The 2006
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN LECTURE
29 November 2006, Canberra
Trust Matters:
Politics, trust and the republican cause
Dr. Rebecca Huntley
Good
evening and thank you for all for coming tonight. I want to thank the Australian
Republican Movement for inviting me to deliver this lecture; it is a real
honour. I also want to thank
I
am proud to say my connection with the ARM stretches back over fifteen years.
My first encounter was during the early days of university. The ARM had set up
a stall for orientation week, with a large banner stating ‘Join the Republican
Movement’. My initial response was surprise that the American Republican Party
was interested in recruiting Australian students. Then someone pointed out to
me that this was in fact about Australian republicanism, rather than American
conservatism, after which I duly signed up.
I
suppose my own republican allegiance stretches back to childhood. Once – I must
have been about five or six years old – my primary school had organised an
excursion for all the students to line
Whether
born or bred republican, it has long been a truism that the political views of
young people are greatly influenced by their parents, particularly the more
vocal and influential parent (which is not always the father, mind you).
And
so this leads me to one aspect of what I want to discuss tonight, which is
about the current generation of young Australians and their attitudes to a
republic. We all hope they will see a republic in their lifetime, but will they
be the ones to demand it, to vote for it and determine its shape and its
character?
At
a Sydney Institute speech earlier this year, a woman in the audience asked me
whether young Australians were at all enthused about
My
findings are supported by most national polling, which shows that support for a
republic amongst young Australians struggles to climb above 50 per cent. In 2005, Newspoll found that younger people were lukewarm about a republic,
with 43 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds in favour compared with 52 per cent of
35 to 49-year-olds. A year later we saw a slight improvement in the Newspoll
figures, with 45 per cent of the 18 to 34 bracket in favour of a republic.[3] But as
academic and former ARM chair John Warhurst has rightly pointed out, these
numbers aren’t as telling as the percentage of respondents designated as
uncommitted, what Warhurst describes as ‘the
often-forgotten, very important third category of undecided/don't know/don't
care’.[4] In 2006, 29 per cent of
those young Australians surveyed by Newspoll were undecided either way about a
republic, 3 per cent more than those who were against the idea. I want to come
back to the uncommitted later on because they are both a challenge and an
opportunity for the republican movement.
Of
course the picture gets rosier for us if we look at polls concerning the
prospect of King Charles and his royal consort Camilla. In the same 2006
survey, Newspoll found that support for a republic amongst young Australians
rose to 50 per cent if a crowned Charles was thrown into the mix. This is consistent
with a 2005 Roy Morgan poll, which showed that whilst 51 per cent of
Australians want
And
so the prospect of today’s young Australians living under a republic seems
bright if Charles and Camilla are the succession plan for the British monarchy.
Combine this with the fact that, as Warhurst points out, ‘the monarchists are shrinking at a rapid rate generation by generation’[7], then we can feel even
more confident about our future. Despite the fact that the republic is
currently a low priority issue for Australians both young and old, and despite the huge popularity of Princess Mary and
Princess Diana’s two sons (which I think has more to do with celebrity and good
looks than our constitution or government), our movement certainly has time on
its side.
But
waiting around for our robust Queen to pass away or our even more robust Prime
Minister to retire is clearly not enough for energetic republicans like us. And
so I want to return to those young Australians in the third
category of ‘undecided/don't know/don't care’. Some political scientists and
media commentators would label this group ‘apathetic’. Indeed young people are
often described as disinterested and ignorant about
formal political processes. Whilst the general political knowledge of young
people is not what it could or should be, I would dispute the label
‘apathetic’. Instead of apathy, what I found in my own work could more
accurately be described as ‘disengagement’.
Disengagement from a
political system dominated by the two major parties, which doesn’t seem to
provide young voters with a real choice.
