19.02.1998

On the Sidelines

The Australian left has given the ruling class a free run in the constitutional debate

Australians will go to the polls next year in a referendum to decide whether the country should become a republic. After two weeks of putting on a grand show of ‘democratic debate’, last Friday, Feb­ruary 13, a constitutional convention recommended Australia become a re­public on January 1 2001.

For all the disagreement at the con­vention, what was on show has been a tedious mutual admiration society from the establishment, whether re­publican or monarchist. This was epitomised by the monarchist Liberal Party prime minister, John Howard who, in summing up, said: “I have learnt out of this convention that this Australian way we have of doing things is special and is unique. The bringing together of so many people in different ways, with different back­grounds, with different contributions, with different views, was something that at the beginning one might have thought was fraught with danger.

“But in a great display of civility and good humour and with great in­tegrity in many areas, it was possible for us to really let out what has been a moment in Australia’s history. I have no doubt that Australia can conduct a referendum on this issue with vig­our, with passion and with meaning and yet in a way that doesn’t under­mine or fracture the essential values of our society,” concluded the prime minister.

The convention comprised 152 del­egates, half of whom were elected, the other 76 appointed by the govern­ment. Whereas parliamentary elec­tions are compulsory in Australia, the vote for the convention was not. Only around a third of electors bothered to vote in a postal ballot last year for the 76 elected representatives. Neverthe­less, in opinion poll after opinion poll, there has been steadily rising major­ity support for a republic.

This lack of enthusiasm for the multi-million dollar convention stems from a popular cynicism towards the ‘common-sense’ minimalist constitu­tional change favoured by the estab­lishment’s cross-party Australian Republican Movement. For most, in­cluding the monarchists, it all seems a forgone conclusion - input from be­low is not on the agenda.

So what were the debates about? Four positions emerged at the con­vention.

One was for the status quo of the federal constitutional monarchy. The others proposed variations of shade over the nature of the republic, cen­tred around the election method for a president. The ARM favoured the minimum of change, to be achieved simply by replacing all references to the monarch and governor-general in Australia’s (written) constitution with the word ‘president’, and inserting a clause that the president be elected by two-thirds of a joint sitting of both houses of parliament. The second model proffered was for a direct popu­lar election for president and a bill of rights.

In the ensuing debate, a third, ‘com­promise’, position emerged whereby the president, elected by two-thirds of parliament, would be open to nomi­nation by the electorate. It was this ‘bipartisan’ model which gained most support, although it did not receive an absolute majority from delegates.

The final vote was 73 delegates vot­ing in favour, 57 opposing and an ex­traordinary 22 abstaining. The resolution read: “That this convention supports the adoption of a republi­can system of government on the bi­partisan appointment model in preference to there being no change to the constitution”.

The result of the referendum is by no means guaranteed. In order for a constitutional amendment to pass, there not only has to be a majority of all votes, but there must be more than 50% support in a majority of the six states which make up the federation. Of the 42 referenda put to the elector­ate since federation in 1901, only eight have passed.

Australian republicanism has al­ways been a strange beast. Tinged by the transportation of Fenians and the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the 19th century, it has had its racist flip side: a white Australia for white labour.

There has always been a desire to be seen to be independent from the ‘mother country’ and there is a bra­zen egalitarianism that runs like a thread even through bourgeois poli­tics today. It led Mark Twain to com­ment that “Australians are the most obscenely democratic people in the world”.

Yet, because this almost intrinsic loathing for all things aristocratic never took on a mantle of independ­ent working class politics, Australian republicanism is imbued with a deep chauvinism, its revolutionary roots in Irish republicanism and Chartism turned into their opposite. What was once a burgeoning red republicanism is now red, white and blue. Or rather green and gold - the national colours draping the all-important Australian sports hero.

Radical roots safely withered, the bourgeois establishment has now felt it safe enough to open what was a potential Pandora’s box in letting loose constitutional change. Of course, the timing of this convention is not about temperament. It is about fundamental shifts in the economic and political basis of Australian capi­talism. From being a British client state to the adoption of the United States after World War II, the Australian elite has dropped its white Australia policy and become a decidedly ‘multi-cul­tural’ society in its emerging orienta­tion to Asian markets.

In essence, we are witnessing an ongoing, though by no means smooth, rearticulation of bourgeois rule in Australia. In many ways, this process began in 1983 with the elec­tion of a Labour government. Lasting 13 years, prime ministers Hawke and Keating steered the Australian economy away from protectionism in line with a global OECD shift from Keynesianism to monetarism. Armed with the class-collaborationist ‘prices and incomes’ accord - known in Blairspeak as social partnership - the Labour government was able to head off any potential resistance by unions in a far more corporatist manner com­pared with Thatcherite open class war.

This current push for republican­ism represents the more ‘internation­alist’ Murdoch/Packer wing of Australian-based finance capital, keen to engage with south-east Asia, China and Japan rather than the more con­servative landed and traditional capi­tal based on resource export.

