So here I am back home in this antiquarian outpost of Empire, this land much better than the least of us who run it, this Constitutional Monarchy (can you believe it?!), this major beneficiary of the affluence that has caused the climate to change and imperilled the lives of many of the poorest in the world, and in due cause us all—here I am back from the Republic of Kiribati—the REPUBLIC of Kiribati—an independent nation of 100, 000 souls (we could fit them all in the MCG), of thirty-three tiny atolls and a realm of sea as big as Australia, whose elected president is pleading his sinking nations plight to the world, and I find myself thinking, if we are big enough to manufacture global warming and to send out international aid, to receive migrants from the rest of the world but to ship the most needy of them to islands in the Pacific; if we are grownup enough to send the sugar and the rice and the soft drinks and the bottles and the breads and cheeses the graceful citizens of Kiribatis thrived without for centuries—are we not big enough, also, and sure enough of ourselves to stop playing dress-ups and trust ourselves to elect our own head of state? To make ourselves a republic we might then grow up enough, and grow wise enough, and responsible enough, and literate enough, to deserve to be called? Instead, we busy ourselves conferring knighthoods on English monarchs who long ago, like ageing parents, made it clear theyd be happy to see us leave the parental home and strike out, like Kiribati, on our own... Freedom is a chosen path, and there is dignity and there is beauty in such freedom. But we cling, in a very Australian way, which is at once lazy, innocent, brazen, and fearful, to a clapped out and undignified idea of who we. We bludge off Empire, as if it were our parents, long after Empire retired to that small grand island in the Atlantic, where it began in piracy and ambition. Time to strike out for ourselves, no? Who knows how much better than our leaders we might find ourselves to be. The Republic of Australia. Bring it on. 1960 might be a good year to get it begun.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:59 +0000
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