This article featured in the current edition of Green Left Weekly - available at http://www.greenleft.org.au/ comradely, Kim B ____________ The red queen alliance alliance? comment by Sean Healy The monarchists have chanced upon the Basil Fawlty strategy for defeating the November 6 republic referendum: Whatever you do, don't mention the queen. Rather than go into bat for the happy and glorious Elizabeth Windsor and her litter, the no case has focused on opposition to the particular republic model on offer -- a president appointed by two-thirds of parliament. Their slogan says it all -- Vote No to the politicians' republic. Kerry Jones, the convener of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy and as hard-bitten a right-wing scaremonger as you can get, has even made a deliberate pitch to those wanting to directly elect the president, urging them to vote no. Undoubtedly, the monarchists' campaign has found fertile ground. Politicians of all stripes are widely hated, and there is considerable, justified,anger at the exclusion of the popularly elected president option from the November 6 ballot. The referendum's outcome is finely balanced and dependent on the 20-30% of don't knows. A major part of the no case's success has come because the monarchists haven't had to do it alone. Prominent direct-election republicans, such as former MPs Ted Mack and Phil Cleary, have given a radical tinge to the No camp. Many of their criticisms are correct: Cleary, for instance, argues that the republic model put forward by Malcolm Turnbull's Australian Republican Movement aims to provide empty symbolism rather than real democratic reform. Cleary also argues, rightly, that the major parties are opposed to direct election because it might endanger their own monopoly on political debate. It seems that this argument is now being taken up by some further to the left than Cleary and Mack. The International Socialist Organisation, for example, in the October 22 issue of its newspaper, advocates, Stuff the bosses' republic! Vote No, arguing, The `yes' case is not about democracy. It's about nationalism. There's an obvious flaw in such an argument. We can reject the bosses' republic -- and be left with the bosses' constitutional monarchy! Isn't getting rid of feudal relics a good thing? More importantly, the left no case misses the real point of the exercise. Which result, yes or no, will advance the interests of working people and democratic change more? Cleary and the ISO both argue that if the ARM's model is defeated, then there will be another chance soon enough, this time for a directly elected president, whereas if the yes case wins, there will be no further such chance. This is pure speculation. There are any number of scenarios. Just as likely is that, if the no case wins, John Howard will smugly claim an against-the-odds victory; the ARM will drop its support for a republic altogether, knowing that the only possible republic would now be one with a directly elected president; and together they conspire to bury the republic in some back closet of Parliament House. What will the political consequences of a no vote really be? Is it really going to fire people up, increase their combativity and morale? To see even such a minor reform to the system rejected would have to have a debilitating effect on working people's confidence to fight for greater, and more fundamental, democratic reform. After all, many would think, if this can't get up, what chance do we have of forcing a rewrite of Australia's undemocratic electoral laws? Or getting a bill of rights which enshrines the right to free speech and free association? Or investing working-class communities with real decision-making powers over their localities? The left no case is clutching at straws: their sense of moral outrage is well meant but, if successful, a no vote would have just the opposite impact from what they think it will. Far more worthwhile is the approach Green Left Weekly has put forward: voting yes on November 6, writing elected by the people to indicate what your real preferred option is and getting active in the movement for change. Or, as yes campaigner Pat O'Shane put it, We'll take what we can now, and then we'll take what we can later. [Sean Healy is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party.] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
