 
SPECULATING ON THE AUSTRALIAN REPUBLIC

Five award winning Australian speculative fiction stories from the National Republican Short Story Competition

Glenn Davies (editor)

Published by Australian Republican Movement, Canberra, 15 October 2014

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014: Australian Republican Movement  
ISBN: 978-0-9870889-0-1  
All stories © 2014 by their respective authors, reproduced with permission of the authors. All artwork by John Graham at http://johngraham.alphalink.com.au/

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Find out more about the Australian Republican Movement at http://www.ouridentity.org.au/

CONTENT LIST

PREFACE / Professor Geoff Gallup

INTRODUCTION / Glenn Davies

ROOK FEAST / Kel Robertson

INAUGURATION DAY / Sean Ness

THE KING AND MISTER CROW / R.P.L. Johnson

THE HARVEST / Jennifer Morris

WHEN THE ICE MELTS / Ingle Knight

UNFOLDING AUSTRALIA'S REPUBLICAN FUTURES / Glenn Davies

COMPETITION DETAILS / National Republican Short Story Competition

ABOUT US / AUSTRALIAN REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT

PREFACE

Professor Geoff Gallop

In Australia's history republicanism has always been more than an argument for breaking our constitutional ties with the British Crown; it's also been about how we can create an improved system of democracy that better reflects our values as a free, fair and multicultural nation.

It's been about a better future and how we can create it through a mixture of reflection, deliberation and decision. It's driven along by the belief that we can do better and that our political imagination can be trusted to find a system that will inspire and endure.

Our opponents think we have reached the pinnacle of achievement and no good can come from a move to the republic. They fear change and prefer the past to the future.

Through this Short Story Competition we have encouraged imaginative thinking of the sort we need also to apply to our institutions generally. How could they be better? How can we translate aspirations into goals? How can we achieve those goals?

Thinking and doing, doing and thinking – that's the key to improvement!

Professor Geoff Gallop AC.

Chair, Australian Republican Movement

1 October 2014

BACK TO CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Separation Creek

2009 was a milestone as it was 10 years on 6 November 2009 since the republican referendum was lost. To commemorate this event and to remind Australians what they still didn't have the Australian Republican Movement challenged Australia's fiction writers to look forward rather than back and speculate on Australia's republican futures.

The Australian Republican Movement used the example of the Republic of Letters to encourage political change in Australia through the establishment of the National Republican Short Story Competition. The Republic of Letters emerged in France during the course of the 17th and early 18th centuries and was composed of French intellectuals from the Parisian salons who worked together to bring about concepts of philosophy, broadly conceived as the project of Enlightenment. The main way the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment's Republic of Letters were transported throughout France and across the Atlantic was through polite conversation and letter writing. It was their imagining of possibilities that helped to bring about change.

Speculative fiction writers deal with possibilities.  
They speculate.  
They make the future seem real.

The National Republican Short Story Competition was established to encourage the writing of republican speculative fiction where the story unfolds in an Australian republican future. These speculative short stories didn't have to be political thrillers or constitutional whodunits as long as they were an exploration of our future, our republican future.

The inaugural winner of the National Republican Short Story Competition in 2009 was the Canberra-based writer, Kel Robertson. On learning of his win, he commented:

"I am truly delighted to win this competition. I enjoyed myself immensely writing this story; the whole experience was entertaining. As a young man I was very much of my time and had great sympathy for the royal family whereas now find myself bemused by their activities. It was great fun being able to have some gentle pleasure at their expense."

In Rook Feast, Robertson tells the story of the final meeting between the King of England, who is under house arrest, and a minister of the British government. The minister (who is also a relative) has come to inform the last King of England "on a perfect English spring day" what is to be his fate. Set in the future, where a post-tourism-age appears to have killed the monarchy, Robertson's story explores concepts of the hidden costs of monarchy through a "security expenditure issue" and the theme of the inevitability of the popular will of the people. The plot is written around a discussion of what would be the individual future of the last King of England. There is a strong sense of pathos and resignation from the King:

"More than 1500 years of history all the way from bloody Edgar. Over. Ended."

But for the last King there is no exile to

"... California or New York, gracing the boards of big corporations, skiing Aspin in winter and sailing Rhode Island in summer."

He is not welcome in the great democracy. Nor have the governments of Canada, Northern Ireland, New Zealand or countries in the Caribbean, and Africa accepted him. Instead, nearly 50 years after they removed their titular monarch, the government of Australia agrees he and his family can settle their as private citizens. In this Australian republican future, the robust egalitarian society of the south remains strong, with sufficient generosity of spirit to embrace the remnants of Northern Hemisphere royalty — the last King of England and the newest citizen of Australia.

In Sean Ness' 2010 prize-winning Inauguration Day, he tells the story of James Hapeta, an Australian Federal Police Lieutenant assigned to Presidential protection detail in the Inauguration Day Presidential Parade. As the Presidential motorcade travels through the streets of Canberra, Hapeta and his security colleagues attention to security is at fever pitch due to the discovery of a 'credible threat'. Ness' sense of humour is evident in his reference to 'Billies'. He explains that in the early days, monarchists took the Rum Rebellion analogy and ran with it; in response, they were uniformly nicknamed Billy Blighs, or just Billies. When Hapeta breaks protocol the theme of 'Life and Death in the Australian Republic' emerges. The final scene is captured by a bystander with the photo becoming the defining memory of the day.

In 2011's prize-winning The King and Mister Crow, R.P.L. Johnson has the future King William V reflecting on the theme of 'citizen or subject' through an hallucinatory conversation on issues of individuality and Australian independence while he lays injured in a plane crash in the Australian outback. The theme of 'defining national identity' is explored by Jennifer Morris in 2012 in the prize-winning The Harvest with its excellent evocation of the country town atmosphere as well as descriptions of the vegetable garden and its connections with a sense of home. Finally, Ingle Knight's 2012 prize-winning When the Ice Melts with its quietly satirical edge connects the climate change controversy with discussion of euthanasia and dilemmas in the republican debate.

The Australian Republican Movement is grateful to these five writers for agreeing to publish their work in Speculating on the Australian Republic. As these five prize-winning short stories show, it is through speculative fiction that change can begin. We can't achieve anything unless we imagine it first. Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past. So, for anyone who is interested in speculating on the possible futures of the Australian republic, please... read on.

Glenn Davies

National Republican Short Story Competition convener

BACK TO CONTENTS

ROOK FEAST

Kel Robertson

Outside, the sign read "Ministry of Defence Research Establishment: No Public Entry". We swept past the saluting guards at full tilt as the gates closed behind us.

The driver parked the armour plated Land Rover one hundred metres inside the high stone wall, part way along the granite carriageway that continued for a further 500 metres up to the entrance of the house. To both the left and right were vast expanses of lawn – garden-party perfect – across which any attackers would risk exposure in order to take the building.

I was not to be dissuaded from picking my way through the garden bed and walking, unaccompanied, up the slope to the terrace. I'd taken too little exercise for too long and, frankly, no excuse was needed, for it was a perfect English spring day. Besides, if there was something I'd learned from my grandparents, it was the importance of a good entrance.

It was only in private spaces like this that I'd ever been free of the photographers and the gawping public. For my grandchildren, though, it would be different. England was taking unsteady yet determined steps to a different future and this time there would be no turning back.

He saw me, as I knew he would, as soon as I stepped into the open, but it wasn't until I was close enough to recognize that he put down his book, reached for his jacket and strode to the French windows, to make his way inside. At that point a minder must have turned him back; he swivelled and started for the western end of the terrace, clearly hoping to make his escape around the side of the building. However, another guard appeared there, before he'd taken even three steps. When he about-faced to the east, it was only to sight yet another figure in khaki.

"I'm afraid there's no avoiding me," I called.

He shrugged and returned to the table, knowing at last that there was no escape.

I'd expected it all to finish very differently – angry demonstrations outside the palace, melees in the Strand and petrol bombs at the parading of the colours. However, the days of dragging the household cavalry from their horses in front of Japanese tourists were long gone, like the tourists themselves.

But don't be mistaken, global warming and the end of international airline travel had played a significant early part in the drama – not because the absence of snap-happy foreigners had made the citizenry think twice about their relationship with the Royal family, but because, put crudely, English taxpayers didn't want to foot the bill for a costly tourist lure in a post-tourism age.

In the end it was, like so many watershed moments in English history, about money and the refusal of the House of Commons to provide it. Not the Civil List, you understand; it had been phased out years before. And not the cost of maintaining the yacht, train or jet; they'd also been flogged off in favour of "integrated transport". It wasn't even the cost of maintaining the last remaining residence. No, it was security – or the hidden cost of it – as much as 20 million pounds a year – that finally precipitated the crisis.

"I have nothing to say to you," he said, adjusting the position of his chair so that he looked over the lawn, rather than at me.

I removed my hat and gloves, loosened my tie and propped my swagger stick up against the side of the vacant seat. I placed my pistol on the table and wiped a handkerchief over my forehead. I was a lot less fit than I'd thought and concluded that there were, consequently, no good reasons to forego deadly pleasures. So, I lit a cigarette and watched a pair of amorous stoats race across the green expanse into the privacy of the low shrubs at the eastern end of the garden.

"Did you enjoy any alfresco congress when you were young?" I asked him.

"I've already said I have nothing to say to you."

"I imagine the opportunities would have been Scottish and can well understand why a tumble in the thistles wouldn't have piqued your interest."

He picked up his book – I couldn't make out the title – and pretended to read.

"You'd want your kilt to end well below your knees if you were thinking about the traditional approach."

He continued to ignore me but I knew he'd respond, eventually.

"Then again, if both parties removed their clobber and put it on the heather, you could probably avoid spiking anything you prized."

He sighed, put the book down and put away his glasses.

"What do you want?"

I looked around for something in which to extinguish the last of my cigarette. In the absence of a pot plant, I dropped it on to the paving and ground it to harmless shreds with the heel of my boot.

"We have to talk about your future."

"I'm surprised to learn that I have one," he replied, wiping a tiny piece of blossom from his lapel.

It was probably the only time I'd seen him looking anything less than immaculate in the 30 years since school. I'd made arrangements for him to have casual clothes but he'd refused them. Instead, he'd worn the same suit – 3 pieces, probably Grieves and Hawkes or Dege and Skinner – for the last month. I suppose it was as much about impressing his status upon the staff as it was about keeping his own spirits up. But I knew a thing or two about mind games, myself, and that's why I'd denied him dry cleaning or a replacement ensemble. I wanted him to know that I knew.

"I do have one, then?" he asked.

"A future?"

"Yes."

"Why not? It's spring: the time of new beginnings. This is no Berkeley or Pontefract and, if you hadn't noticed, we're a long way from the Tower."

"I'm especially glad it's not Berkeley," he said, smiling slightly.

He was right, of course; the least enviable of royal deaths had surely been Edward II's.

"What are my options?"

Looking at him, I couldn't see as many of my own features as I had once done. Certainly, we were both blond, balding and slight, but adult life had blurred the resemblance which had once seen him thrashed in my place at school. Yet, when the housekeeper – not one of the maids – brought tea and sandwiches out to us, she looked from him to me and back to him, again, signalling with the tiniest smile recognition of our physical similarities.

"What sort of sandwiches are they?" he asked, reaching into his shirt pocket for his glasses.

"Bloody cucumber," I answered.

He shuddered. "You'll have to take some away with you," he mused, "if you are not to cause offence."

I positioned the strainer and dribbled a small amount of tea into my cup, then – satisfied that it would be strong enough – poured for both of us.

Apathy, too, had played a part in the finale. At most royal appearances in the previous decade, security personnel had outnumbered the public. A royal scandal, inevitably involving the teenage princess, could still excite the media in Scotland and Wales, but hadn't the Scots always enjoyed a laugh at the expense of the English? And hadn't politicians in both countries long used Royal misbehaviour to justify their decisions to secede from the Union? In England, though, people weren't even interested in scandal. With the majority of our citizens born elsewhere or into sub-cultures without any understanding of what it was to be English, the royals couldn't have been anything but irrelevant to the masses. It was the American gossip magazines who paid the paparazzi.

In the end, the security expenditure issue was probably devised by the Government Whip as a distraction from the Cabinet's failure to combat terrorism. However, it quickly spiralled out of control into a fully-fledged constitutional crisis. The government fell and, with a new set of ministers in place, there had still been an opportunity for the monarch to walk away with significant property, good will and dignity. But he prevaricated and the opportunity was lost.

I passed the sugar.

"Are you Lord Protector yet?" he asked.

"Still only a Cabinet Minister", I replied.

He put his cup and saucer on the table.

"Plenty of time for you to make your mark, though."

We waited for more stoat foreplay.

"I've come to make you an offer," I finally said.

"From?"

"The Cabinet."

He smirked.

"So, you come in the dress of Lord Protector and people call you the Minister for...?"

He knew perfectly well which ministry I held.

"Defence."

