It’s high time Australia became a republic 

The demise of Queen Elizabeth II should set off the initiation of the process of Australia becoming a republic. To put it plainly, Australia owes nothing to the British monarchy. King Charles, leave alone Queen Elizabeth II, has done nothing substantial for Australia. In fact, nothing at all. And King Charles’ life-record has been no epitome of nobility, enough not to be an Australian icon; not to mention Prince Andrew. Besides, the treatment meted out to Prince Harry’s wife, Meghan Markle, who is half-black, by the British media is an insult to Australian multi-culturalism and the native black population.  

And can we forget the atrocities carried out by the British on the Aboriginal peoples?  

The British began invading Australia in 1788, on the premise that it was terra nullis: a land with no owners.  At the time of the arrival of the British fleet in the vicinity of what is now the city of Sydney in 1788, there were an estimated 750,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living across the continent. In around 15 months from the arrival, almost 50 percent of the aboriginal peoples were dying of the smallpox epidemic brought in by the first fleet. 

It is believed, by some historians, that bottles of smallpox were brought across on First Fleet ships, and the disease was then released, either accidentally or with insidious intent. 

What is worse is that dozens of massacres of indigenous people were carried out by the British right up until the 1920s.  On 10 June 1838, the Myall Creek massacre occurred near Inverell in NSW. Some retribution came for this heinous act, as it was the first time that Europeans were brought to justice for such an atrocity in Australia. 

At the time, about 50 Aboriginal men were working for stockmen in the area. One evening the stockmen rode into the local people’s camp, tied up 29 men, women and children, and beheaded them. Seven of the perpetrators were eventually brought to trial and hanged. 

The original White peoples of Australia, in fact, were criminals, according to British law, who were shipped to Australia as punishment. The British established Australia’s oldest city, Sydney, in the late 18th century as a penal colony to house its surplus of petty criminals.  

In the Industrial Revolution era of Britain, crime soared in that country as a result of overcrowded cities. Britain then found it convenient to ship these criminals to a far-flung country like Australia to deal with over-filled prisons. People were carted out to Australia for crimes as petty as thieving a bag of sugar or a loaf of bread. 

The first Australian convicts arrived on the First Fleet in 1788, part of the 1,500-strong colonisation party that included military and civilians. Admiral Arthur Phillip founded the penal colony of New South Wales on 26 January 1788 – Australia’s national day. The convicts’ skills were used to help establish the first European settlement to colonise the Australian continent. 

It was only in 1868 that convicts ceased to be transported to Australia. By then, Australia’s population had reached one million, and could sustain itself without relying on convict labour. 

More than 160,000 convicts — 80 percent men and 20 percent women — were transported to Australia from the British Isles between 1788 and 1868. The British sent criminals to NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and WA. Today, one in five Australians is the descendant of a convict. 

The 26^th of January is nothing but a day of invasion and subjugation for the native population, and a day of punishment for the original White peoples. Yet Australia celebrates 26 January, the day the British arrived on the shores of Australia, as Australia Day, with scant respect to the sentiments of the native population. How come Australia, whose major portion of the population are descendants of people who were expelled by Britain, is so loyal to Britain, that it even displays the Union Jack on its flag? A lack of self-identity, perhaps. And a scant regard for its native culture, heritage and peoples. This, indeed, is worthy of excoriation.   

Nonetheless, it is high time that Australia became a republic. It is only being fair to its people and in vindication of its democracy that Australia has a head of state that is elected on merit rather than as a proprietor of inheritance. A Republic is a democratic nation in which the highest public office is held not by a monarch, who inherits the position by birth, but instead by a citizen chosen on merit.  

Becoming a republic will pave the way for actual and true nationhood, and not make Australia subservient to a foreign power.  

The fact is, Australia did not become a fully independent and sovereign nation in 1901 at Federation. Australia was, and still is, defined as a “self-governing colony” under s8 of the Australian Constitution Act 1900 — an Act of the British (not the Australian) Parliament. 

Under the colonial Constitution, Britain retained the power to make laws for Australia, and to overturn laws made by the Australian Parliament. 

Australia didn’t take high command of its armed forces until the 1940s in WW2. Until 1968, Australians travelling overseas carried “British Passports”. And, until 1986, Australia’s highest Court of Appeal was the Privy Council, sitting in far-off Westminster, UK. 

Today, it would be apt to remind Australian lawmakers that Australia is neither a penal colony nor a terra nullis. It is a multicultural society, with a large part of its peoples having no allegiance at all to the British monarchy. Besides, it owes its complete nationhood to its native population, that have been around for 600,000 years.  

This becomes more pertinent because the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are perhaps the most incarcerated population on earth. 

As of March 2022, there were 11,288 indigenous adults detained in the Australian prison system. First Nations peoples account for only 2.5 percent of the overall Australian adult population, yet they represent 28 percent of the adult prisoner population. 

And volumes can yet be written about the tragic atrocities carried out on the Stolen Generations.  

The Stolen Generations refers to a period in Australia’s history where Aboriginal children were removed from their families through government policies. This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. 

In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s. For about a century, thousands of Aboriginal children were systematically taken from their families, communities and culture, many never to be returned. These children are known as the Stolen Generations survivors, or Stolen Children. 

These children were taken by the police; from their homes; on their way to or from school. They were placed in over 480 institutions, adopted or fostered by non-indigenous people and often subjected to abuse. The children were denied all access to their culture, they were not allowed to speak their language and they were punished if they did. The impacts of this are still being felt today. 

There are currently more than 17,000 Stolen Generations survivors in Australia. Over one third of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are their descendants.  

It was only on 13 February 2008, that then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered a formal apology to members of the Aboriginal Stolen Generations on behalf of the Australian parliament.  

Surely, it is with respect to these people and the aboriginal peoples in general that Australia must sever its ties with the British monarchy, that has been the herald of enslavement and misery for these peoples. 26^th of January should no longer be celebrated as Australia Day and the Union Jack must unceremoniously be taken off the Australian flag and replaced by the aboriginal colours forthwith. 

(The part on the Stolen Generations was extracted from a report by The Healing Foundation) 

For further reading, read my articles: Subservient to the British Crown dated 13 September 2021; The call for international justice dated 22 August 2021; and The reprehensible acts of British colonialism in India dated 10 August 2021.