Becoming a Republic will not cause Australian to turn into a tin-pot African-style Republic. David Donovan busts another myth.
Some people say that Australia becoming a Republic could cause poverty and instability in our great nation. This is silly.
It should be remembered, we have altered the Constitution eight times since 1901, as well as making other changes to our system of Government, including allowing women to vote, introducing proportional representation in the Senate and changing the voting age. Despite the gloomy predictions of doomsayers before each of those changes were implemented, none of them caused even a ripple in the fabric of Australian life. Likewise, there is no cause to believe that removing the monarchy from our system of Government would do anything other than produce positive benefits for Australia in terms of its national identity, pride and sovereignty, along with cementing popular Australian values and ideals such as equality, fairness and democracy into the national psyche.
To support their dire prognostications of uncertainty, panic, chaos and anarchy arising from an eventual Australian Republic, doomsayers typically point to failed African “republics” — many of them only marginally democratic and having executive (US style) presidencies. This is entirely fallacious. The differences between Africa and Australia are, of course, profound and have nothing to do with the monarchy, but stem almost entirely from geography and history. The African situation is the sad by-product of post-colonialism, debilitating regional conflict and widespread poverty, whereas Australia is a prosperous first world nation largely due to our unchallenged access to an immense store of natural resources in this country. Additionally, there is no prospect of Australia creating a US-style presidency; our Republic will certainly involve a non-executive head of state with similar powers to those of the Governor General. In short, there is no possible meaningful comparison to be made between Australia and the African Republics.
A far more appropriate point of reference is prosperous and stable Europe. There are many Republics in Europe and most of them do not have executive presidencies. Indeed, European Republics are classed amongst the most affluent and peaceful nations in the world. For instance, since 1802 Switzerland has been a parliamentary republic with a Head of State elected by its parliament — it also had the highest wealth per adult of any country in the world in 2010 and is consistently at the top of the rankings for most other national indicators. Then there is Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world and the largest in Europe, which has its head of state elected by its Parliament. Next door to it is Austria, one of the richest countries in the world and one where a non-executive head of state is directly elected by the people. Finland is also a parliamentary republic with a directly elected head of state (since 1919) and it ranks as one of the world's most peaceful, competitive and liveable countries. Other comparable parliamentary European Republics include Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal and San Marino.
To claim monarchies are more stable and prosperous than republics is simply confusing causation with correlation. Monarchies are well represented among the world’s most prosperous nations because the majority of the remaining monarchies are in wealthy stable Europe. Constitutional monarchies like Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Grenada and Italy under Mussolini are, of course, seldom mentioned by proponents of the status quo.
Becoming a Republic will not affect our national prosperity and stability. Australia will continue as a wealthy peaceful nation as a Republic, but even more so, and its progress will be built on the shared sovereignty of the Australian people rather under that of a foreign unelected monarch.
