18.06.1998

For a centralised republic

Reaction raises its ugly head in Australia

The framework of bourgeois politics in Australia was shaken last weekend as the ultra-rightwing One Nation party of federal MP Pauline Hanson took some nine seats out of 89 in elections to the Queensland state parliament. With final figures awaited, One Nation won 22% of the vote, making it the third force in Queensland politics behind the incumbent conservative coalition of the Liberal and National parties, which received 27.4%, and the Labor Party with 39.2%.

Since the 1960s, Queensland has been the equivalent of Bavaria or the Deep South in terms of Australian politics. For 26 years a minority National Party ruled through blatant gerrymandering under an eccentric rightwing premier, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. Yet from the late 1930s up to the 1950s, Queensland was the ‘Red North’. The state parliament is unicameral, the upper house having been abolished by a leftwing Labor government. The Queensland parliament contained Australia’s sole Communist Party MP, Fred Paterson, elected for two terms from 1944. The formation of the Australian Labor Party emerged from the heroic shearers’ strike of 1891, which was based in Queensland and had a distinct republican colouring. The ‘sheep shearers’ republic’ was defeated, and ALP born.

Pauline Hanson entered the political limelight during the 1996 federal election when she was expelled from the Liberal Party for extremist statements, only to stand as an independent and take the until then safe Labor seat of Oxley in Queensland. In her maiden speech to parliament, she stated she was only representing the white people of her electorate and claimed that Aboriginal people were given extravagant privileges unavailable to ‘white Australians’. Hanson has been a worryingly prominent figure ever since.

One Nation was formed last year and the Queensland poll was its first electoral contest. This success has already led to ambitious talk of holding the balance of power after the forthcoming federal elections.

The party went to the electorate on an anti-immigration and anti-Aborigine xenophobic platform. Although it has been ridiculed by many as the ‘one notion party’, it also favours capital punishment, trade protectionism, rural subsidies and the abolition of all arts funding. A key policy is the family unit. One Nation says: “It is essential to restore the integrity and authority of the traditional family unit and all government policies must encourage family unity and stability.” Ironically, Hanson is a single mother.

The rag-bag collection of new One Nation MPs include a former policeman who wants more police powers and a referendum on capital punishment. Also elected were a professional Santa Claus who wants more discipline in schools and a former army signaller who wants to abolish all native title.

Just who will form the Queensland government is unclear and counting is expected to continue into next week. Labor, with 44 confirmed seats, seems likely to form a minority administration with the support of a centre-left independent - although it could yet win one of the two undecided seats to give in an overall majority. The coalition, with around 35 seats, would be prepared to form a minority government with the support of One Nation and an independent.

Amidst controversy before the election, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser condemned the Queensland Liberals’ decision to direct their preferences to One Nation. The overtly racist party took five seats from Labor on Liberal preferences. Australia has an optional preferential electoral system with compulsory voting.

One Nation’s success points to a clear vacuum in Australian politics and a dissatisfaction with the mainstream amongst the rural poor and farmers as well as some traditional blue collar Labor supporters. For the left in Australia, which remains on the fringes of politics, Hanson’s success should sound alarm bells and prompt a rethink on programmatic perspectives.

The Queensland poll has occurred in the run-up to a federal election which will almost certainly be fought around issues such as Aboriginal land rights, industrial relations in the aftermath of the wharfies’ victory and the impending referendum on Australia becoming a republic. The conservative federal Liberal-National government can constitutionally dissolve both houses of parliament at any time after its Native Title Amendment Act was rejected by the upper house, the Senate.

This situation is crying out for the left to construct an alternative beyond mere protest politics and the rallying of support for this or that well-deserving cause. Pivotal to this must be the building of a mass workers’ party - a party committed to a coherent programme able to provide concrete answers, not just point to the problems within the system. An immediate test for the left will be its reaction to One Nation.

While fawning electoral support for the Labor Party is limited to the trade union bureaucracy and British-clone sects like Workers Power and the International Socialists, there exists nevertheless a lesser-of-two-evils mentality in many sections of the workers’ movement.

The debate around the constitution provides the Australian left with an opportunity to pose a break from Labor. Up until now it has relegated the republican question to just one more issue on the checklist. Bemoaning the debate’s domination by bourgeois pundits, the left - from the ‘official’ Communist Party of Australia to the dull economistic Cliffite ISO and the self-styled ‘green’ Democratic Socialist Party - have all paid lip service to the constitutional debate while missing the main point.

One Nation’s rise shows the importance of forging a programme of militant working-class republicanism. The fact that the republican debate is dominated by the chattering classes and their paymasters is not evidence of its irrelevance. On the contrary it points to the failure of the left to offer its own alternative as to how society is ruled. Opinion polls now show a clear majority in favour of Australia becoming a republic. However, the masses are far from enthused. A 1,000-year old monarchy on the other side of the planet holds little relevance for a population which is now one of the most multi-ethnic and diverse of any country. Yet Australia’s archaic constitution, which only came into effect with the federation of six British colonies on January 1 1901, ensures that an overall majority in a referendum is no guarantee of constitutional change. Not only is such a majority required, but a majority must be obtained in four of the six states making up the Commonwealth. This will be no simple task. ‘State rights’ has been a recurrent theme of reactionaries ever since federation.

The most recent and emotive example of this has been around the struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights. The Labor Party, under former Australian Council of Trade Unions leader Bob Hawke, came to power in 1983 on a platform which included a commitment to legislate for national land rights. This was scuppered in 1983, primarily under pressure from the powerful Western Australian mining lobby. The ‘right’ of Western Australia was cited then too, leading to Labor’s capitulation. Hawke did however overrule the state government of Tasmania over the flooding of the then World Heritage-nominated Franklin River, which the hydroelectric industry was keen to dam. This environmentally motivated decision to block the scheme caused a furore amongst reactionaries and conservatives who claimed that constitutionally enshrined state rights were being trammelled.

Now in the current debate over republicanism, ‘state rights’ has again reared its head. Even if the bourgeois Australian Republican Movement’s minimalist constitutional amendment is accepted, states will retain their right to maintain links with the crown. A majority ‘no’ vote is far from unlikely in the less cosmopolitan and backward states of Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania. These states make up less than five million out of a total population of over 18 million in Australia as a whole. Yet if they return even the most slender of ‘no’ majorities, the republican proposal will fall, irrespective of the size of the overall ‘yes’ majority across Australia. It is thoroughly anti-democratic that a redneck, monarchist minority can stifle the will of the majority. Pauline Hanson points to the political strength that this reactionary minority can exert under the federal constitutional monarchy. Under such conditions, it is even more urgent for communists to be raising the issue of the nature of the republic.

After their recent magnificent victory a call for a ‘wharfies’ republic’ has a certain resonance. Yet in the aftermath of One Nation’s success, communists should raise the banner for a centralised republic. The states and territories must be abolished. The republican majority is not opposed to multiracial immigration, favours reconciliation with Aborigines and supported the wharfies. The progressive and democratic aspirations of the majority cannot be held to ransom by a reactionary, bigoted minority. They need to be channelled into a revolutionary struggle against the state under the leadership of the working class.

With a democratic revolution emerging just to the north, the Indonesian masses can act as an inspiration and example to revolutionary-minded activists in Australia. A revolutionary struggle for a centralised republic in Australia must be connected to the rising confidence of the masses in Southeast Asia.

Marcus Larsen