This was a vote of self-confidence in Australia, one the nation almost surely would have lost only a few years ago. Ever since their nation’s founding as a colony for exiled prisoners from Britain, Australians have been fighting the sense of inferiority they call the “cultural cringe.” Content for much of the 20th century to fight under Britain or America in World Wars I and II, and to look up to any culture not their own, Australia later struggled to assert an identity. The 1980s brought fits of “Kangaroo nationalism” as Australia celebrated its bicentennial and its yachting victory in the America’s Cup–triumphs to which have now been added the Rugby World Cup, which Australia won the day after the referendum. (Irony of ironies, the trophy was presented to the Australian captain by none other than the queen.) The early 1990s saw a touchy debate over Australia’s place in Asia, and a sneaking suspicion that the neighbors were laughing at Australian subservience to the British queen. Now, riding a wave of prosperity and prestige, Australians no longer worry so. “There’s a feeling that this time we were pushed [to become a republic] for the wrong reasons–do it by 2001, or do it so we won’t look ridiculous in Asia. Australians are massively unimpressed by that kind of argument,” says author and social commentator Hugh Mackay. “We do want to become a republic. But we’ll do it on our terms.”
Those terms have little to do with the monarchy. The yes vote failed because many Republicans were not satisfied by the referendum offer, replacing the queen’s representative with a president appointed by the Australian Parliament. The no campaign ridiculed this as a “politicians’ republic,” and argued that Australians should wait for the right to elect their president. Short of creating a truly democratic republic, they said, it makes no sense to change heads of state when things are going so well. After painful racial debate and economic reform in the early 1990s, Conservative Prime Minister John Howard came to office promising to make Australians feel “relaxed and comfortable,” and he’s done just that. “The nationalism of this country is very strong,” said Howard, before leading the no campaign to victory. “As I go around this country, I find that people are very satisfied with their identity as Australians.”
And why not? Australia opened up in the 1980s and ’90s to international market forces and is now reaping the rewards of reform. Its combination of high growth with low inflation and low interest rates is in many ways a mirror of the American “miracle economy,” and the envy of the neighbors. Australia was not scorched by Asia’s recent economic firestorm, and now its GNP is larger than eight Southeast Asian states combined. “The last two years have been difficult ones for East Asia,” says Treasurer Peter Costello. “And during the severe crisis in our region, the Australian economy proved its strength. Australia has been one of the standout economies of the world.” Once seesawing between boom and bust, he says, Australia is now “a sophisticated, prosperous, skilled nation,” and the next 10 years “could be a great decade for Australia.”
The referendum mood of quiet triumphalism also got a boost from Australia’s role in East Timor. When Indonesian rule began to crumble in East Timor earlier this year, the United Nations turned to Australia as the only neighboring country with the money and might to lead a peacekeeping force. “Since East Timor we’ve realized how independent we are,” says Christine Box, 38, a Sydney mother. “We don’t have to rely on other countries.” Costello says the sight of Australian soldiers’ restoring calm to the terrorized people of East Timor galvanized Australian pride “in a way I haven’t seen before.” Prime Minister Howard said Australia had not played a greater leadership role since World War II, and had demonstrated its status as a “powerful, independent nation,” no matter where its monarch resides.
Australians found it easy to keep the monarchy precisely because they no longer feel overshadowed by Britain and its royals. The “tyranny of distance” that made Australia feel out of date and out of touch can now be overcome with cheap airfare or the click of a mouse. These days, Australians don’t think of themselves as Down Under. Rather than feeling half a world away from Europe, Australia finds itself in the thick of the real action in Asia. Since the term of Prime Minister Paul Keating in the early 1990s, it’s been official policy to tighten Australian ties to its Asian neighbors. “Australia is a very practical, empirical nation,” says Gerard Henderson, director of the centrist think tank The Sydney Institute. “It makes sense for Australia to engage more with the region.”
It’s also taken some agonizing. Australia went through a much-publicized bout of xenophobia in the early 1990s, with the rise of right-wing politician Pauline Hanson. She articulated as no one had before a sense of middle and lower-middle class fear of the nation’s changing racial profile. Immigration is transforming Australia from a nation of Anglos into a nation of Asians, and Hanson wanted to put a stop to that. After peaking in 1996 when she won her seat in Parliament, Hanson and her isolationist One Nation Party are now fading. And the backlash against its “ugly” racism has produced a more “reasonable” sense of patriotism, says Mackay. “Australians have lost a lot of their cockiness and the cultural cringe. There’s a feeling that we are creating a tolerant and harmonious society made up of immigrants from 200 different places. But there’s a growing sense of unsureness about how to deal with some of our problems–and I think that’s a maturing. We’re a bit less glib.”
The monarchists were quick to exploit that sense of caution. They warned that a yes vote would bring 69 changes to the Constitution, but didn’t explain that most of those changes involved replacing the word “queen” with “president.” Their slogan, “This republic: don’t risk it,” caught the mood. It seems to have worked, persuading a substantial minority of immigrants to vote for no change, despite arguments from their leaders that Australia would never truly embrace its Asian or Aboriginal communities until it scrapped a British constitution that enthrones the queen. “The eyes of the world are watching Australia in terms of a range of issues, including racial relations,” said Aden Ridgeway, an Aboriginal politician and a leader of the yes campaign.
To most Australians, the House of Windsor just doesn’t matter. They were not swayed by those in a rush to scrap the monarchy now, and perfect a republic later. Media magnate Rupert Murdoch warned last week that a vote against the republic could damage Australia’s image. “The British monarchy has become irrelevant to this generation of Australians,” he said. “It’s not just a question of the monarchy, it’s a question of whether Australia has any self-confidence.” Murdoch warned the prime minister that support for the British monarchy is “bad politics,” but Howard is ignoring that advice. In March, Howard plans to squire Her Majesty on her first Australian tour in eight years. “Australia is now in the process of leaving the monarchy,” said Ted Mack, a leader of the no campaign. “It’s of no great moment that this first draft of the republic is sent back to the drawing board.”
The British influence–from Parliament to common law, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to cricket and rugby–is so old and pervasive it’s become background noise. No one thinks to credit the British for it. When the monarchs show up, they’re treated as visiting relatives or celebrities at best, nothing much to fuss about. Queen Elizabeth visited in 1992, and Prime Minister Keating was so indifferent to royal protocol–thou shalt not touch the queen–that he tried to steer her through a crowd with a hand on her back. The last time there was more than a passing interest in the royal family was when Prince Charles brought his fairy-tale princess to visit in 1983 and 1988, and Australians mobbed them like rock stars. There’s no question the spell is fading. The queen’s representative, Governor General Sir William Deane, has quietly changed his loyal toast from “Her Majesty, the Queen,” to “The queen and the people of Australia.”
The next royal visit may be the last by Elizabeth II as the Queen of Australia. Only a small minority actively supports the monarchy, and the shock of the no vote may well kick-start a more urgent republican movement. They will make more hay out of those rare moments when the monarchy is an embarrassment to Australia, like the 1996 state dinner where Howard toasted Bill Clinton, and Clinton toasted the queen. “When we realize we had a chance and said no, that will jolt us into increasing the momentum,” says Mackay. He predicts the next prime minister will be “looking for the opportunity to be the statesman who leads us into the republic,” this time with a grander vision and a directly elected president. Australians aren’t interested in a ceremonial figurehead, they want a “dignified, a truly national figure with the attributes of a leader–the curious combination of humility, strength, a certain passion and the ability to explain us to ourselves. It’s a nice dream really–a leader who can tell us our own story.” It’s the story of a people comfortable to be Australians.