"That's right, Minister for Defence, but you're actually a messenger boy."

"I volunteered for the task," I replied. "As for the uniform, you well know we are at war."

"It's a proven distraction from trouble at home and I imagine your medals will impress in the history books."

"Thank you," I said.

"Providing you have the jacket let out."

"Bitch."

"My pleasure."

We both surveyed the lawn.

"I suppose they're all cucumber," he asked, poking at the soft, white, crustless triangles with his teaspoon.

"It seems that way," I answered. We looked, again, over the lawn.

"My future," he began, apparently embarrassed to be switching from confrere to supplicant. "What are my options, exactly?"

To the difficult bit, at last.

"Some of the support you attracted, before it became necessary to place you in protective custody, lost you friends."

"I can't be held responsible to the people who attached themselves to me," he remarked.

"But you didn't move to distance yourself from them."

"What good would it have done?"

"And some of your remarks about the re-introduction of English values..."

"You disagreed with them?"

"Not necessarily, but that's not the point, is it?"

"I was fighting for my survival," he said.

He pitched a sandwich into the open and half a dozen rooks scurried to tear it apart.

"At any rate, you have rather fewer friends than previously."

"So you say."

"Such that your continued presence in England is not an option the Government can countenance."

"You want me to abdicate in favour of Elizabeth... and leave?"

"No, it's much too late for abdication."

"I see," he said. "Then it really is over."

"Afraid so."

"More than 1500 years of history all the way from bloody Edgar. Over. Ended."

"History doesn't change," I said. "The past is always as it was."

"Very epigrammatic," he snorted.

He underarmed another cucumber sandwich onto the lawn. A larger number of rooks landed and savaged it noisily.

"There's nothing that can be done?"

"Nothing."

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite."

I looked over the table at him. He was trying not to blub and at that moment – I admit it – I felt desperately sorry for him.

"Can I pour you on another cup?"

"I didn't want to be king," he said, "but it was my duty... so I did it."

He sipped his tea, avoiding my eyes. "Was it that I didn't work hard enough? Because there were times, let me tell you, when I was just bloody exhausted by it."

"No one has suggested you didn't work hard enough," I confirmed.

"There were times when it made me absolutely miserable."

"No doubt."

"Then how did it come to this?"

"The whole business," I said, "the monarchy – it's no longer relevant."

"I tried desperately to be relevant."

"Again, this is not about you or about how you went about your duties. The world has moved on."

It was true. Nearly all of the world's royal detritus now lived, ironically, in California or New York, gracing the boards of big corporations, skiing Aspen in winter and sailing Rhode Island in summer. They just adore immigrant royalty in the world's pre-eminent democracy."

"I suppose I'm off to the U.S.," he said glumly. "How bloody."

"Not exactly," I replied. "In fact, the Americans have indicated – unofficially, of course – that you are not welcome."

"Why?"

"They're worried that your presence could inflame racial tensions."

"Because I spoke about the heritage of the English – the legacy of our race?"

"For whatever reason."

"So, the home of the Ku Klux Klan won't have me."

"Only one government has indicated a willingness to take you."

"I'm not going to Northern Ireland," he said.

"No, not Northern Ireland."

"The Caribbean and Africa are too unruly."

"Agreed."

"Canada is just America without guns and god."

"Not Canada."

"And I don't want to live with 30 million sheep."

"Not New Zealand, either."

"So where?"

"A much larger country with only half as many sheep."

"Not, Australia!"

"Yes."

"I've been there, of course, but really. I know nothing about the place and even less about the people. It's absurd."

"I might have said that a lack of knowledge of the place and its people didn't prevent your predecessors from doing "happy and glorious" out there for a couple of centuries."

"From a distance, yes, and we all knew it was a silly idea. Besides, they haven't had a titular monarch for nearly 50 years."

"And they're not looking for one now."

"I don't follow. Do they want me to be their king or not?"

"No, not their king. Just a citizen."

"Even more absurd," he muttered.

"Vast numbers of Brits have migrated there over time: a good number of them at your predecessors' pleasure. Many of them seem to have been improved by the experience."

The jest was wasted.

"What do the Australians want from me?" he said in a tone tinged with suspicion.

"Nothing except that you live quietly, refrain from politics and pay your taxes."

"Bizarre," he shook his head.

"I would have thought that 'generous' was a more appropriate response."

He shook his head. I picked up a sandwich and hurled it as far as I could down the slope. A huge number of birds fell on the pieces.

"You could do a good deal worse," I said. "You'll have the chance to grow things, to read, to breed horses, to drink fine wine – the chance to enjoy life."

"The only thing you haven't mentioned is the beach."

"Lots of that in Australia."

"And you didn't beg them to take me?"

"You know how these things work. They're very forgiving people, the Australians."

He seemed reassured by this.

"The family?"

"Welcome to go with you."

He picked up the plate on which the last four triangles sat and tossed the contents at the waiting rooks. They squabbled raucously over the feast, disposing of it in the shortest order.

"Would it be possible to live near the sea?"

"I gather that you'll be able to live wherever you can afford to buy."

"I'll have money?"

"Of course."

Finally, the housekeeper came with more tea and, noticing the empty plate, asked whether we'd enjoyed the sandwiches.

My cousin, the last King of England, dutifully remarked that they'd been among the best he'd ever eaten.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The First National Republican Short Story Competition (2009) challenged Australia's fiction writers to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic. Short stories were required to portray an Australian republican future in a positive light and demonstrate the absurdity of a hereditary monarch as the Australian Head of State in twenty-first century Australian society.

Kel Robertson lives in Canberra, and is the author of two critically lauded crime novels featuring the Chinese-Australian Federal Police investigator, Brad Chen.

INAUGURATION DAY

Sean Ness

James Hapeta's fifth cigarette fell to his feet. He crushed the butt with a polished shoe and glanced at his watch.

11:03

Fifteen minutes overdue. No word yet.

It was hot. Clear skies and January humidity turned the air into a sauna; beads of sweat ran down Hapeta's neck and irritated his skin. His black suit and tie felt suffocating, more appropriate as funeral attire than operational gear. Even his shoe polish mercilessly reflected the sunlight back into his face.

Three other men were on the sidewalk, suits and shoes just as slick as Hapeta's, leaning against the black four-wheel drive beside them and talking quietly between themselves. Hapeta tried to look calm for his men, but could not.

11:05

11:07

He lit another cigarette.

As if on cue, his radio earpiece crackled to life.

"Escort Two, this is Command."

The cigarette fell out of his mouth and hit the pavement, spilling tobacco. Hapeta cupped a hand over his earpiece and mic.

"Command, Escort Two, go ahead."  
"We're coming out. Tell all units to assume motorcade formation."

"Roger, wilco."

Hapeta's jangled nerves were momentarily calmed by the need to work. His men had stopped talking and were looking at him expectantly.

"You heard the order. In the vehicle; all weapons locked and loaded; we move shortly," Hapeta commanded.

The doors were pulled open and the black suits disappeared behind the tinted windows. Hapeta cupped his mic again and spoke, "Escort Three; Escort Four; all Airborne Units; this is Escort Two; move to our position immediately and prepare to go."

A half-dozen acknowledgements talked over each other through his earpiece. Hapeta waited on the sidewalk, surveying the empty street.

Thirty seconds later, a jet-black limousine turned the corner, followed by a four wheel drive and a large black van. They were just in time; the glass doors behind Hapeta opened, spewing out a burst of air-conditioning that gave him goose bumps.

Emerging from the doors was a group of five men with suits, all walking in a tight box around a silver-haired man in a light grey suit and a woman beside him in an emerald dress.

Hapeta's stomach turned into ice.

The President of the Republic of Australia, and his wife, walking underneath the bright red sign over the doorway that declared HOTEL EXCHEQUER...

... took Hapeta back for a moment, fifteen years ago, when he was working as a shopping mall security guard, wondering what to do with his life, until he saw a crowd gathered around the television in a shop window, and he looked and saw a tall man on the TV wearing a cheap-looking suit shake hands with a much shorter, grey-haired man, on the doorstep of the HOTEL EXCHEQUER.

The tall man had then walked away from the hotel entrance, wearing such a beatific smile, and spoke to the gaggle of reporters and cameras.

"To the people of Australia... today, over lunch at this very hotel, the Governor-General, on behalf of the British Monarchy, signed over all his authority to me. This concludes six months of negotiations since the referendum, and as your new Head of State, I shall ensure..."

The cheers and cries from the crowd around the TV had almost drowned out the rest of the speech. Hapeta had no interest in politics – was not even registered to vote – yet in that moment realised that the old man on the TV in the cheap suit had gone for lunch one day and ended up with a brand new country to run. If that was possible, why couldn't James Hapeta do anything he wanted?

Within six months of that day, he quit security and his application for the Australian Federal Police had been accepted.

And that same view, of the front of the Exchequer...

... the President and his wife walked over to the sleek limousine, escorted closely by one particular bodyguard – short and thick, bald and fierce-looking. After the Presidential couple were inside, the man closed their door and approached Hapeta.

"Commander Griggs," Hapeta said, "What's the situation? Is he going to cancel the..."

Griggs interrupted. "The motorcade is going ahead. Same route – Ainslie, Antill, Northbourne. Keep your men alert and the formation tight. We get to Parliament in thirty minutes, no less."

Hapeta choked down a horrified gasp. "But sir, surely with a threat this credible... I know how much the parade means to the President, but..."

"You have your orders, Lieutenant. The President says we continue, so we do."

"But the investigation..."

Hapeta stopped as Griggs face went red.

"I am sure your AFP colleagues take their jobs very seriously, Lieutenant, however, my colleagues and I understand that we obey the President, not dictate to him. Understand?"

Hapeta said nothing.

"Your car stays ten metres behind the limo at all times."

Hapeta nodded. Griggs stormed over to the limo to take his place with the President, while Hapeta entered the passenger seat of his vehicle. The air-conditioning was a relief, but did not make him feel much better.

Hapeta would have found Griggs an off-putting commander at the best of times; that fact that Hapeta was AFP and Griggs was Australian Federal Security Service made it that much more difficult. Inter-agency bickering since the founding of the AFSS made all joint operations stressful. Hapeta wished his bosses would just let the AFSS handle all Presidential security; he'd rather be neck-deep in drug wars and Bikie murders than deal with all this.

Forget it, Hapeta thought. Focus on the job.

Ten seconds later, half a dozen engines rumbled to life. The motorcade was on the move. Hapeta took one last glance at the entrance to the Exchequer; then they were off.

***

The interior of the car remained silent. Fear bored through Hapeta's stomach like an angry worm, churning his insides. The other men sensed their superior's discomfort and said nothing, and the atmosphere became more oppressive than the humidity outside.

To focus his mind, Hapeta went through the facts.

The motorcade:

The Presidential limousine; armoured, hardened, bullet-proofed.

The limo was followed closely by two four-wheel drives, also hardened, each loaded with four highly-trained AFP men, including Harpeta.

A large black van following, containing six SAS operatives, armed to the teeth; heavy firepower, if it was needed.

Another four-wheel drive watching the rear.

A State Police car two hundred metres ahead of the motorcade, making sure the route was clear.

Four choppers at high altitude overhead; two surveillance birds, two with SAS counter-snipers on board.

Over two dozen personnel, plus two hundred State Police along the route.

Hapeta tried to reassure himself. It didn't work.

"All cars, this is Commander Griggs: surveillance choppers report light crowds in the suburbs up ahead. Keep an eye out."

The line of cars rolled in a tight formation over the four-lane Ainslie roadway. There was no other traffic – every entry and exit was blocked off with wooden barricades, traffic cones and State Police vehicles.

The road went through a leafy suburb, all two-storey houses with gates and tall fences. Families stood on the sidewalks outside their homes; dads supported little ones on their shoulders, mothers pointed the limo out to toddlers; cameras flashed and people clapped. Some held cardboard signs with bond felt-pen lettering:

YOU HAVE OUR SUPPORT

AUSTRALIA FIRST!

WE LOVE OUR PRESIDENT

Everyone was happy.

Of course, this was the easy side of town. This was the base that had never been satisfied with a President who was just a ceremonial chief backed by a two-thirds majority; they wanted a man who they could relate to, who could wield great authority and most importantly, who they could vote for directly. These were the people who had carried the Presidential Powers Referendum over the finish line last year and given the country a real Head of State.

In other words, Hapeta thought glumly, these people were the source of all his recent professional headaches.

They slowed down ever so slightly, and from his place behind the President's vehicle, Hapeta saw the limo's window roll down and a thin hand stretch out and wave. Families cheered.

Right at the end of the block, right before the houses started to get smaller, was an elderly couple: grey hair, plain clothes, a stiffness that stood out from all the happy families. The lady held a poster-size portrait of the Queen; the gentleman held a sign that said "THE SECOND RUM REBELLION IS HERE – GOD SAVE US ALL!"

Hapeta felt a chill run through him.

One of the men in the back seat spoke.

