By Pip Hinman
Paul Keating's H.V. Evatt lecture last April — his first detailed public statement on Labor's "republican vision" — was awash with pronouncements about "reconciliation" with Aborigines, entreaties to forge a so-called "uncompromised Australian identity," and the need for "a common purpose" as the 21st century draws nearer. His second major public speech on the topic, at the Corowa centenary dinner on August 2, steered away from the increasingly divisive issue of Aboriginal reconciliation to concentrate instead on constitutional reform. Both speeches dripped with unabashed nationalism, and both were crafted with the same purpose in mind — to forge a new ideological consensus around Labor's economic restructuring program.
Keating recalled the significance of the Corowa conference, which, a century earlier, had played a role in the lead-up to federation. He correctly noted that most Australians didn't give a damn about the constitution, but called on Australians to "reclaim" it. He stopped short however of proposing any democratic changes to its content, such as the addition of a Bill of Rights.
Keating focussed on the constitution rather than Aboriginal reconciliation as the safer option with which to recycle Labor's nationalist rhetoric. In his speech to the Corowa Shire council and invited guests he said: "In this last decade of the 20th century, we have the chance the like of which the Australians of a century ago could not have imagined ... I am for the republic for what can deliver — a new sense of unity and national pride in which Austrians of this and future generations can share".
Ideological needs of capitalism
Why is the Labor Party pushing this barrow so hard at the moment? Why has the "republic debate" assumed so much importance?
Have the closet fenians in the ALP suddenly seen their big chance after the recent spate of royal family scandals? Or is it simply because we're nearing the end of the century? No, their motives have much more to do with the promotion of a new ideological consensus which Australian capitalism desperately needs as it goes through its most traumatic restructuring. They are trying to dress up an old ideology to sell their calls for sacrifice, and yet more sacrifice, for the capitalist system.
Right at a time when the class divisions are becoming a lot more apparent, when sections of the middle class (both urban and rural) are being sucked into the lower of society's two tiers, what better way to muddy the waters than to promote a new sense of nationhood, of community purpose, of common struggle for building a more competitive Australian capitalism. As Keating put it in his April republican speech: "If we Australians are bold and determined and faithful to our beliefs and aspirations I believe the 1990s will be a great watershed 1890s was a watershed so will this decade be. I believe we will emerge as a robust social democracy, a player of substance in the world, integrated with our region and prosperous in a way that we have never been before: I mean prosperous not only in material comforts but prosperous in ideas and innovation, in our capacity to make things and sell them to the world, in opportunity, prosperous in our faith: our faith in ourselves and the life we have created here."
In its fifth consecutive term in office the ALP is desperate to win some ideological consensus around its particular brand of "economic rationalism." The Labor leadership is, of course, extremely conscious of it being one of the few social-democratic parties to have survived in government into the 1990s. While social-democratic parties have been thrown out of government elsewhere in the world — France, Germany and even Sweden — the Australian Labor Party has survived this long partly thanks to a particularly inept Liberal/National Coalition opposition.
Fundamentally, the Coalition offers the same "economic rationalist" program as Labor. From the point of view of the ruling class, Labor's main advantage is its ability to govern with the unqualified support of the leadership of the trade union movement.
The ALP leadership knows this of course, which is why they have to bolster the ideological underpinning for their so-called reforms over the next period. They know that their program of economic restructuring will certainly not bring about prosperity for all but instead will lead to more unemployment, savage cuts to public utilities and infrastructure and stepped up attacks on democratic rights. They therefore have to find the right formula, the right rhetoric, to sell it.
The cement that held the Accord together for Labor — the lies about the grand recovery around the corner and the promises to improve the social wage — has evaporated into thin air. Keating hopes that a republican campaign may provide him with some social "super glue."
The first versions of the Accord were sold to workers as a simple trade off: wage restraint in return for jobs and a rising social wage. But before long it was wearing thin. Wage restraint was being delivered but the jobs and rises in the social wage did not eventuate.
In its 1987 document, Australia Reconstructed, the ACTU sketched out a more sophisticated ideological underpinning for Labor's austerity program. This presented a vision of a newly modernised and more competitive Australian economy built on cooperation between the Labor government, unions and employers. Labor and the ACTU would actually help employers better exploit labour — through "labour market reform" — all in the "national interest." Somewhere down the line everybody would be a winner. But for the immediate future workers were asked to keep on sacrificing. To sell this, Labor needed to reinforce nationalist sentiment among workers.