With a muted trade union movement and shifts in balance of power within the Australian elite, a cosmetic change to the constitution seems ap­propriate. Although the election of a conservative Liberal-National coali­tion in 1995 has slowed down the tempo, its direction is unrelenting.

What has been quite amazing throughout has been the absolute quiescence of the left. Amongst the hundreds nominated there were no left candidates whatsoever to the consti­tutional convention. Almost univer­sally, the left, small as it is in Australia, views these constitutional matters as the sole property of the bourgeoisie. The only reflection of any social democratic reformist agenda in the debate came in the shape of delegates - such as Aboriginal magistrate Pat O’Shane - arguing for a directly elected head of state and a bill of rights.

In some reports in the Australian bourgeois press, these ‘maximalists’ for constitutional change were jok­ingly labelled Bolsheviks, the compro­misers Mensheviks. The arch-conservative chair of the convention, former National Party leader Ian Sinclair, managed one of the great howlers of the proceedings.

Hectored by the New South Wales magistrate Dr Pat O’Shane about the pace of the programme, Mr Sinclair called on the conventioneers to get on with it: “If you just put the text of this revolution ... er ... resolution,” he began. It brought the house down. Yet there was no revolutionary in sight.

The left has insisted on painting it­self into a corner. The debate, it has universally argued, is of no concern to the working class - it is just about tinkering with bourgeois rule. How­ever, the terms of the debate have re­mained boring and safe precisely because the left has lacked the imagi­nation or vision to put forward a revo­lutionary working class alternative on the very issue of how the masses are ruled.

This has been the Australian left’s missed opportunity. The bourgeoisie makes great efforts to enshrine con­stitutions as eternal truths - lofty and sacred tenets which mere mortals ought not to question, much less at­tempt to alter. So, when the establish­ment itself is at sixes and sevens over how best to rule, a space opens to fight for an independent working class solution. Divisions within the ruling bloc exist on the front bench of the ruling Liberal-National coalition. The cabinet contains monarchists, ‘direct­-election’ republicans as well as the tamer minimalists.

But the Australian left has had nothing to say other than what a great waste of money it has all been.

Yet within the Australian body poli­tic, a confluence of potential crises is emerging. So far, the bourgeoisie has been able to contain the debate around constitutional matters to the most lim­ited degree. Skilfully, the prime minis­ter is putting the referendum off until after the next election, which is almost certain to be around race-based is­sues.

Since 1992, when the Australian High Court gave equal recognition to Aboriginal native title and lease-based pastoral title on crown land, a simmer­ing crisis has been brewing. Inflam­ing this crisis has been the election of Pauline Hanson and the subsequent formation of her openly anti-immi­grant and anti-Aboriginal One Nation party. The government has put forward changes to the Native Title Act which have been unacceptable to the Labour Party, Greens and the liberal Australian Democrats in the Senate.

Prime minister Howard looks set to use this as the basis for a double dis­solution of both houses of parliament and a federal election around this ex­plosive and divisive issue.

Another crisis is brewing on the in­dustrial front. The praetorian guard of the Australian trade union movement, the Maritime Union of Australia, is now under open attack.

The MUA, which consists of wa­terfront workers, ‘wharfies’ and sea­farers, has 100% unionisation on the docks. It is traditionally militant, was communist-led and as a consequence has the best working conditions and pay of any waterfront in the world. Because in the 1980s the union move­ment was merely co-opted, not smashed as the NUM was in Britain, it retains relative strength to fight any attacks. The National Farmers Federa­tion - a long time proponent of what is euphemistically called ‘waterfront re­form’ - has provoked a dispute by leas­ing part of the Melbourne docks to start Australia’s first non-union stevedoring company. A ‘big blue’ looks likely. The NFF has government support, armed with the new Workplace Relations Act which fur­ther strengthens bans on solidarity or ‘secondary’ strikes enacted by the previous Labour government.

Predictably, rather than putting forward a total vision to change society, rather than seeking to unite these struggles in an all-out assault on bour­geois hegemony, the Australian left - whether it be from a Trotskyite, Stalinite or Labourite tradition – is merely fall­ing into line behind the wharfies’ dispute. Such pathetic economism will condemn the revolutionary left in Australia to irrelevance.

While the left is neutered with a pro­gramme which cannot mount an all-­out challenge to bourgeois hegemony in all fields of politics, the working class remains unarmed. Red republicanism is not on the agenda in Aus­tralia. Yet it is such militant republicanism, rather than sterile economism and ‘strikism’, which has the potential to capture the imagina­tion. It has the potential to unite work­ers in the revolutionary championing of all democratic struggles - including the struggle of indigenous Austral­ians and the defence of the histori­cally militant maritime workers. It is the basis of a vision for a different sort of society.

Martin Blum