"Look old enough to remember the first Rum Rebellion."

Snorts and giggles. Even Hapeta smiled. As he did, a few kilos seemed to fall off his shoulders. In the early days, monarchists took the Rum Rebellion analogy and ran with it; in response, they were uniformly nicknamed Billy Blighs, or just Billies.

The big houses faded as they turned a sharp corner onto Antill. On the left, they passed schools and public swimming pools and clusters of shops; on the right, rows of small homes and low-rise apartment blocks. State Policemen were on either side of the street, controlling the crowds. As the motorcade swept down the street, the low murmurs turned into a loud cheer that echoed off the apartment blocks. Streamers were tossed into the air, and confetti rained down like pink snowflakes.

Hapeta's heart sank.

"Bloody hell," he said aloud, "Why aren't there any barricades? Didn't the Staties say there would be?"

The driver shook his head. "And half the police are looking inwards – at the motorcade – instead of at the crowd! Useless."

Lazy or clumsy? Hapeta wondered. Ever since achieving Statehood, city authorities never seemed to miss a chance to stuff something up.

Griggs' less-than-reassuring voice crackled. "All units, this is Command: crowds are heavy. Airborne units, watch rooftops; ground units, the crowd. Situation is less than ideal, so stay focused."

The other men snorted at Griggs' euphemistic language. Hapeta said, "Enough clowning – stay sharp."

Hapeta's gaze jumped from person to person, taking in faces, hands, things they were holding, clothes they were wearing. The glimpses he caught here and there were all filtered down to their most essential components.

A group of tanned men with fluoro vests; probably builders, here on their break.

A man in yellow shorts, holding a child up on his shoulders. Big smiles.

Tall blonde woman, water in one hand, coat in the other.

Coat? In this heat?

Hapeta's focus went from wide-ranging to razor-sharp, watching Blondie. The coat looked too large for this girl; the way she stood casually next to the Statie, who seemed distracted by her; it seemed so wrong...

Blondie was coming up fast; should he sound the alarm? Should he tell Griggs? Should he contact the State Police unit and get them to pull her out of the crowd? Should he...

Hapeta just watched. Just wait, just wait...

The limo up ahead, with the windows down and the President's hand waving, came within twenty metres of Blondie.

Ten.

Five.

Hapeta's hand went to his holster.

Blondie went past.

Nothing.

Hapeta sighed.

But he did not relax. No time. People kept aiming cameras straight at the limo; lenses kept flashing; the parade was a chaotic blur of balloons and waving hands. Hapeta went back to focusing on the most important details as best he could.

Hats held in hands.

Flags tucked under arms.

People that looked too grim.

Clenched fists.

Unpleasant smirks.

Faces, clothes and bulges all blended together.

It was almost a relief when Griggs announced, "All units, Command: regular crowds thinning out until Northbourne; demonstrators ahead – some students, some Billies – coming up on both sides. Medium-risk groups; watch carefully."

In the parking lot of a Housing Commission apartment block, young people had a series of banners held up with wooden poles. Lined up, the banners formed one lengthy sentence:

WE GAVE THE PRESIDENT POWER, NOW GIVE HIM RESPONSIBILITY – BILL OF RIGHTS FOR AUSTRALIA

The words were surrounded by students, all jeering and waving theirs hands angrily. They were a riotous splash of colours: neo-rockers, flower children, sharp young hipsters, Bikie wannabes. This was the most organised student protest Hapeta had witnessed: all the cliques sitting under the one banner.

On the opposite side of the road were another group of protestors, this crowd much older and greyer and waving less-impressive banners declaring 'AUSTRALIA IS A ROGUE STATE"; "PRESIDENTIAL POWERS ACT = NAZI POWERS"; "COMMONWEALTH NOT DICTATORSHIP".

The Staties had botched a lot, but at least kept up their promise to separate the leftie protestors from the Monarchists. The two sides had sparred on more than one occasion on campuses and main streets all over Australia.

The Billies generally did not worry Hapeta. They were old news, quirky but harmless. The smart ones had refashioned themselves as a reformist party and ran for office; the rest were reduced to waving signs in protest of an issue that had effectively died fifteen years ago. On a normal day, they could be ignored.

Today was not a normal day.

Because today Hapeta kept thinking about the photos that colleagues from the Political Extremism unit had sent him: photos of the apartment the AFP had raided yesterday in Sydney, based on a tip received as part of a five-month investigation into Presidential death threats after the passing of the Presidential Powers Referendum.

Photos of walls lined with street maps of the motorcade route, entrances and exits marked out, along with technical schematics on the exact model of limousine the President used. Plans for something big and dangerous, all mixed in with Monarchist pamphlets and ultra-conservative literature. All this taken from an apartment that was rented under a false name, with no known photo of the resident.

Seeing and knowing all that, Hapeta found himself wishing they could throw everyone who even looked remotely suspicious into prison. Or at least cancel this bloody parade.

But they could not, because the President was a man of the future, trying to "brush away the cobwebs of the old system forever," as he put it. This was Australia's third elected President, but the first directly elected, and he had big plans to match his increased powers: massive infrastructure projects, foreign military interventions, overhauling federal taxes.

But he had the charisma and commonsense to pull it off. While his colleagues debated complicated resource management policies in house, the President flew out to rural communities and pitched his views to the man in the street, face-to-face. While the previous Government cried about the great responsibility of having a President with absolute authority over the Defence Forces, this man had visited servicemen stationed on Pacific Islands and assured them he would never waste their lives on fruitless adventurism. He scored a huge majority, even by pre-Republic reckoning.

To keep on assuring the people that he was their representative, he declared Inauguration Day a national holiday and said he would ride from the Hotel Exchequer to Parliament House, the exact route that the first President had taken, and everyone was invited to watch.

The President insisted on the motorcade, even as, at the last minute, Commander Griggs – the AFSS officer personally responsible for Presidential security – tried to talk him out of it, citing the threat that the AFP had uncovered. The President had been unconvinced, saying the same thing that Griggs had said to Hapeta two hours earlier – "All you've got are a bunch of maps and car design plans" – and deciding that he was going to give the adoring public what they wanted, risks be damned.

If only...

Hapeta snapped to attention. Somebody was shouting over the radio: "Window! Left-side, seventh-floor..."

Hapeta's head craned up, as the radio network exploded with a dozen other voices.

"Movement in the window..."

"... sniper, repeat, sniper, left side top room..."

"... what's happening, too much going on to..."

Hapeta felt a wave of panic grip him; even though the network was screaming about a window, he was seized by the idea that the blonde he had seen earlier was responsible. What was he doing? He had let everyone down, the whole thing was falling apart, he had to...

... no, no, no, focus. Find the window.

He saw it, just as a flat sheet rolled down from it: red, black and gold.

"... hold your fire, it's not..."

"... just a flag, I repeat, just..."

From a window in the apartment above the students, an indigenous flag hung defiantly in the still air. In the neighbouring window, a banner unfurled: DON'T FORGET OUR RIGHTS TOO!

Upon seeing it, a cheer went through the students. A grim "Boo!" came from the Billies. The atmosphere turned ugly; Hapeta was grateful that five lanes of asphalt separated the two.

Griggs cried, "Goddamit, no one say 'sniper' until you see a rifle! Chopper Three almost blew those people away!"

***

The motorcade had only one last stretch of road to go: Northbourne. It ran directly through the office complexes and five-star hotels that dominated the CBD, across the lake and all the way to Parliament House.

Hapeta was exhausted, but as they turned the block, he noticed that this street at least had the barricades. Some silver lining.

'O'kay, boys," he said, "Last strip of asphalt. Keep a look out – we're almost home."

The motorcade slowed to a crawl; the President's arm stuck out even further. The air was full of good cheer; no signs, no protests.

A burst of static came through; not even Hapeta's earpiece, but the car radio.

"Escort Two... uh, Lieutenant Hapeta, are you there? This is Constable Mackay, over."

The car interior went silent. Communications should be over the main network, not on the backup channel that the car radio was set to. It was odd, and odd was the last thing Hapeta needed.

Hapeta grabbed the hand mic and replied, "Constable Mackay, this is Lieutenant Hapeta, over."

"Lieutenant... I am on crowd control, eastern side of Antill, near Delphi Towers. There's some kind of, ah, disturbance here."

Hapeta's blood went cold. The motorcade would pass by Delphi Towers in two minutes, tops.

"Roger that, Mackay... why aren't you reporting this to Command, or your superior, over?"

'Lieutenant... ah, I don't have the frequency for Command. I was told to report to the State Police Command unit, but they are unresponsive; technical issues, I think. I only got your vehicle because I talked to an AFP officer and he gave me your frequency."

Hapeta felt anger shoot through him. A security detail that didn't have access to the main communications network? State Police Command unresponsive? It felt like Keystone Cops around here.

'Roger that, Mackay... what is the nature of the disturbance?"

"Another State Police unit reported seeing a man wearing a long black coat, behaving strangely. Units have been unable to locate the individual, but some civilians are confirming the reports and saying the man was acting unstable or oddly; he was last sighted in my location."

Wild goose chase? Maybe...

"Constable, thanks for reporting this."

Hapeta cupped his own mic. "Command, this is Escort Two. A State Police unit has reported suspicious individual, near Delphi Towers. Recommend we investigate."

Silence over the network. Hapeta could hear the tension.

"Escort Two, received; nothing has come through from State Command, so we'll let them handle it until it gets here."

Hapeta wanted to shout and scream and demand, but remembered Grigg's lack of patience back at the Exchequer. He would get no sympathy.

But something was wrong. Fifteen years of trained instinct was screaming at him: do something!

Hapeta replied, "Griggs, I have concerns about State Command responsiveness. Requesting permission to get out on foot and investigate."

Hapeta knew he was in trouble; he had bad-mouthed the Staties on the air and been borderline insubordinate. He didn't care. His mind was a mess of images: the TV screen fifteen years ago; the man in the cheap suit; the apartment in Sydney with maps and photos; snipers and bombers and crazies.

"Escort Two, request denied."

No rancor, no rage. Not yet, anyway.

Delphi Towers – fifteen stories of steel and glass, dead ahead. Hapeta shuddered.

Mackay's voice on the car radio: 'Lieutenant, more civilians in the crowd have reported seeing the disturbed man. He's definitely out here."

Hapeta felt something inside him twist and snap.

He grabbed the radio. "Roger that, Mackay. Meet me at barricade twenty metres to the north of Delphi Towers. Out."

The other men in the car looked on in shock; Hapeta said, "Continue driving, keep the pace."

He opened the door.

The heat blasted him. He leapt from the vehicle and ran across the road.

He pushed through the line of State Police and cleared the barricade in one hurdle. Shocked faces from Staties and civilians alike. He pushed through the crowd, feeling desperate.

It was a furnace out here! God...

He crashed into a tall cop with a crewcut.

"Lieutenant Hapeta?"

"Constable Mackay."

They exchanged nods, then pushed forward together. Mackay had to yell into Hapeta's ear over the crowd.

'The man was last sighted near a food vendor, heading south."

Hapeta nodded. "Stick close to the barricades; is he's armed, it's the only shot he'll get."

The crowd was a heaving mass of bodies and blue flags being waved; Hapeta and Mackay had to push and shove.

Up ahead: a rustle of black.

A coat.

Hapeta shoved harder; he heard Mackay behind him, shouting into his radio for reinforcements.

The black coat was up ahead now, lurching forward.

Hapeta was running.

The coat, swaying and shuddering erratically, turned around.

Hapeta saw a hand clenched tightly around a...

... oh God, was it a...

... it's a...

... large paper cup, clutched in a sweaty, wrinkled hand. Above the hand was a confused look in ancient blue eyes.

Hapeta stopped, stared, just as the man in the coat dropped his drink and collapsed.

What the...

Hapeta ran forward and saw the elderly man was clutching at his chest, gasping. The crowd parted and looked on in surprise.

Staties swarmed around them. Hapeta heard Mackay's voice: "God, this guy's having a heart attack!" A cop started resuscitation.

"Dad!" a shrill voice cried. A petite blonde woman ran forward, tears in her eyes.

Hapeta instinctively grabbed her by the arm.

"Ma'am," he said, "These men are trained, let them administer first aid..."

The woman looked at Hapeta. Two Australian flags were painted on her cheeks; her tears were making the colours run.

"He... he went to get a drink... I didn't think he should be out in this heat, but he wanted to... to see..."

She burst into sobs and fell forward into Hapeta's arms.

He was stunned at first. Then he started to relax. He hugged her back.

'Everything's going to be o'kay..." he said.

Grigg's voice was yelling over his earpiece; it annoyed him greatly, so he pulled it out, and continued to hold her while the cops worked on her father.

Behind him, the motorcade swept past. The crowd roared.

***

A tourist snapped a photo of Hapeta, cradling the woman, with her dying father visible in the foreground and the majestic Presidential limo in the background. It showed up in all the newspaper and television coverage of the first Inauguration Day. The President himself cited the image as an example of the humanity and dedication of the country's police forces, State and Federal, and for a few months, it went a long way towards defusing the suspicion around the President's new powers. The photo would appear in Inauguration Day retrospectives for decades to come.