Disengagement from a
political culture that has seen ‘the rise and rise of the technocrat and
super-spinner’.[8]
Disengagement from
political parties that don’t allow enough internal democracy to satisfy the
needs of a generation that expect flexibility and options in all their
endeavours, who are enthusiastic about direct democracy.
So
rather than apathy, what I found amongst young men and women was something more
like powerlessness, either to change the political culture or to make progress
with national political issues.
Now it’s no great revelation to say that young
Australians are wary and cynical about politics. This is the natural result of
growing up in a conspiracy theory age where it is well accepted that
politicians cheat and manipulate in order to seize and hold onto power. The
young people I interviewed for my book used words like ‘lie’, ‘distrust’ and
‘corrupt’ in connection with politics without any sense of false bravado. It
seems that this is a generation that anticipates being duped by authority
figures. Why take an interest or invest in a system that you expect is going to
lie to you about important stuff? Better to disengage than be fooled.
Why
has there been this turning away, this disengagement amongst young Australians?
I believe the tendency of some people in older generations to blame young
people themselves – labelling them as selfish, shallow, in the thrall of
consumerism or intrinsically conservative - is both unfair and inaccurate,
primarily because it ignores two facts.
First,
let’s not kid ourselves, Australians have never placed
much trust in politicians. As political scientists Judith Brett and Anthony
Moran comment:
Political elites regularly
bemoan the political apathy of ordinary people, seeing their poor knowledge and
limited interest as a failure or lack, rather than as a reasoned response to
experience. Predictably, they call for more civics education in school, rather
than for institutional reforms that would give people more reason to engage.
They also always imagine that things were better in the past.[9]
Secondly,
since the beginning of the millennium, social researchers such as Hugh Mackay
have remarked on a general trend of disengagement across generations, and
social classes. Mackay argues that by the turn of the century, Australians were
becoming fatigued by the ‘heavy agenda’ of social, economic and political
issues including the republic. Both social research and TV ratings showed that
we were beginning to disengage from ‘the big picture’ and turn our attention to
more personal, domestic and local matters – home renovation, cooking shows,
celebrity weddings and unreality TV. As Mackay observes:
It
was as though Australians had decided the items on the big agenda were beyond
their control; they wanted to narrow the focus and turn it inward,
concentrating on an agenda within their control.[10]
At
the same time, Australians were experiencing a long stretch of economic
stability and prosperity that is only just now showing signs of wobbling. This
prosperity spread, at the very time the current crop of young Australians were
maturing into young adulthood. It was a time when, as Megalogenis states,
Australians started to ‘reduce the checklist of things they wanted government
to do for them and their sense of what governments should be held accountable
for’.[11]
In
many ways the 1999 republican referendum, in which I was heavily involved as an
organiser for the YES Coalition, was a real low point in terms of the ebb and
flow of public trust in politics. The NO case was effective because it played
on public cynicism about politicians. I think the monarchists MPs who endorsed
and advocated this line should be ashamed, particularly those who argued they
couldn’t be trusted to appoint a head of state but could be trusted to
determine whether Australian women could have access to RU486. These
monarchists MPs, in publicly degrading their own profession, have contributed
to the continuing erosion of trust in our public institutions and
representatives. It has taken me some time to come to terms with the fact that
there are some politicians who actually rely, even thrive, on the public’s
cynicism about politics. They actually want voters to have low expectations. It
makes their jobs so much easier.
Whilst
disengagement from and distrust of politics and politicians is at a premium,
our political institutions and the integrity of those who work within them is
more solid that we think, particularly if we compare the problems we face with
those evident in other comparable democracies. I want to look briefly at two
examples –
First,
I turn to
I
want to turn now to my second example, the
And
what are the warning signs? Like
Herein
lies the republican movement’s greatest challenge. It
is a much harder task than simply developing a model for electing a head of
state or deciding on the design for a new flag. Harder but
more important and more urgent. Simply stated, it is to give people a
reason to engage, to raise their expectations of government. In a 2003 speech,
Hugh Mackay identified a ‘disengaged electorate’ as one of
the republican movement’s significant hurdles. His solution for getting
people to engage again was not to wait but to ‘seize the agenda and promote our
cause in a bold and more engaging way’, to ‘restore our confidence and
optimism’ in public life.[22] John
Warhurst agrees, arguing that:
Republicans
can't rely just on their huge lead among activists and among the committed.