Historical role of ALP
Labor's latest nationalist campaign is not a new phenomenon. The ALP the strategic role for the ruling class of rebuilding social cohesion, especially at times when the fabric of society is frayed as a result of capitalism's contradictions. Hence, Labor governments have been brought in to heal the social wounds from recessions and wars. That is essentially why the republic debate has been resurrected.
Over the last century, various Labor figures raised the nationalist flag. But their nationalism was intimately tied up with their racism particularly against Asian itinerant workers, but also, to some extent, revealing a certain distrust of British colonial policies. But this latter aspect never went anywhere close to severing Australia's partnership with British imperialism.
Labor's racist nationalist attitude was summed up by McGowern, the first Labor premier of NSW: "While Britain is behind us, and while her naval power is supreme, Australia will be what Australians want it — white, pure and industrially good."
It found formal expression in the White Australia Policy adopted at the time of federation in 1901, and later championed by Arthur Caldwell (one of Labor's "grand visionaries", applauded by Keating in his speech), and not officially buried until 1972.
Today Australian capitalism is clearly independent of British imperialism and Australia has been effectively a republic with only the symbolic trappings of a monarchy remaining. Just as earlier nationalist campaigns by Labor did not challenge collaboration with British imperialism, Keating's republicanism does not challenge the rule of the transnational corporations that dominate the global capitalist economy today.
Keating's republican posture also seeks to disguise Australia's role in the region as an imperialist power. There is a lot of talk about Australia becoming more a part of Asia. The traditional anti-Asian immigration stance of Labor has been muted — though the Asian refugees in immigration detention centres could be forgiven for thinking that the White Australia Policy has in no way been diminished.
Australian capital is moving into Asia in a bigger way than ever before and also seeks to build itself by forming alliances with and attracting — as privileged business migrants — Asian capitalists seeking a place of retreat should the growing contradictions in Asia explode one day.
Australian investments abroad rose from an insignificant amount in 1983 to around 24% of GDP by the end of 1980s.
But to encourage Australian workers to sacrifice harder, the developing countries in Asia are presented as competitors rather than the object of Australian exploitation.
Keating's minimalism
Australia today is only a monarchy in form. In content it is already a epresentatives in Australia, the governor-general and the state governors, are not hereditary monarchs but are appointed by federal and state governments. While Laborite republicans point to Governor-General Kerr's dismissal of the elected Whitlam Labor government in 1975 as an argument against the monarchy, the governor-general's reserve power to dismiss an elected government does not stem from his/her position as the Queen's representative. The British monarchy has no such power. Rather, this reserve power was enshrined in the Australian Constitution by the Australian ruling class, and can only be invoked if the Senate blocks the government's money supply and the government of the day refuses to call an election to resolve the deadlock between the two houses of parliament.
When Kerr dismissed Whitlam he was not acting on orders from Elizabeth Windsor (she wasn't even consulted). Rather, Kerr was acting as the majority of the Australian ruling class wanted him to act. When the 1974-75 international capitalist recession — the first synchronised global capitalist recession since the 1930s — hit Australia, the ruling class here panicked. They thought the Whitlam Labor government would not be able to contain workers' demands for wage rises to compensate for the high inflation that accompanied the recessionary slump, and launched a hysterical media campaign to get the Liberals into office.
Keating's "minimalist" constitutional change to a republic does not seek to remove the power of the unelected head of state to dismiss an elected government. It simply proposes changing the head of state's name from "governor-general" to "president" and removing all references to the monarchy from the Australian Constitution. Labor seeks a simply "symbolic" change. It wants to make sure that the republic "debate" remains as narrow as possible to avoid the embarrassing possibility of it actually being used to assess Labor's performance in government, the extent and content of Australian "democracy" or, God-forbid, to discuss and implement radical solutions to the current social and economic crisis.
Keating has appointed a committee of "eminent persons" to keep the debate as limited as possible. This grand but pointless process, Keating hopes, will serve the same symbolic role that Hawke's grand summits did a decade ago.