The photo was also the only thing that saved Hapeta's job. Instead of being fired for insubordination, he was praised and then quietly transferred elsewhere. Hapeta did not mind; the Republic was wide, and he was sure there was a place in it for him.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The theme for the Second National Republican Short Story Competition (2010) was 'Life and Death in an Australian Republic'. Australia's fiction writers were challenged to speculate on possible Australian republican futures

Sean Ness was born in North Queensland but his family moved to Hong Kong when he was young. He lived there until he was 12 returning to Brisbane and later study in Psychology and Information Technology at university. Sean works in the public service in Canberra. His interests include travelling, participating in Volunteer Emergency Services, following politics and, of course, reading and writing a lot.
THE KING AND MISTER CROW

R.P.L. Johnson

He appeared as if out of a mirage: tall and impossibly slender like a figure on a rock painting. His silhouette billowed in the thermals baking off the red earth. The spear he carried stretched upwards to infinity, as if he was suspended on a wire from the sky. His appearance almost enough to take my mind off the pain.

Almost.

One would have thought that the sight of a crashed helicopter might have been enough to elicit some haste, but he plodded steadily towards me.

He was an aborigine: an old man with a tangle of greying hair kept out of his eyes by a braided headband from which dangled the black feathers of a large bird, possibly a crow. His beard was a dense cone of silver. He was dressed, or rather undressed, in a simple loincloth and in addition to his spear he carried a kangaroo skin.

He stopped a few feet away.

"Do you need help?"

A strange question to ask. The helicopter was half buried in the furrow it had dug for itself on impact and I was hanging half in and half out of the crumpled fuselage: clamped into the wreckage by the twisted ruin of the pilot's seat. I thought about replying that no, I was fine and always spent my Sundays pummelled into the outback dirt like a bug ground beneath a boot heel. But all I could manage was, "Water... Please."

The old man nodded, unstoppered the neck of the kangaroo skin and held it to my lips. The water tasted rank, as if the hide had not been tanned properly, but I drank anyway.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked. His accent was strange, archaic with a clipped formality that made me think of old relatives and even older movies. He sounded as if he had learned English from the men of the First Fleet.

"I was on my way to the Willowra township," I replied and then gestured to the wreckage around me. "But I fear I might be a little late."

I had elected to fly myself to Willowra, both as a symbol of the modern, dynamic royalty that my advisors encouraged and also to get a few quiet hours before the convoy of journalists, handlers and local officials arrived from Alice Springs.

The crash had provided me with a bit more solitude than I had planned for. Kate had insisted on a standby chopper in case of emergencies. No doubt it had begun scouring my flight path as soon as I lost radio contact. But I hadn't followed my flight path, not exactly. (How's that for a modern, dynamic monarch?)

I would be found within hours of course: a day at the outside. But fitter men than me had died out here in less time than that.

"Are you a flying doctor?" the aboriginal asked and enough of my pride had survived the crash to feel a little crestfallen at his lack of recognition.

"No," I replied. "It was supposed to be a state visit."

The old man examined me closely. "I know you," he said eventually. "You are the Prince."

"King," I corrected him. "For two years now." News must travel slowly out here. "Before you lies King William the Fifth, by the Grace of God King of the United Kingdom and his other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith."

The man nodded sagely. He sat down next to me, thin brown legs folded under him like a bushel of firewood. His pale soles faced me. It looked as if he could have walked a tightrope of barbed wire without feeling a thing.

"I am Wakarla," he said. "You are a long way from home. What brings you here?"

"Don't you think that the people of Willowra deserve a visit from their king?"

"I think that a visit should be a gift given by the visitor. It is not a thing to be deserved."

"You're avoiding the question," I said. "Can't a king visit his people?"

The old man, Wakarla, reached over with a calloused thumb and, before I could stop him, rubbed it hard against my forehead.

"Just checking," he said. "Wanted to see if you were wearing dhardarr, the white clay."

"Are you saying that they are not my people just because I'm not black? I'm still their king."

"I'm saying they're not your people because you don't live here. You never have and you don't know anything about this country except what you can read in books. You don't know this land."

Here I was, pinned down in the hot sun, like a hide pegged out to cure, and my Samaritan was intent on berating me about my lack of multi-cultural piety.

I wasn't concerned about my safety, although a man of more extreme views could easily have walked away and left me to my fate. I had no doubt that outback life had the capacity to harden a man's sensibilities just as it toughened his, pardon the pun, sole. But Wakarla did not look as if he was about to abandon me and so I countered his blunt manner with a few forthright words of my own.

"You say I have no right to be here. Well to that I say that my family has ruled Australia for over two hundred years. In that time it has grown from a handful of colonies to the very model of a modern society. You say I don't know my people? I say I know them better than you could believe."

As I spoke, Wakarla shook his head.

"What do you want, a bloody history lesson?" I asked. "My father studied here. My great-grandfather stood with the Australian people against the Axis powers. And when Captain Arthur Phillip sailed into Sydney he did so at the behest of my ancestor. Aborigines may have lived on this land, but this country, Australia, was settled by my people."

"Settled," Wakarla said. "Such a gentle word. I suppose you think they settled as neat and soft as a brolga settling onto its nest. I don't remember it being so gentle. Your first words held more truth, Windsor. Our history was indeed bloody."

I looked at the water skin Wakarla held. The few sips I had taken had loosened my tongue but done little to quench my thirst. I had nothing to gain by antagonising this man.

"Look. That was a long time ago."

"Yes, a long time. Many generations have passed and yet you are still king and I have no shoes."

"The two are not related. There is no finite pot of money for any kingdom that has to be meted out in proportion to each subject's status. As the kingdom prospers, so does every individual. There's nothing to  
stop you from buying your own shoes, or opening a cobblers store and making and selling shoes to others. The wealth of the nation comes from the productive efforts of individuals."

"That's easy for you to say. But try telling that to the kids growing up in the town camps. My people have been driven from the best land and forced to abandon the way of life that allowed them to survive for over forty thousand years.

"This country that you claim to have founded has inequality built into its bones. You, yourself are proof of that. This notion of creating your own wealth may work for the children of the wealthy. They have the money to invest, the education to innovate in new directions. For a child growing up in Willowra, this idea is a fantasy. You might as well tell him to grow wings and fly out of there."

"It is difficult, I understand that. That is why I am here. To draw attention to the plight of people in remote areas."

"There is quite enough awareness already. What is needed is action. Tell me, young King. What wealth do you create? Who wears the shoes that you have made?"

"I have worked," I protested. "Three years in the Army, another three in the Royal Air Force."

"But you have not worked in the same way as your subjects, week-in week-out because to do otherwise is to starve."

He was right. A few years of service, just to show willing. It was merely an inoculation: a swift jab to stop young princelings from growing up completely insulated from the world their subjects inhabited.

"There is no need for anyone to starve," I said. "There is welfare for those who truly cannot work and help for many more besides.

"Anyway, do you think that my life is not work enough. Born into a spotlight. Every decision mapped out for me before I even drew breath. This is indentured service about which I have no choice. No more choice than the children of the town camps. No-one can choose the status of their birth. Any no child, whether born into poverty or royalty deserves to be saddled with an original sin for an event that they had no control over."

"On this we agree... A man should not be judged by the stamp of his origin, but by what he makes of himself in the time following. If you are indeed saying that no man should be born into servitude and no man through a similar accident of birth should be given the power to rule over others, then you will hear no argument from me. But it is strange to hear an argument against the divine right of Kings coming from a royal mouth."

"Believe me, I'm just as surprised to hear it coming from you. If this land is not mine to rule then neither is it yours. If I cannot claim ownership through an accident of birth then neither can you. You say your people have been here for forty thousand years instead of my ancestors' few hundred. Well if history carries no weight then forty thousand times zero is still zero."

"But we make no claim to ownership."

"You don't? I have lost track of how many official engagements I have been to these past few weeks. I can reel off that opening address verbatim. How does it go? 'We acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and thank the elders past, present and future for their continuous stewardship.' If this is not my land to lord over then neither was it ever your land to lose. If I am an archaic throwback to a system that the world no longer has any use for, then what of you and your friends with their possum-skin coats and smoking ceremonies?"

"That is just tradition."

"But your argument is that tradition masks a deeper reality and in this case I think you are right. In demanding recognition as traditional stewards, the aboriginal elders are thumbing their nose at progress. They are clinging to old grievances when in reality those aggrieved are long dead: just as dead as those that once persecuted them. It is this mentality, this cult of victimhood, that is holding you back."

The old man's face cracked in a broad smile. He rocked backward and forward and slapped his hand against his knee in a single dusty clap.

"Perhaps you are right," he said. "If all people are born equal then it is meaningless to fight over the sins of generations past. But tell me this, if we are to let go of old grievances, what will you relinquish?"

We were similar, Wakarla and I. Both clinging to our old ways in a world that had changed.

I lifted myself up on one elbow and went to hand the kangaroo skin back, but Wakarla was gone. He must have taken back the kangaroo skin for it was nowhere in sight. Nor could I see any tracks in the dirt to indicate which way he had gone.

Perhaps I was worse off than I thought and had slipped for a moment into unconsciousness? But I felt refreshed. As much by the old man's conversation as his shared water. He was right. The way forward could not be just more of the same and although I could not unmake history, perhaps I could make it. Something had to change for both our sakes but for that to happen, I had to live.

The sun was setting, a golden disc balanced on a plane of red under the darkening sky. Like the aboriginal flag. A flag that one day might be seen in Australian museums, alongside the Union Jack and the other standards of old armies. Already the blistering heat of the day was fading. The night would be cold, but I had a jacket within reach. I would survive and by tomorrow I would be found. Of that I was sure.

After that?

Wakarla was right. No-one deserved to be born into a position of authority over another. Even my nominal, atrophied and benign rule was corrosive to the spirit of a free people.

If Wakarla and men like him were to give up their grievances, I would also have to make a sacrifice. Empathy was not enough, there had to be action.

If the children of Willowra could not grow up to be king, perhaps one day they could grow up to be a president. Perhaps I could show them that authority is not eternal and that the actions of one individual could still change the world.

Wakarla had said that the children of the outback could not fly from their troubles. Not yet. As a final gift to my people, I would give them wings.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The theme for the Third National Republican Short Story Competition (2011) was 'Citizen or Subject'. Australia's speculative fiction writers were challenged to speculate on possible Australian republican futures.

Richard Johnson has been awarded 'Second Prize' in the Third National Republican Short Story Competition for 'The King and Mister Crow'. He is an ex-Pommie who migrated from the UK in 2001. He works as a structural engineer and has been privileged to work on several iconic building such as Flinders Street Station and the renovation of the GPO. He has had a couple of prior publishing credits, most notable of which is the Gold Award at the Writers of the Future Competition in Hollywood in 2011, the world's longest-running and most prestigious competition for amateur writers of science fiction. Richard lives in Melbourne with his wife and four year old son.

THE HARVEST

Jennifer Morris

Daniel and young Jim tossed the coin. It landed President side up. "I get to collect the eggs," yelled Daniel. "You have to wash their water dish out Jim. Back soon Gran!" I watched out the window. The boys, my youngest grandsons, ran, jostled and pushed each other most of the way to the chook yard. The original vegetable garden to the left of the yard was flourishing. Broad beans were flowering, the coriander was spurting new growth and the parsley had taken on a life of its own.

The mini-bus was just coming over the cattle grid. The workers, mostly from Afghanistan but now happily settled in Murang, climbed out and waved in the general direction of the window. They were always keen to get started not wanting to waste daylight. "The tomatoes are better picked early in the morning," they would smile at me. I turned the oven on. The scone dough was quick to mix, especially since I had started using the lemonade recipe. No kneading now, just flour, lemonade and cream. They loved the steaming hot scones, always accompanied by a platter of freshly cut fruit. I wasn't sure at first how they would take to the distinctly Australian offering. Fortunately they found the taste to their liking, and the fruit, well who wouldn't enjoy the lush, irresistible freshness of watermelon and cantaloupe?

The tomatoes had been moved to the paddock in front of the house. We had increased our crops to meet the demands of the market. My late father-in-law and I had started 'Mary's Kasundi' enterprise a generation ago. In my wildest dreams, I would never have envisaged the spicy tomato chutney being such a hit in the Asian countries. There had been so much change in the last few years.

The dizziness threatened to overwhelm me. I lowered myself carefully into the armchair I kept in the kitchen. If I didn't move for a few minutes those waves of nausea might stop. I was grateful the boys were here for a week or so to help. The past events of many years ago flashed before me like an episode of a serial.

The move had happened so quickly. Ron had come home agitated. "They didn't renew my contract." Ron applied for other jobs without success.

One morning after a restless night, Ron announced that we would go to his dad's for a while. "I need a break."