They must continue to search for the key to unlocking the hearts and minds of
the uncommitted. There is not much opposition there, but there is lack of
commitment. That lack of commitment shouldn't be criticized, but engaged with
on its own terms …
This
is particularly true for the uncommitted group of young Australians I have
discussed today.
Of
course this is all easier said than done. How do we go about doing it?
For
what’s its worth, my tip to any interested MP is not to protest your own
integrity in question time and campaign material. As marketing gurus Al Reis
and Jack Trout state, ‘you can’t position yourself as an honest politician,
because nobody is willing to take the opposition position’.[23] What
you have to become is a champion of our system as a whole, of the structures
and institutions of law and government that have been built up by generations
of Australians that deserve to be defended, refined and if necessary reformed
for the good of all.
Despite
what someone like Mark Latham would have us believe, we cannot afford to write
off the political class in this endeavour, despite the problems with the
culture of the parties and despite the fact that many parliamentarians are
already committed republicans. Rather we need to enlist them in an on-going
campaign of ‘talking up’ our democracy to the both the voting public and
organisations outside party politics.
These
organisations outside party politics are indeed a vital part of any push to
broaden the appeal of republicanism. It is community and non-government
organisations (some of which may not have any obvious connection with
republicanism) with which our movement could form stronger alliances. It is
these organisations that we could call upon when another referendum is upon us.
(This would of course entail some kind of reciprocity - they would need to feel
like they could rely on us as well).
Indeed, this was one of the tasks we struggled with during 1999. We
failed to create any grassroots momentum via community organisations and, in my
experience, relied too heavily on political party machines.
What
of young Australians specifically, how do we make the republican cause relevant
to them?
Again, our connections with organisations outside party
politics and government are crucial. In my work on the political attitudes of
Generation Y, I found that most of their civic activity is focused around local
and community politics. Similarly political scientist Ari Vromen has found that
whilst young people may not measure high on the
scales of traditional political activity (such as donating money, contacting
MPs, joining political parties or unions) the vast majority of them are
involved in community, campaigning and protest activities through church
groups, parents and citizens groups, environmental and sporting organizations.[24] It is these groups and
NGOs more generally seem more trustworthy, able and willing to make a
difference. We can better reach young Australians by forming relationships with
those organisations where they are most active.
As
I mentioned previously, this is a generation enthusiastic about direct
democracy.
They get to choose the next Australian Idol and
the next evicted housemate on Big Brother. One of the reasons there is
such comparatively low levels of youth membership of the major parties is that
their ‘tow-the-party-line’ mentality seems too simplistic, too constraining for
a generation used to direct involvement in decision making. They are also used
to having their concerns and issues ignored by political parties eager to chase
the votes of self-funded retirees, mortgage holders and three-child families.
Of course this has profound implications for a
potential republican model. Generation Y are unlikely to be enthused by a model
which denies them a direct say and which is filtered through a political system
from which they feel alienated. Despite all the strong arguments in favour of
the model we presented to the voters in 1999, the direct election model is
undoubtedly a better fit for this generation and could help to build a critical
sense of ownership of and connection to our public institutions.
If
we look back at early republican sentiments, in the pre-federation era, they were
largely focused on ‘opposition to tyranny’.[25] We are facing a new kind of tyranny of
distance, namely, the growing distance between our citizens and our systems of
government. Part of the challenge for our movement is to place our cause at the
centre of a broader and braver campaign to build up public trust in those
systems. If we don’t, then I believe
we may struggle to get people to care about the republican cause, to believe it
matters and has relevance to our lives today and to the lives of future generations.