Well May We Say, 40 Years Is History

That Day Again - 40years On

11th of November commemorates two things in Australia - the end of World War I, but also the sacking of Gough Whitlam in 1975. Of the two, the former is receding into history fast as we experience the centenary of various sign posts of that accursed war. The latter, is proving to be the touchstone event that feeds into Australia's own Republicanism.

Recently John Menadue penned a piece that firmly placed Sir John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser in collusion with one another, with the inference being Kerr sacked Whitlam before Whitlam could sack him. Today, Whitlam's biographer who has extensively collated documents relating to the Dismissal, has charged that the British Crown - i.e Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles - knew full well by a month and a bit that Kerr was looking to sack Gough Whitlam, and sat mum that information.

The implication of these revelations is that it highlights a specific conspiracy on the part of Sir John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser, who essentially conspired (there's really not another word that is more appropriate in the english language) to bring down Gough Whitlam and his government.

As long time readers of this blog know I've spent a good deal of time thinking about the Dismissal, and perhaps have drawn a different conclusion to most people who now clamour for a Republic. While I'm definitely not a Monarchist, I've browned off from the idea of the Republic being any better than the Constitutional Monarchic model, as a system. All systems of government are only as good as the people working in the system. If some people decide to game the system and/or short circuit the system, is it really a problem of the system? The events of the Dismissal actually point the other way.

To put it more plainly, if the advantage a Republic has over the Monarchy is symbolic, is that symbolic difference enough to prevent a repeat of the Dismissal? Given what we know of the event,  the answer is most likely not. That being the case, would it be less likely for the Head of State President to sack a head of Government Prime Minister under a Republic than the Constitutional Monarch who allowed the Dismissal to take place? Most likely not.

More over, given that it was collusion - if not a conspiracy - between the then Governor General and Then Opposition Leader, the answer is again, most likely not. If one were to become an Australian Republican in response to the Dismissal, then it's really no help because a similar incident could easily happen again given the Reserve powers vested in the Head of State. Really, we lucked out that Whitlam didn't press upon the military to back him; which is what happens in coups in Latin America which end up with a Generalissimo in charge of a junta. We were - we've been told - blessed that Whitlam had the 'common sense' not to drive Australia into a civil war over his own highly questionable sacking.

At the core of the Dismissal, is not the failure of the system of government. It is the failure of people to act in accordance with the system's rules. In other words, there's really no accounting for dickheads being dickheads; and unfortunately Malcolm Fraser went along with Sir John Kerr's dickhead plans which makes him an accomplice dickhead. 40 years on, now that it is baked into history (and nearly 20years on from the republic referendum), it bears pointing out that if the problem is the Dismissal, then becoming-a-Republic is most certainly the wrong answer.

Yes, it sucks that it went down the way it did. Yes it sucks that the head of our state is some doofus representative of the Monarch of another country. Yet if it's a choice between say, 'Change to a Republic' against 'reducing poverty/inequality', I'd much rather they tackled the latter than the former.