"What about my job?"

"Take some leave," he snapped. "We're going Monday. I've rung Dad, he's expecting us."

Ron's father, Jim, lived on a farm in South Australia. It was about four hundred hectares of prime grazing land. Jim would proudly tell us he had only ever relied on tank water since he could remember. I guess it's one way of declaring that you're a country farmer not a Collins Street farmer. He was seventy-eight last September. The Aged Care Assessment Team from the nearby town of Murang had gone out to do an assessment on him after a bad fall. Jim had turned a simple arithmetic question into a lecture on specifications for the stockyards. Doctor O'Reilly, who was usually blunt but always right, had gently told him he should consider a knee replacement, that his knee could give way at any time.

Jim's wife Mary had died after a massive stroke five years ago. It broke his heart to see her crumpled in the hospital bed, unable to share the day with him like she used to, unable to keep her dignity. He had refused to leave his property since. "I won't be leaving here while I'm on the right side of the turf," he announced repeatedly.

It was a silent trip out of Melbourne. Ron drove the first leg. His hands gripped the steering wheel in the' ten to two' position. Any attempts at conversation rendered a grunt in reply. Sometimes it was as if I hadn't spoken. Your silences are nothing new I think. When you did have a job I remembered your quick, rushing footsteps down the passage, the slamming of the heavy front door and your unspoken words. Goodbye Beth, I love you, see you tonight.

We drove through Northern Victoria's Mallee area. "Less traffic to worry about," Ron said shortly. That was an understatement. Flocks of galahs, the odd kangaroo and several mounds of red gelatinous goo mixed with hair and bones along the side of the road would be it.

We pulled in to a small town to change drivers. The wide street was vacant and the old wooden doors of the shops locked. I counted three pubs, one drapery store, a milk bar and a grain silo down near the railway line. The milk bar with its wide bay windows painted in faded colours, urged the more prosperous shopper from a previous era to "Always insist on Gordon's Aerated Drinks." From an old ragged poster on the Lodge hall window, a young Queen smiled benevolently on the desolation. Tumbleweeds somersaulted down the road driven by a dry gust of wind. Some homes boasted small squares of struggling lawn skirted by bright, garish annuals, as if in defiance of the struggling town around them. Other houses looked abandoned, the hoses still on reels in yards now covered by dust and old brown leaves.

Ron shook his head as he gazed around. I gestured to the car. "Come on dear, let's find a spot out of town for a cuppa." I pulled off into a clearing further out of town. We were surrounded by Mallee scrub. It was unique vegetation, drought resistant, with strong roots that battled to hold the sandy soil together. The Mallee roots once cleared for farming often managed to regenerate, but when they didn't, the sandy infertile ground would blow around from farm to farm, not unlike the younger generation who had ventured to the cities of Melbourne, Adelaide or Sydney for a more prosperous life.

The land became greener and the towns more populated as we drove into South Australia. We were reluctant to lash out on motel tariffs so we stopped overnight in a cabin, on the edge of a caravan park. "We're not stinting on dinner," I insisted. There was a Chinese restaurant in town so we ate there. The menu was certainly no competition for yum cha in Chinatown, Melbourne, but the selection of small, succulent dumplings, Peking roast duck and spicy pork stir-fry loosened Ron's tongue a little and filled my depleted energy stores. They even had some local South Australian Riesling that didn't overpower our dinner selection. "I enjoyed that," Ron remarked. Ron did sleep that night, his choking snores waking me a couple of times.

The noise of the tyres bumping over the cattle grid as we drove in, returned me to visits when the kids were young. It was five in the afternoon and Jim was pottering outside the sheds. He was always there when we arrived, always feigning urgent tasks, always waiting for us. His large frame had shrunk a little and the faded old jeans covered legs that bowed at the knees. His face creased into a familiar smile and his arms reached out as if to hold us, even before the car came to a stop.

Father and son shook hands. "Sorry about the job," said Jim. Ron looked at the ground and shook his head. I welcomed Jim's embrace. "Good to see you," he said, his large arms around me. There was a lump in my throat and I struggled to hold it together. Jim tightened his grip.

We carried our bags to the spare room. It was really a gauzed in veranda. The old wooden framed bed with the high ornate bed head was pushed to the back and faced the door. An old wooden wardrobe and dresser faced each other across the room. On the polished cement floor Jim had placed Mary's treasured, braided rugs. 'The rugs of many colours' the kids called them.

"Don't throw that out!" Mary would lovingly cut old dresses and curtains into strips, then braid these as if she was braiding the hair of the daughter she never had but had wanted so badly. Each braid would be coiled and wound into a flat spiral to be sewn together. Braid was joined to braid until either Mary was happy with the size of the rug or there was no further unwanted material to be reclaimed and cherished.

Jim's hand shook as he poured the tea for us. We sat under the canopy of the ancient pear tree. The patchwork of old bark climbed up the trunk ultimately revealing newer, smoother limbs that ruptured into buds of emerging colour and growth. Jim filled the silence. "Old Bert down the road died last month, they found him in the lower paddock. He'd been cleaning out a water trough. Must have had a heart attack. Best way to go. David his son, has come back from Singapore to run the farm. Never married apparently, a stock broker, sick of the rat race. I'll miss Bert, we used to have a bit of a catch up every now and then."

The days passed quickly and we settled into some semblance of a routine. In the mornings the radio blared, a blanket to fill Ron's usual heavy silence. The back door squeaked as he flung it open. "I'm fixing that electric fence," he would hurl over his shoulder, leaving me with his unspoken words. Goodbye Beth, I love you. See you soon.

I sometimes liked to stay in bed for an extra ten minutes. The smell of Rawleigh products from an earlier life permeated the walls. I inhaled deeply and listened to the long, loud call of the crows. Later, Jim or I would turn off the radio and together we would enjoy a more leisurely breakfast, sometimes out under the old pear tree. We planned the day ahead. There was always some housework to be endured and the evening meal to be discussed, but our main focus was on Jim's plans for the vegetable garden.

"I'll show you how to sow the tomato seeds. Once they're up and growing, gently brush your hand across the tops of them each day for a couple of minutes. This will make them stronger plants. Everyone loved our Mary's tomato kasundi. You've probably seen all the spices in the pantry. We had plans to make it in large quantities and sell it at the Farmers' Market," he told me. I had seen the containers of mustard seeds, coriander, turmeric and ginger. I closed my eyes for a minute and could almost smell and taste that beautiful, spicy chutney. Mary had usually placed it alongside some cold lamb and salad in the evening.

I remembered how Jim's vegetable garden had once thrived. It was his pride and joy. When they were young, the children would roll their eyes about grandpa piling so many vegetables into the car just as we were heading out the gate. "I just like to make sure you have real, fresh food to enjoy," he would say, his eyes moist.

We worked well together. I loaded the weeds and rubbish into the trailer behind Jim's little tractor and he hauled it away for me. Jim had arranged for a load of compost to be dumped over the plots, he showed me how to work this into the soil. It was rich and dark with a powerful earthy smell. "I can almost breathe in that tomato fragrance now," Jim said. He inhaled deeply. "Just wait Beth, we'll get our own compost heap going and nothing will stop us." We planted Aker's Plum Heirloom seeds for our summer salads, plus a variety of other Heirloom seeds for our tomato kasundi. Each day I watched my boxes of seeds, carefully placed under the shed awning. My patience was eventually rewarded and little green shoots appeared in neat rows of two. I was looking forward to harvesting the much anticipated, luscious red yield. "If we record our progress, including successes and failures," Jim told me, "we'll be even more productive next year."

I had begun to take Jim's gardening books to bed at night to gather more knowledge on vegetable growing and to understand the composting process. I tried to show Ron the pictures of vegetable gardens I had been looking at. "I'm tired, turn out the light," he sighed. I slept with his unspoken words. Good night Beth, I love you. Sleep tight. Often I was up shortly after the little Honeyeaters began their beautiful morning chorus just before dawn.

Jim now walked with more purpose in his step and even enjoyed the odd trip into Murang with me. "I wouldn't mind a bit of lunch at the Vic' Hotel, Beth," he remarked casually. "Bert and I used to meet there sometimes." It certainly wasn't a quiet lunch. We took a while to work through our mixed grill and not just because the steak was a bit tough. We were constantly interrupted by old cronies of Jim's. I think I met the whole population of Murang in two hours, including Bert's son David, who had come into town for supplies. He was a good looking man with a wide, open smile.

We sipped a thick, sweet Muscat that evening under the old pear tree. The insects buzzing in the background around the shed light thankfully left us alone. Jim leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. I thought he was savouring the magic of the still, peaceful evening. Suddenly he leaned forward. "Ron, Beth, I'd like you to consider staying here. You're my only son Ron. What's here will be yours anyway. You could rent out your house in Melbourne and make a living here. Have a think about it." He left us and slowly made his way back to the house. He didn't look back. We were silent. We hadn't seen the offer coming.

"I don't know," said Ron, "farming's buggered. I think we'll go back to Melbourne and I'll try for another job". Ron's choking snores kept me awake that night. In the morning, above the blaring noise of the radio, Ron repeated his decision.

"No." My eyes refused to blink or waver. "I'm staying here. Jim is my father-in-law and my children's grandfather. He needs me. I've already booked a stall at the Christmas Farmers' Market to sell our kasundi chutney. The kids are coming up to help."

Ron's chin dropped and his mouth formed a cavernous oval. I turned off the radio. As I looked at him my unspoken words hung like shiny white balloons bouncing on a long string suspended between us. Goodbye Ron, I love you. Perhaps you'll come back soon.

Ron never did come back from Melbourne. I drove over to his funeral a few months ago, retracing our original journey here.

"I'll drive you," pressed David my business partner and close friend.

"I'll take my time, don't worry. Someone needs to oversee the tomato harvest."

There was no milk bar in that little country town Ron and I had stopped at all those years ago. The painted window still remained, a proud reminder of the past. A busy delicatessen and mixed grocery store bustled in its place. The wide street was alive. Cafe style tables and chairs outside were occupied by people from several nationalities. There was much laughter and talking. I stopped to enjoy a beautiful aromatic coffee, thick with flavour and sweetness. Inside, the enterprising owners displayed an enticing array of spelt products.

"You not only ground spelt for flour," they explained. "It can also be added to salads or side dishes."

"Where does it grow? I asked.

"Here, we grow it here," they patiently explained. "We combined our money to buy land. This is how we farmed years ago before we had to leave the old country. Here some of the family members can work outside the farm to help pay for extras we need. There are so many opportunities. We can choose what we do here in Australia. We can control our future. We are Australians."

I was impressed to hear how these people had pooled their resources to buy properties. The subsistence method of farming and the surplus being taken to a Farmers Market was a story I could relate to. I was reluctant to leave the little town especially after I was urged to taste some lunchtime offerings. The owner pressed a bag of sweet delicacies on me as I left.

"For the journey. Travel safely."

I needed to stay somewhere on the way to Melbourne. This flourishing town was so welcoming my spirits lifted. I strolled further down the street. The old Lodge hall was now a vibrant community centre. A freshly painted sign out the front touted several short courses that ran continuously: English as a second language; computer courses; literacy for the workplace and yoga for the over fifties. Around the corner a large board erected at the consolidated school offered courses to be run during the school holidays, open to anyone over sixteen. They covered a diverse range of subjects from plumbing to accounting. Behind the board in the school grounds was a huge, flourishing, community vegetable garden. A substantial awning covered the area to protect against the summer heat. Three elderly men were perched on a bench, tools by their side.

I decided to stay the night in one of the three hotels. I was ushered to a tastefully renovated room complete with ensuite. Dinner was a mouth watering meal of marinated Damara lamb accompanied by a side dish of spelt grain with cubed butternut pumpkin, raisins and fresh herbs. "The local farmers breed the Damara sheep," explained the chef, "apparently they're well suited to arid conditions. We have a modern menu now, to cater for the high occupancy rates. Teachers come from Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide to conduct the adult courses in their holidays. They like the town so much, some say they might retire here."

"Yes, we're quite busy," the owner joined in. "We've had to become a bit more progressive, update the menu and improve the accommodation to cater for tourists. January is our busiest time. Australia Day celebrations seem to continue for most of the month. The town's awash with Australian flags. On January the twenty-sixth the main street is closed to through traffic. Tables are placed down the middle of the street and families from in town and those out on the farms, bring in food to share. We all celebrate together. There's food from all cultures. Last year we had television cameras and a food show host here, filming the event. Some people came from as far away as Adelaide and Melbourne to join us. Choirs particularly love our national anthem singing competition. We raised a huge amount of money for the local schools. The grocery store owners Aarif and Aamina, are in charge of the festivities. They do a great job. They say they want to show how much they love this country. Now Australia is independent, the day is more significant."

Leaning back in the armchair I closed my eyes. All these changes blossoming from the planting of a seed.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The theme for the Fourth National Republican Short Story Competition (2012) was 'defining Australian identity in a future Australian republic'. Australia's speculative fiction writers were challenged to speculate on possible Australian republican futures.

