The Prime Minister is back in ties of varying colours. The political fray has resumed. The royal wrap-arounds pulled from newspapers have been delegated to the recycle bin and the public holiday, mostly used for spring pruning and home accounting, is barely a memory.
Talk of the republic, stilted during the official mourning period, seems to have paused for now. The question of what monarchy means for us feels best left alone for a while. We’ve had enough of royal pageantry. The ‘whole thing’ was a bit much and we’re a little uncomfortable, I think, grappling with what it might say about our national psyche that we were engaged, intrigued, even moved by it all. Or maybe that’s just me.
As an Australian republican and sometime romantic Fenian, I was deeply moved by the death of the Queen and find myself sifting through my feelings about the institution which she represented — or rather, was. For part of what is intriguing about the whole business of monarchy is that, to a significant extent, the monarch is the monarchy. One person who embodies it all, even as the ‘all’ is an edifice much larger than that individual.
Not for we Australians, of course; but for the English and, with more contest, the Scots, the Welsh and those in the north of Ireland. By this stage, the Crown of Australia plays the role of constitutional backstop. In some sense we could pluck any engaged but appropriately disinterested person from outside the polity to play the role that happens to be played by the British Crown. Theoretically, anyway. Conservatives have a point in noting the role has been and continues to be played the British Crown, for all the historical reasons. But now the best reason is that this arrangement, with this person, mostly works. And better the devil you know.
Which is how most Australians seem to consider the issue. There is no popular groundswell for constitutional change in the direction of a republic just at this moment. The parliamentary recess, the proclamation by the Governor General of our fealty to the new King, and the public holiday were all a bit embarrassing. Over the top given that flimsy constitutional backstop role. The parade being over, we can go back to gawking at the Royal Family much like Americans do. Our need for a grand, troubled fairy tale is satisfied without needing to assume communal national