belongs to the “crown”.

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Let Charles the Tired have Britain, if that is what he believes to be his due. Let him grift £132 million (AU$269.5 million) in projected “wages” for 2026, auction off the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland for offshore wind rights, and draw rent from £1.5 billion (AU$3.63 billion) in property while his Bucko Palace residence is renovated at the public’s expense for £369 million (AU$753.3 million).

The English are apparently jolly content with that. They had their chance and threw it. Fed up with the toffs, there was a popular uprising in 1649 and Charles the Original had his head lopped off for the crime of high treason — not to mention being a ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy’.

Inexplicably, after a civil war and a draconian turn by that devil Cromwell, the people did an utterly bonkers thing and restored the monarchy as if nothing had bloody happened, when it certainly, bloodily had.

Thus, Charles the Headless’ son became Charles the Reboot, and the clubby clan kept a grip on the entitlement and the land titles all the way down to the current incumbent, Charles the Second Sequel.

But, in Australia, people don’t take kindly to being lorded over. If they don’t like a leader, they are not shy about sending him a helpful message. Consider the times when governments have not only lost elections, but the seats fallen to the foe include the PM’s very own — presumably for “high treason.”

Why not shuck the “royals”? Is it because they’re “inoffensive”? Is it because they don’t “hurt” and “oppress” like they did in Ireland, India, America and countless other colonies?

But what about hurt pride? Should Australians be all “she’ll be right” about having a foreign head-of-state who can (and has) dismissed their elected government? Can they be Olympic-win proud when the flag that is hoisted is one-quarter dominated by the colours of another nation?

Not even Canada will take that sort of guff any longer.

Now is the time for a new referendum on the subject of being subjugated. It has been a whole generation since “Honest John” Howard derailed the independence express in 1999 with his preamble-blather and his loaded, convoluted question.

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A growing chorus is calling for Australia’s republic conversation to focus less on symbolism and more on empowering local communities through real structural reform.

Yes, Australia needs a clear republic pathway model or two to debate. But let that debate begin once it is clear that the majority demands a free Australia.

This government was given a clear mandate at the last election. Now, all it needs is the audacity to run a new referendum. If it wants to save cash, it can run a double-bill, along with a re-drafted (and better-marketed) Indigenous Voice proposition.

It’s certainly not without precedent that referendum questions cannot be put to the people twice. In 1916, the Australian PM, that sawn-off Welshman Billy Hughes, asked the people to allow conscription to aid Britain’s war with Germany. It was soundly thrashed. Truly a man with the courage of his delusions, Hughes put conscription up again the following year. It was rejected by an even wider margin.

Would it have made much difference to the outcome of World War I? As it was, 500,000 Australians, from a population of five million, volunteered anyway. Of those, 62,000 were slaughtered.

The holding of a referendum rarely results in change. Of the 45 held over 125 years, just eight have been carried. The same-sex marriage ask romped home in the positive, but that was a plebiscite, and didn’t require the majority “Yes” in every state and territory that a referendum must deliver.

However, the Hughes referenda made an important point: Australians want a say in their destiny. Now it’s time to have that say again.

Look at smoking. Everybody now has just about got the message about puffing in public. So let all those old ‘NO SMOKING’ signs be re-purposed. Simply strike out the ‘SMO’ and you’ve got a big bunch of ready-made ‘NO KING’ signs.

Take them to the streets. It’s about reason, not treason.