Jennifer Morris has been awarded 'First Prize' in the Fourth National Republican Short Story Competition for 'The Harvest'. Jennifer has spent most of her adult life in country Victoria and has great hopes and empathy for rural Australia. After an initial career in nursing she gained a degree in Social Sciences. In the past twelve months Jennifer has pursued a long held passion for writing.

WHEN THE ICE MELTS

Ingle Knight

As the air gets warmer and the ice melts we should be facing the end of the world but instead we find our days occupied with another kind of ending. What the two endings have in common is the Prime Minister's lifelong refusal to give credence to either of them until, suddenly, now. I know everything seems strange these days. Nothing is turning out as we would have expected. But what seems strangest of all is that it is the old man's capitulation to the inevitability of what's happening that has been the catalyst for things turning out as they have.

For me, this season of endings began when we noticed the old man's absence. Ironically (because it was the opposite of what one might have expected), it was the arrival of the boats of refugees from Tuvalu that brought his absence to our attention. As the Navy tried to send them home (how? home had drowned) all the usual foghorns blasted the same old jeremiads across the usual net-feeds: loss of autonomy over our borders, deluge of refugees taking our jobs, eating our food and raping our women. All utterly predictable. But something was missing. An expectation unresolved . Couldn't put my finger on it at first. Until I realised: no pronouncements from the PM's office. The old man's customary tirade was nowhere to be heard.

I wasn't alone in wondering why he was so unexpectedly mute. Those of us who had awkwardly raised our voices against him at the beginning of his reign have long since thought better of it. We've even wearied of feeling guilty or disempowered by our timidity. After all, there were so few of us. The great suburban majority seemed happy enough to let him have his way with the country so long as they could carry on with the workday commute that paid for their weekend wallow in the irrelevant but intoxicating pictures moving on their screens. Why not? He told us we were lucky and it was true. And, usually, he told us how proud we should be of our Navy boys braving the elements, turning back the boats, keeping us safe. He had kept it up, year in, year out, since well before he took over the country. So the sudden resounding silence emanating from the old bulldog seemed odd to those of us who still bothered trying to extract information from the Canberra blog-feed.

My first tweet about it was to ask if I had missed a net-feed somewhere. I have my channel filter spread across all the national feeds so I usually catch anything significant. (I sometimes feel nostalgic about simultaneous TV, don't you? We were never in danger of missing things back then.) However, I tweeted the question and almost all my feeds immediately agreed that they had noticed his absence too. In fact we hadn't heard from the old boy in weeks. No policy announcements. No funding cuts. No warming denials. Nothing.

Everybody noticed at once. Suddenly Oznet was buzzing. Where was he? What had happened to him? YouTube News put out footage of him in Parliament but no one took it seriously. When it comes to appearances by elder statesman no one trusts a screen anymore, unless there are living witnesses tweeting confirmation. It's too easy to create simulations. News International were simulating Rupert Murdoch's appearances at the NI AGMs for 10 years before they finally admitted he was dead.

Finally the government made its big announcement. The PM would address the nation in one week's time. And that was it. Nothing else. No details. No clues. Nothing. We would just have to wait. For seven days.

The Twitter-sphere went bananas. To the young ones, the ones they call the EN-gen (they want Everything Now), seven days must have seemed like half a lifetime. Well, perhaps that's why he made us wait: so that they might feel as if they'd had a bit more time. Hard not to pity them. After all, it's not so bad for those of us who were born last century. But the young... I'm surprised they've been so forgiving.

That week I went to see my mother. It was the first time for almost a year. She had always been a huge fan of the PM. As soon as he first appeared on the political horizon, a handsome young conservative monarchist, it was as if he had constructed his politics to perfectly suit all of her prejudices. Back then, when he was still young, she was already old. As he grew old, she stayed old. And as he has grown in stature, she has slowly diminished - her proud, blythe, energetic stride slowed by the degeneration of her body, to a vague shuffle. And her mind, so sharp and sceptical and sentimental back then, blasted by Alzheimer's into perpetual absence. The only trace of the grand shop-window of her theatrical personality that the disease has left behind, barely noticeable before, is her resentment.

Resentment is a trap the mind falls into when envy becomes intolerable. And what we envy most is other people's power; their control over themselves, and, sometimes, over us. (My resentment of the PM has for a long time bordered on the pathological.) My mother never appeared to have a great deal of self-control but she enjoyed controlling others. She was the dominant personality in her circle of friends and a few of them seemed happily prepared to do whatever she wanted. A couple of them maintained their devotion to her as she gradually lost what self-control she had, but that was of their own volition and everything that was left of my mother resented it.

I sat in her little room and chatted to her as if she could understand.

"So what do you think it is that the old bastard's going to announce? It can't be another election, surely. If you believe the polls, public opinion is sympathetic to the Tuvaluans, so that dog whistle won't play. If it was something economic he would have let the Treasurer have it. Some tweeters are suggesting he's going to release all the political prisoners but I can't see how, since he's always denied their existence. And he's already expelled all the Moslems so it can't be that. Do you think he is finally going to come out of the closet?"

As I prattled on, ever more provocatively, she held me in her silent gaze, wondering who I could possibly be and what the strange sounds were coming out of the hole in my face.

The corruption of her memory began years ago: incremental but unstoppable. In one of her last lucid moments she told me that she had no desire to burden me with a mindless remnant of her former self.

"For God's sake, darling, have me put down. Or do it yourself. It doesn't matter how. I won't know. Just take me to a cliff and let me wander off the edge. I really don't care. But don't let me hang around like some sort of astonished vegetable."

Easier said than done. As soon as that handsome young politician she admired so much became Prime Minister he came down hard on all the old transgressions. What was so astonishing was how easily he got away with it. He played the threat of terrorism like Mozart on Steinway. Everything he disagreed with suddenly became a threat to internal security. As he slowly turned the vice there was a boom in the building industry from the extra prisons required to contain his victims. And anyone even indirectly associated with an act of euthanasia was in danger of arrest. One man got 15 years for buying his cancer-ridden father an air ticket to Switzerland. So I just had to watch my mother become the very thing she dreaded most. I was powerless.

A couple of days before his big announcement the rumours began. He was going to announce a referendum to turn the country into a republic. I could hardly believe it but every blog worth reading was carrying it and by the time he made the announcement the few un-hysterical Twitter feeds were already taking a republic for granted and discussing the best process for choosing a president.

There were, as we all now know, two announcements. His first appearance was a shock. We had been watching that grizzled, leathery face for so long we were accustomed to its age, but now, suddenly, he seemed ancient. When he made the second announcement I realised why. To finally face the truth must have been the hardest thing he ever had to do. But it hadn't dulled his Machiavellian acuity. It was an act of political genius to announce the republic first. It was the very thing he had fought against for his entire career. It had established his political identity. The only thing he resisted more was man-made climate change. And so, even as he was halfway through the second announcement, that tired cliche "ultimate irony" was resounding across the Oznet. The most stringent denialist was the one now telling us that the end was coming.

And that, he said, was why he wanted to see the nation fulfil its destiny as a Republic. In two months time he would become President. There wasn't much point, he said, holding an election, it was hardly as if anyone was going to hold the office for very long.

***

To begin with, my resentment was apoplectic. It seemed so petty and deliberately offensive to those of us who had been calling for a republic for so long. Now that it would make no difference at all, now that it was a gesture which, like all gestures now, could have no effect or meaning, now he had finally granted our fondest wish.

Since then though, I think we have all come to understand what an inspired idea it was. While all the other countries of the world have been tearing themselves apart (except China, of course; the Chinese haven't been told yet), we Australians have become quietly more conscious of belonging to a single polity. It has had a strangely civilising effect on us all. Even more peculiar has been its effect on him. His long held attitude of defensive recalcitrance - like so many demagogues, his genius has been to paint himself as a victim of those he has oppressed - has softened. And not just in tone.

He has led the government in an apology. On behalf of all the denialists who have supported and promoted the fossil fuel industry for so long, even back when there was still a chance to slow down the emissions and prevent the catastrophe, on behalf of them all, he has said sorry: sorry to all those of us he attacked and imprisoned and silenced. And he has rescinded his fear-speech legislation and declared an amnesty for all prisoners who were jailed as a result of it. But most of all he has apologised to the young and to the unborn who will never know the beauty of the living world.

I blogged that if he was really that sorry I was surprised it hadn't occurred to him that he didn't deserve to be President. I got a few half-hearted responses but people seemed bored with the old antagonisms. The mood was for reconciliation and forgiveness.

***

On the day the republic was declared I went to see my mother again. The King and Queen had flown down for the event. They were probably glad to come. England has seen some of the worst breakdown of law and order on the planet. In the northern cities revolutions have been declared. A lot of bloggers are calling it civil war. So far, down here, our luck has held. No small thanks to that wily old bastard. My only consolation is that now the runaway warming has begun there won't be anyone left to appreciate the legacy he's been nurturing for so long.

I took my Roller-screen and hung it on the wall of my mother's room so that she could watch the declaration of the republic. An entire day had been given over to it so the organisers had had to invent a series of rituals and ceremonies to fill screen time. As the King and Queen entered the Parliament I collected a couple of sleeping pills that I found in an old bottle in the wall cabinet in my mother's little ensuite bathroom and I planted them in the sweet soft middle of a chocolate cream biscuit. I gave it to mother with a cup of tea. As she ate it I made jokes about the size of our new President's ears. And I thought I saw her smile. As the King was ceremonially ejected from the Senate she went to sleep. I filled her bath with hot water and undressed her. As I carried her to the bath I realised I hadn't seen her naked since I was a little boy. The skin was like soft white translucent parchment. Under the surface, the scribbling of pale blue veins wrote a long indeterminate history of an English life lived in a foreign place. I lowered her into the hot water as the old Prime Minister declared the new republic. And as an ancient aboriginal elder declared that now, finally, we all belonged to the same nation, I took a rusty little Stanley knife I had found in my kitchen drawer and I punctured the veins of her wrists.

BACK TO CONTENTS

The theme for the Fourth National Republican Short Story Competition (2012) was 'defining Australian identity in a future Australian republic'. Australia's speculative fiction writers were challenged to speculate on possible Australian republican futures.

Ingle Knight has been awarded 'Second Prize' in the Fourth National Republican Short Story Competition for 'When the Ice Melts'. A prize-winning playwright and actor, Ingle has a PhD from Murdoch University and lives in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. 'When the Ice Melts' is his first work of prose fiction.

UNFOLDING AUSTRALIA'S REPUBLICAN FUTURES

Glenn Davies

Unfolding Landscapes

It seems strange there is no tradition of republican speculative fiction in Australia. There have certainly been many republican writers but very few examples where republican settings or arguments have been explored in Australian fiction. Republican arguments and explorations of the past and imaginations of the future have almost always been written within the framework of constitutional debates. Where do the people of Australia fit into this? Where are their myths and stories to tell, retell and remember about Australia's emerging republican identity?

The mid-nineteenth century saw the first chapter drafted in the imagined destiny of a republican Australia. This was a period monopolised by a small number of republican writers and orators such as  John Dunmore Lang,  Daniel Deniehy and the poet Charles Harpur whose visions of a republican future created an imaginary framework for the rest of the century. In 1849, the republican poet Charles Harpur attached the subtitle "A Song for the Future" to his poem, "The Tree of Liberty". By 1852, Lang had published  Freedom and Independence for the Golden Lands of Australia, an appeal for the establishment of a United States of Australia. This was the first argued case for an Australian republic. In the 1850s Deniehy argued publicly and through newspaper columns that Australian society was to be founded by 'sons of the soil', hardy and austere men in love with their native soil. Lang and Deniehy believed that it was Australia that offered the best hope of a great republic, a much better hope than America.

The radical thoughts of the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly were evident in the hour of his capture when the police took from his pocket a declaration for a Republic of North Eastern Victoria. Ned Kelly has become an Australian folk hero for his defiance of the colonial authorities. Born in Victoria to an Irish convict father, as a young man he clashed with the police. After he murdered three policemen, the colony proclaimed Kelly and his gang wanted outlaws. It was Ned Kelly's  Jerilderie Letter that showed elements of a manifesto and a foreshadowing of a rebellion. In 1879 the Kelly gang held up the town of Jerilderie, New South Wales. Months prior to arriving in Jerilderie, and with help from his mate Joe Byrne, Kelly had dictated a lengthy letter for publication describing his view of his activities and the treatment of his family and, more generally, the treatment of Irish Catholics by the police and the English and Irish Protestant squatters. The Jerilderie Letter contains language that is colourful, rough and full of metaphors and has become a famous piece of Australian literature.

