RightsBase

Australia is,  I believe, the only country in the world to declare a public holiday in honour of a horse race.  But at the least the Melbourne Cup is a home-grown event and the holiday actually falls on race day (the first Tuesday in November).  Today is a public holiday known as the Queen's Birthday.  Only it's not her birthday and — the embarrassing 1999 referendum notwithstanding — her status is much disputed downunder.

Elizabeth II is Queen of Australia and much else besides, but she is not Australian.  She is represented in Australia by a Governor-General, who has the power to declare war and to dismiss public service chiefs, judges, MPs and even the Prime Minister, as occurred in 1975 when Gough Whitlam was dismissed by a Govenor-General he had himself appointed.  G-G Sir John Kerr is said to have gotten the jitters, wrongly believing he was in danger of being dismissed by Whitlam and moved to sack Whitlam first.  Bizarre.  And a hopeless way to run a country.  The situation in Britain is entirely different, given that there the Queen rules independently of the government of the day

For me, it's not about nationalism — far from it — it's about democracy.  And a workable system of government.  I welcome the renewed push for an Australian republic and believe it is also an unmissable opportunity to examine and rectify questions of indigenous sovereignty and remake race relations in Australia.  As the now-defunct Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation noted, there is a "pressing need for non-Indigenous people to re-establish the foundations of nation which can no longer justify the means by which its sovereignty was first acquired."

The European Enlightenment conceived of human rights as something like the text of a contract between the people and their chosen government.  For the social contract theorist, the very purpose of government is to secure the people's rights.  Violate rights too extensively and the deal was off.  Abusive governments could and should be justly overthrown.  Such is the thinking behind the American Declaration of Independence.

So far as Australian Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders are concerned, there is no mutually-beneficial contract by which they have freely accepted the responsibilities of Australian citizenship.  Australia was invaded without thought to the rights of its existing inhabitants, who were dispossessed without treaty or compensation.  White historian of indigenous Australia Henry Reynolds argues that, despite efforts to make nation and State (and race) coterminous in Australia, there are three nations within the federal State of Australia: Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and the multi-ethnic settler population.  This is not unusual.  He estimates that, despite the rhetoric of the nation-state, 95 per cent of modern States are similarly multi-national entities.

Recognition of indigenous sovereignty, rather than being a threat, could give the Australian State the legitimacy it currently lacks.  Nothing less than a ‘new social contract’ is required.  It may be metaphorical, evident in genuinely re-made relationships and power structures; rhetorical – say, in a new constitutional preamble; and/or literal, in the form of a legally binding treaty between sovereign nations, but it must be brokered in a spirit of good faith, respect and trust, with the full, informed and free consent of equal parties and it must give effect to universal standards of human rights.

Australia's Constitution is notoriously difficult to change, with many failed referenda.  One thing a constitutional referendum needs to succeed is bipartisan political support, and that is something Parliamentarians for an Australian Head of State may be able to offer.  They claim that "around three quarters of political candidates and politicians support an Australian head of state."  They're working towards a new refereundum on the subject in 2009.

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