Republican Peter McGee suggests republicans forget the wedding of two foreigners on April 29 and discuss having a Republic instead—over a beer of course!
The approaching royal nuptials gave me a reason to reflect; what’s happening to Australia when our media becomes so engrossed in the wedding of two foreigners? Australians have a track-record of fascination with the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding, and are able to digest more than their fair share of the puerile information that the fawning media outlets produce. A rerun of the Simpsons probably has more relevance to Australian social life.
It seems ludicrous to me that Australia hasn’t outgrown its constitutional monarchy arrangements. Australians independently keeps pace with the developed world in business, sport, science and medicine, company governance, yet we haven’t stepped up to ownership of our democratic framework. We can confidently take a lead regionally and internationally on important matters, yet bizarrely we seem unable to recognise that there is no one better than an Australian to be our ultimate Head of State. Some of us aren’t even embarrassed or bemused by the fact that we have a foreign monarch as our Head of State.
To help me work my way through a few of these questions I have invited some friends the discuss the conundrum. It seemed that 29 April would be an appropriate day to focus our minds on the question, on one side of the world in a foreign country there will be the usual fairy-tale wedding of a royal throne pretender to a commoner, on this side of the world we will discuss how long it will take for Australia to become a republic and what form of republic we should develop. This agenda looks to be thirsty work so it seems sensible that our meeting should convene at a pub.
I hope there are some others that think that we should talk this through and arrange their own groups to nut-out what’s holding Australia back in becoming a republic.