Alternate history contains elements of historical fiction and sometimes time travel, but is unique in that it extrapolates upon how, if a given event is changed, the course of history will be altered from that point forward. In A. Bertram Chandler's (1984) Kelly Country the narrator is sent back in time, into the mind of his great-grandfather, in order to be able to write an eyewitness account of the Siege of Glenrowan, his ancestor having been among those present in Ma Jones's pub on that occasion. An alternate history emerges, in which the bushranger Ned Kelly was not captured and hanged, but led a rebellion, ultimately becoming the president of an Australian republic, which degenerated into a hereditary dictatorship, "The Kelly".

The radical bookshop was the heartland of nineteenth-century radicalism. In the back rooms of radical bookstores and newspaper printeries sprinkled throughout the colonies, republicanism was a topic of heated discussion. Many of the radical republican writers of the 1880s and 1890s found a vehicle for their ideas in the radical newspapers and journals. By the 1880s, Australians had become a more mobile people. In addition a majority were native-born and most were literate. These two factors helped in providing an audience for the many nationalist writers who were active in the last three decades of the century. By the 1880s and 1890s, radical journals such as the Bulletin, Louisa Lawson's The Dawn and the short-lived Republican in Sydney, the Clipper in Hobart, the Tocsin in Melbourne, the Worker and Boomerang in Brisbane and the Charters Towers  Australian Republican reflected the radical, intellectual and political energies emerging in Australian life. During the depression years of the 1890s, John Norton's Truth also kept up its republican flag. For these journals, Australian nationalism was closely interwoven with republicanism. These editors possessed a brash self-confident nationalism, were fiercely patriotic about Australia and just as fiercely opposed to any Australian government that included the Crown. It was a reaction against imperialist attitudes combined with the radical hope of being able to create a new society in Australia. It is within the columns of journals such as these that the oppositional politics of anti-monarchical republicanism can be seen

Henry Lawson was one of Australia's greatest writers. His interest in the republican movement was sparked by his exposure to the radicalism of friends of his mother, Louisa. In 1887 he became titular publisher of The Republican. In the aftermath of the republican riots in Sydney in 1887, he penned his first published poem, 'A Song of the Republic'. The poem appeared in The Bulletin, 1 October 1887 and on Saturday, 15 October 1887 in The Republican. The last stanza reads:

Sons of the South, aroused at last!

Sons of the South are few!

But your ranks grow longer and deeper fast,

And ye shall swell to an army vast,

And free from the wrongs of the North and Past

The land that belongs to you.

Other republican poems by Lawson included 'The Statue of Our Queen' (1890), and 'The English Queen' (1892). Lawson was of course not a political theorist; rather, he was the voice of an Australian sentiment that put to words the yearnings of the radical nationalists of his day. Lawson was aware that to achieve independence, identity and a just social order, a Republic was the only form of government.

The first Australian republican novel was  Henry Crocker Marriott Watson's 1890 The decline and fall of the British Empire or, The witch's cavern. Watson wrote a number of novels in the utopian genre that was popular during the late nineteenth century. Born in Tasmania in 1835, Watson lived mainly in Victoria where he was ordained as a clergyman. The novel is set in the future and begins with "A letter of explanation", dated, "Melbourne, 12 August 2992" by William Furley. Furley's letter sets the scene for the narrative of his experiences. In the world of 2992 British civilisation survives most strongly in Australia, which is now an independent republic with an elected president. The continent has been developed extensively and is a garden spot, with Eyreton as a new inland capital. Trade flourishes extensively with China, which provides raw materials in exchange for Australian manufactures. There are electric land cars and fairly fast air transportation

Having finished his education in 2988 Furley travels the world with his fiancée and Professor Fowler, a historian. When they visit England it has gone primitive. Population has decreased enormously, with London consisting of some twenty thousand people who live amid ruins, and with little evidence of the high civilisation of a thousand years earlier. As Furley wanders about he sees a large white hare which he follows down into a great cavern where he meets the witch, or Sibyl, as she is sometimes called. She shows him visions and gives him a ring to protect him. He then awakens along with certain of his Australian friends and companions in London of the 1890s.

The heart of the book consists of Furley's experiences and observations in the collapsing late nineteenth century world. England collapses. Strikes break out. In a short time a mammoth demonstration ushers in the Great Revolution. Eventually, the better people leave England, migrating to the colonies. Furley awakens back in his own era and declares that when Australia becomes overpopulated, he and his fiancée will return to England to repopulate and recivilise it in a form of reverse colonialism from the antipodes.

Historians also enjoy  imagining history as it might have been. The 'what if' theme is taken up in a 2006 collection of counterfactual histories edited by Sean Scalmer and Stuart McIntyre called What if: Australian History as it might have been. In McIntyre's counterfactual chapter, Australia's entry into the First World War is pre-empted by a Pearl Harbour-like attack on Australian troop ships in the Cocos Islands, well before they reach Gallipoli. In the shock that follows, Billy Hughes stubbornly rallies his nation to the cause of empire. On the other hand, Sydney academic Helen Irving imagines what might have happened if Australia's initial attempt at Federation did not win British approval, and was therefore deferred until 1910. Rather than Alfred Deakin, Irving has the irascible Billy Hughes bring Australia together as a nation. Greater confidence in nationhood leads to a less obstructionist senate, paving the way for Australia to become a republic by 1980.

One of the only examples of early twentieth century republican fiction was M Barnard Eldershaw's (1945) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. This is regarded as one of Australia's premier early Science Fiction novels. It is basically an alternative history of an Australian socialist republic from the 1920s onwards flowing from a revolution during the First World War. Tomorrow was censored by the Australian government when first released because of its attitude to national security.

Australian debate on a possible republic in the late 1990s inspired an outpouring of writing from republicans and constitutional monarchists. Almost none of it took the form of novels, poetry, plays or short stories. None of the delegates to the 1998 Constitutional Convention was a writer of literary fiction (although, at a stretch an exception could be made for Steve Vizard's,  Two Weeks in Lilliput). Although the republican and monarchist causes had supporters from the literary world like Tom Keneally and Clive James, such writers did not use their fictional talents for their causes. This absence impoverished the republic debate, since works of fiction provide particular opportunities to imagine how familiar political institutions might work if some of their key features are altered.

A popular way to show republican imaginations of the future is within the framework of constitutional debates. Some of the few speculative fiction novels that are set in an Australian republican future include Rodney Hall's (1987)  Kisses of the Enemy which begins with the success of the 1992 Republic Referendum and the election in 1993 of the Republic's first President. The novel depicts the development of Australian political institutions under a directly elected President in nightmarishly authoritarianism terms. Hall's novel anticipated many of the fears expressed by opponents of a direct election model in Australia's republican debates during the 1990s.

Other republican novels include Camilla Nelson's comic 1998 novel  Perverse Acts which depicts a future Australian minimalist model republic with a ceremonial President and a government that must build coalitions of support among the many small parties represented in parliament. In Ken Harris's (2005)  Pathway to Treason it is the year 2020 and Australia is a republic with a President and a Prime Minister, although the President is supposedly merely a figurehead. However, Peter Elphinstone, ex-test cricketer and President of Australia is far from satisfied with the way the country is being run. On the other hand, Prime Minister Bill Packard is far from pleased with the President sticking his beak into matters that shouldn't concern him. When the Australian ambassador to Syria is assassinated the PM is all fired up to join the US in sending troops to the Middle East whereas the President is more cautious. The novel revolves around the head to head battle between Packard and Elphinstone as the entire seat of government is threatened. In Peter O'Brien's (2011)  A Climate for Change the Prime Minister who had been instrumental as Opposition Leader in establishing the Australian Republic finds that his ambitions are threatened by an enemy in his own ranks, and the President whom he helped to install. O'Brien examines the issues surrounding the Australian Republic and climate change, in the context of a political conflict. All these novels are as much political thrillers or constitutional whodunits that play out within the settings of future Australian republican governments as they are an exploration of Australia's republican future.

Republican settings rather than republican political machinations come more to the fore in Valda Marshall's (2009)  The First President. The year is 1920 and The Prince of Wales is visiting Adelaide as part of his royal tour of Australia, and the royal party is staying at Adelaide's Government House. Extra house staff are hired for the important visit, and Lily, a beautiful young country girl, is one of them. When Lily comes face to face with the Prince, history is forever changed. Fast forward to the year 2016 where Noelene Jones, one of Australia's most celebrated opera singers and staunch republican supporter, has decided to retire from the world of entertainment and is looking forward to the quiet life. She decides that her first project as a regular citizen will be to renovate and bring back to life her grandmother Lilly's dilapidated cottage in the Adelaide Hills. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, a man of cunning with an over-inflated ego, is busy trying to orchestrate the country's historic and complicated transition from Monarchy to Republic. The biggest question on everyone's lips is: who will become the First President? Noelene, a staunch republican supporter, has no interest in the job. But the Australian public has other ideas... and Mike, a friendly reporter who is making a documentary about Nolene's life, is overly encouraging.

On 8 June 2003 the  Preamble Project was launched at the Museum of Sydney. This was an outcome of the rejection in 1999 by the Australian community of the preamble written by poet Les Murray as part of the referendum on a republic. The Preamble Project began as a conversation between the writer James Bradley and other republicans about the need to provide some imaginative foundation for the ongoing debate about an Australian Republic. The project involved inviting several writers to draft preambles to a Constitution of the Republic of Australian as a way of giving voice to some of the deeper impulses an Australian Republic might embody.

Six writers offered individual statements reflecting their vision for Australia, its land and people. James Bradley began his statement with a pledge of allegiance to "the land, the sea [and] the sky". Peter Carey declared that Australia was a nation "engendered by a foreign king, by foreign wars, by happenstance [and] by a once great empire which also bequeathed us our first rich cultural inheritance". For Richard Flanagan the preamble became something more like a national prayer, an exhortation to find meaning in the past and in the land that Australians share, and to make themselves anew through the medium of their shared love of that land. It was unashamedly romantic, not just in its language and imagery, but with its explicit belief in the idea of the republic as an act of the imagination. Delia Falconer and Dorothy Porter by contrast offered more plainsong approaches to the question. Delia Falconer compressed her feelings into a single sentence, trying to draw together the many impulses a republic might embody, acting finally to remind elected representatives that their power stems from the will of the people, and no higher source. Dorothy Porter also sought to express the values the republic might embody by reference to the popular will. Leah Purcell's contribution opened in the language of the Kamilaroi and Gungarri people and continued in English, calling for respect for pioneers, immigrants, the land and its first peoples. Through productive discussions of what sort of preamble we would like to have comes a discussion of the meaning a future Australian Republic might ultimately hold for all of us.

In the Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine Aurealis, 20/21, April 1998 a special double issue speculated on a variety of possible futures of an Australian republic. SF is, afterall, the 'literature of ideas'. It is within the pages of Aurealis that an Australian republican speculative fiction genre appears to finally emerge. Sue Isle's writes in 'Habits of Empire':

Australia had always rather admired the perceived splendour of the British Empire, so it was hardly surprising that it took the first chance available to get one of its own...

In 'The Infinite Race', Terry Dowling writes:

Cas Caro knew there had been another death when he saw both Republican Guard and Federal Police in the public foyer of the Parkes House Capital Hill complex...

Michael Pryor writes in 'Australian Visions':

The door to the cockpit was flung open and a steward stumbled out, wide-eyed and pale. "The crew's all dead," he announced to the apprehensive passengers. "We're out of control and plunging into the heart of the sun." Desperately, he looked around the cabin. "I just hope to God we've got an Australian aboard... "

And finally, in Robert Hood's, 'Occasional Demons' he writes:

.... I toss the antique magazine back to him. "Impossible. She's been dead for what? A decade or so?"

"Security ID gives an 94.7% verification. Do you know what that means?"

Of course I did. But it was still impossible. "Has to be a genetic remake. I saw Elvis Presley at the New Trocadero last week. Dead spit, he was." Digalle huffs, but the scorn's gone before I can protest. "A hologram?" I suggest.

"Do you think we wouldn't sift out the obvious, long before we'd resort to you? Genetic remakes can't catch the nuances. Holograms are unstable. Security ID says it's her."

"The real thing?"

He shrugs. "As you say, it can't be her. But we don't have any alternatives that the analysis programs like."

I get up from behind my desk and wander to the window. Canberra looks stark under the exposed sun, even with the filters running at maximum. "So Princess Di is skulking about the President's house. What's he worried about? That she wants to assassinate him?"

In 2000, the science fiction writer Sean Williams published in  Eidolon the story he had written too late for the Aurealis Republic issue. William's describes 'The Land Itself' as "not just a post-human take on the whole Republic issue, but as post-Australia (if that's a thing)." One of the Australian colonies wants to secede from the motherland and its envoy has to jump through several increasingly strange hoops to do it. He follows this up in 2005 with his second novel,  The Resurrected Man which is set in a future Australia (2069) that was part of the United Republics of Australia in which 'Old Stott-Despoja' had just been voted in for another term.

Alison Goodman's (1998)  Singing the Dogstar Blues is also set in an Australian republican future. It won a 1999 Aurealis Award, was a CBC Notable Book, and was listed as an ALA Best Book (2004). Joss Aaronson, a 17-year-old girl studying to be a Time Jumper is paired up with Mav, the first alien to study on Earth. She has two loves in her life: playing the blues and training at the prestigious Centre for Neo-Historical Studies to jump through time. It is at the Centre, on the old Melbourne University campus, where Daniel Sunawa-Harrod is reputed to discover the Time-Continuum Warp Field.

"On the 10/10/50, the 50th anniversary of Australian Independence Day, Danny receives the Nobel-Takahini Prize for Science".

Writing in 1998, Goodman predicted the success of the 1999 republican referendum and the establishment of the Australian republic in 2000. However, the reality was to be different.

Perhaps the last word on Australian republican futures could come from the 2012 remake of the science fiction action film  Total Recall. At the end of 21st Century, the Earth is divided into two territories the United Federation of Britain (UFB) and the Colony (formerly Australia) after chemical warfare devastates the remainder of the planet. Many residents of the Colony travel to the UFB to work in their factories via 'the Fall', a gravity elevator which travels through the Earth. Habitable space is at a minimum in both the UFB and the Colony. A Resistance operating in the UFB seeks to improve life in the Colony, which the UFB views as a terrorist movement. An explosive is detonated above 'the Fall' destroying it and allowing the Colony to be free from the United Federation of Britain.

The driving theme to republican writings throughout the nineteenth century was a sense of the 'inevitable republic'. However, the acceptance of the 'inevitability of a republic' made it possible for nineteenth century writers to ignore the need to win over large numbers. In  Mark McKenna's (1996)  The Captive Republic he succinctly describes the notion of a 'captive republic', that is, the myth of an inevitable republic, as "the end point of the colonies' political development." He argues that this notion has been used by Australians since the 1830s up until the present "to delay the coming of the republic as much as... to legitimise the republic's arrival."

David Donovan wrote in  Independent Australia that a major reason for a future Australian republic is to aid the further development of a distinct and unique Australian identity. He also notes that a great many of Australia's most important works of fiction look towards our past rather than ahead –

"with some exceptions rather than preferring bright and optimistic tales, the stories with which we seem to most identify have a strong sense of adversity, injustice and persecution at their core".

Donovan argues that identity comes through the way we think about ourselves and our nation and the narrative about what we are as a nation continues to be updated with new chapters added all the time. It is time that we speculate more on the future rather than dwell on the misgivings of the past.

The emerging Australian republican fiction genre provides a compelling preview of the possible future of Australia as a republic. It orientates speculation on our national identity to the future and away from the past. The future is an unfolding landscape and it is through speculative fiction that possibilities can be seen.

Australia is still at heart a speculative enterprise.

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COMPETITION DETAILS

National Republican Short Story Competition themes

2012 – 'Defining Australian identity in a future Australian republic'

2011 – 'Citizen or Subject'

2010 – 'Life and Death in an Australian republic'

2009 - Short stories were required to portray an Australian republican future in a positive light and demonstrate the absurdity of a hereditary monarch as Australian Head of State in twenty-first century Australian society

National Republican Short Story winners

2012 - First Prize: The Harvest / Jennifer Morris

2012 - Second Prize: When the Ice Melts / Ingle Knight

2012 - Third Prize: Once / Terry Byrnes

2011 - First Prize: A Child of the Holocaust / Valda Marshall

2011 - Second Prize: The King a Mister Crow / R.P.L. Johnson

2011 - Third Prize: Royalty Reality / Harold Mally

2010 - Highly Commended Prize: Double Lives / Helen Bersten

2010 - Highly Commended Prize: Inauguration Day / Sean Oliver Ness

2009 - First Prize: Rook Feast / Kel Robertson

Judging Panels

2012 - Thomas Keneally, Professor Brian Matthews, Professor John Warhurst, Dr Glenn Davies

2011 - Thomas Keneally, Professor John Warhurst, Professor George Williams, Dr Glenn Davies

2010 - Professor Brian Matthews, Professor John Warhurst, Professor George Williams, Dr Glenn Davies

2009 - Nick Earls, Professor Brian Matthews, Professor John Warhurst, Dr Glenn Davies

Nick Earls is the author of fourteen books, including bestselling novels such as Zig Zag Street, Bachelor Kisses, Perfect Skin and World of Chickens. His contribution to writing in Queensland led to him being awarded the Queensland Writers Centre inaugural Johnno award in 2001 and a Centenary Medal in 2003. His most recent works are Welcome to Normal, a collection of original short stories, The True Story of Butterfish, about a former rock star re-adjusting to mundane life in the Brisbane suburbs, and Monica Bloom, based on his own adolescent experience of an ill-fated crush

Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Schindler's List, The People's Train, The Daughters of Mars, and Shame and Captives. His latest non-fiction book was The Australians: Origins to Eureka. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and has been a 55 cent Australian stamp. He is also widely known as the founding chairman of the Australian Republican Movement.

Professor Brian Matthews is Honorary Professor of English at Flinders University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has won the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland Premiers' awards for literature, the Bicentenary Biography Prize (shared), and the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. His most recent book is Manning Clark A Life for which he was awarded the National Biography Prize in 2010.

Professor John Warhurst recently concluded fifteen years as Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He is Adjunct Professor at both Australian National University and Flinders University, recently stepped down as Senior Deputy National Chair, Australian Republican Movement, and was Australian Republican Movement National Chair from 2002 to 2005. He also writes a weekly column for the Canberra Times.

Professor George Williams is Anthony Mason Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at University of New South Wales. He was previously a National Committee member, Australian Republican Movement and regular reviews science fiction and fantasy books for The Book Show on ABC Radio National and for The Weekend Australian.

Dr Glenn Davies is the convener of the National Republican Short Story Competition. He is also Queensland State Convener, Australian Republican Movement, a republican historian and author, has been an Aurealis Awards Science Fiction Short Story judge and reads slush pile for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

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ABOUT US

Australian Republican Movement

Gouldian Finch in the Summer

The Australian Republican Movement is a non-profit organisation that advocates for an Australian republic within the Commonwealth, with the Australian people being unambiguously sovereign in a fully independent Australian nation. In an Australian republic all power belongs to the Australian people and nobody inherits power.

The Australian Republican Movement advocates a Head of State who is Australian, who lives here and who can represent our identity, our values and our place in the world. All of our national institutions would then be in Australian hands. The Australian Republican Movement also advocates a national conversation and democratic process for Australians to decide how our next Head of State will be chosen.

An Australian republic is about our identity – the way we see ourselves and the way we want to be seen. A republic will better reflect our values of hard work and a fair go for all. The Australian Republican Movement wants to bring Australians together around what defines us and unites us.

The question of whether or not Australia should be a republic has been debated for longer than most people imagine.

In early colonial NSW, the American rejection of British rule and the violence of the French Revolution were well known. Republicanism was often used as  political language to challenge government authority and only hardened the resolve of those in power to savagely repress any supporters. In 1795, the  'Scottish Martyrs' arrived. The many Irish convicts brought with them antipathy towards the British. Convict uprisings such as the  1804 Castle Hill rebellion were labelled republican. But in most cases the convicts were not looking for political change, they just wanted to return home.

The period from 1840 to 1856 was one in which colonial grievances reached their height. In Sydney in 1850 the outspoken firebrand Reverend  John Dunmore Lang, the People's Advocate editor E.J. Hawksley and the young  Henry Parkes campaigned through the Australian League for a republican form of government when the British government wanted to reintroduce transportation of convicts. In the early 1850s during the gold rushes there was an influx of large numbers of migrants from Europe and the United States to Victoria, many of whom were sympathetic to republicanism. This caused British officials to fear the possibility of revolution. In 1854, the Eureka Stockade rebellion at the Ballarat goldfield was ultimately a republican desire for government by the people. However, the urgency vanished when responsible government was granted in 1856.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century republicanism became strongly anti-monarchical and nationalist in sentiment. The 'inevitability' of an Australian republic became a common theme. In the late 1870s the traditional Irish enmity towards British authority can be seen in the republican sentiments expressed in Ned Kelly's  'Jerilderie Letter' and later in Kelly gang member Joe Byrne's 'Declaration of the Republic of North East Victoria'.

During the 1880s there were fifteen republican organisations and twenty  newspapers or journals in cities and major country towns. This republicanism was often focussed on struggles between capital and labour. From 1884 the Bulletin expounded a strong anti-monarchical attitude. In 1887 republicans  twice defeated attempts at Sydney Town Hall to pass a loyal resolution congratulating Queen Victoria's Jubilee resulting in an open clash between thousands of demonstrators. Soon after, Sydney had a Republican Union and a republican journal led by Louisa and Henry Lawson, and George Black. It was in the Republican that Henry Lawson published "A Song of the Republic".

In 1890 and 1891 the  Australasian Republican Association on the north Queensland goldfield of Charters Towers had over 700 members, published a regular journal, and established republican branches. The Australian Republican editor, F.C.B. Vosper published an  inflammatory editorial at the height of the  1891 Shearers' Strike calling for revolution and the declaration of the republic. He was arrested and tried for seditious libel but eventually acquitted.

The Commonwealth of Australia was the title chosen for the new nation at the 1891 National Constitutional Convention. Although there was controversy over the  republican ancestry of the term it was the title accepted in 1901. Prior to the mid-1890s, republicans had insisted that national independence could be achieved only by Australia's secession from the Empire. However, by 1901 federation was seen as the  first step on the road towards political independence.

In the 1960s  republican activity was restarted by authors Geoffrey Dutton and Donald Horne. At the same time the student magazine Oz lampooned the monarchy. However,  the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by the appointed Governor-General on 11 November 1975 outraged many Australians. Since those turbulent days, several notable Australians declared a commitment to an Australian republic. There were many Town Hall meetings and calls to 'maintain the rage'. Republicans proposed 1988 for the establishment of an Australian republic. This was not to be.

In the 1990s the popular definition of 'republic' was simply the removal of the hereditary monarch. This was seen as the last step in Australia's political development. In 1991 the Australian Republican Movement was established, with Tom Keneally as the Inaugural Chair. In 1993 Prime Minister Paul Keating formed the  Republic Advisory Committee, led by  Malcom Turnbull to prepare options on how to achieve a republic with minimal constitutional change. In June 1995,  Keating announced his goal of a republic with an Australian head of state. The 1998 Constitutional Convention helped to strengthen the debate for a republic. While the republic was a major issue in the late 1990s, the debate was caught up in an argument about the best selection method for the Head of State and on this crucial issue republicans divided. In the absence of a proper process to resolve those differences, Australians rejected the 6 November 1999 referendum 55-45 per cent. No political leader has subsequently emerged who wants to find common ground amongst Australians and to break the logjam. This is where it became frozen for more than a decade.

The last few years of chaotic and messy partisan politics has knocked bipartisan "vision" issues off the agenda. And at the same time, our media has become a cheer squad for "celebrity" monarchy, framing the republic debate as all about a family in Britain, when actually our great national cause is about the sovereignty of the Australian people.

During 2012 a thorough review was undertaken of why the republic issue had stalled. A new campaign was  trialled in Tasmania in late 2012 and a new "listening" campaign was rolled out across the country in 2013 on  university campuses, at multicultural festivals and other community events in an effort to engage all Australians in a conversation, to find as much common ground as possible about who we are as a nation. The Australian Republican Movement asked thousands of people  "Who do we want to be?" Overwhelmingly, people said "free, fair, multicultural... and Australian". It is in such a consensus response that lays the potential for Australian unity. This is a unity that can only be given expression by an Australian as our Head of State and all of our national institutions in our own name.

During the listening campaign people were also asked "What does it mean to be Australian?" and the answers in proportion to the rate of response are demonstrated here:

At the end of 2013 UMR conducted a poll following Governor-General Quentin Bryce's comment in which she  expressed her hope that "one day, one young (Australian) girl or boy may even grow up to be our nation's first Head of State." Those in agreement, 48 per cent, far outnumbered those opposed, 32 per cent. These results were in a similar range to most other polls that show strong support for a republic. So, even with the issue off the agenda for more than a decade, half of Australia supports becoming a republic, there are many undecided and the status quo has no capacity to achieve majority support on the yes/no question.

31 January 2014 was the 20th anniversary of the  new citizenship oath, which replaced a mandatory pledge of loyalty to the Queen, with these words:

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

On this date the Australian Republican Movement released a poll showing overwhelming support for the pledge of allegiance to Australia and its people and not to the Queen. When Tony Abbott was sworn into office in late 2013, he pledged allegiance "to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia." Some other prime ministers  have pledged allegiance to "Australia and its people" (which is also the pledge new Australians are required to make). When asked by UMR in a poll "Which do you prefer?" 70% supported the pledge to Australia and its people, with only 20% agreeing with Mr Abbott's pledge to the Queen.

The monarchy is clearly no longer an institution that can unite Australians. It's broken. The monarchy sits above our system of democratic government but cannot represent us, our identity or our values as a nation.

Contact Us

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