Australian Republican organisations tend to have tiny half-lifes. They split as soon as they are formed. One of the reasons for this is the high level of individualism in the Australian Republican doctrine: another reason is that the Australian variant of republicanism has largely repudiated the 'political' as an intrinsic component of human progress.
Frederick Vosper, the firebrand Australian Republican from the late 19thC wrote one of the strongest stamps of individualism in Australian politics:
Sworn to no party, and of no sect am I.In that simple sentence Vosper is repudiating partisanship and religion as valid political organisational forms. To Vosper the 'political' becomes the individual - guided by reason and conscience. I have argued in the past that liberalism is the political philosophy that seeks to maximise individual freedom, while republicanism is the political science which seeks to minimise tyranny. To the point that tyranny is eradicated. Under republicanism tyranny is an expansive word, beyond absolute power in one individual, as is the Roman understanding of it, but also tyranny's insidious forms. These include arbitrary governance, corruption and governance by exception. One of the purposes of republican political technologies, such as constitutionalism, separation of powers, bill of rights, etc; is that tyranny becomes very easy to spot. When a government steps outside of their constitutional boundaries, or when a branch of government steps outside of the constitution - it is tyranny. By this definition Australian republicanism becomes a highly rigorous, empirical and replicable system that seeks to limit government such that individual liberty is maximised and freedom from tyranny is codified. This goes back to Vosper being sworn to no party; Charles Harpur's for the faith that is in them; or Deniehy's comment on the European politics and institutions:
They have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. They contain within themselves the elements of self-destruction and must inevitably yield, at an early day, to that moral revolution which has laid in the dust the proudest monument of human folly when erected on violated justice or perverted reason. Man, the great Reformer, is abroad;There is an inbuilt wariness and distrust of the 'political'. For Australian Republicans the import of the European and aristocratical political into Australia sullied the new hope for the country as a 'New World" free of the avarice, vice and immorality of political Europe. For republicans like Deniehy the political was the dominant form of tyranny, and through that a restriction on the individual's moral capability and growth (governor and governed). From the Southern Cross:
Corruption is a part of politics. History shows it, and the man who is governed, knows it. It is only people like [Henry] Parkes, who simply understand the newspaper part of politics, who doubt it. But there is - the real politician knows , the same thing in government as the Roman church dogmatically, and society by tacit consent, practically hold - that besides the absolute sin itself, there is another distinct and damning sin - the sin of scandal. Not what you do, but how you do it. The prime necessity in administration is the 'keeping it dark' as that picturesque portion of society which laid the foundations of Australian Empire, used to say 'Keeping it dark' is the science of politics. But a scientific man should not go out in a 'huff', and leave that sort of over-honest crabbed DIOGENESES men called FORSTERS, to go in, with their little lanterns, and find despatches perdu.That may seem like cynicism, which, despite the 19thC language, would not be out of place today. However he is repudiating the political is inherently corrupt, while claiming Parkes enjoyed it as part of the marketing and public relations of the party politic. Which is entirely true of the democratic 'political' which must balance the republican restrictions of constitutionalism with the popular temporal will and opinions of their electorate. Which is why we get grey situations such as Killfile recently discussed with the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee. It is interesting to read that in relation to how Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley discuss the interaction between the Ministers and Civil Service in foreign policy:
... where Cabinet and ministers are responsible and accountable to the House of Representatives, which in turn is accountable to the electorate - formally establishes a clear demarcation of responsibilities between elected politician and appointed policy officials. ... The ministers derive policy from political values that, in theory, they clearly articulate and distinguish from those of their political competitors. ... Appointed officials are apolitical servants of the state ... Underlying the politics-administration divide are widely held beliefs about the separation between two qualitatively different tasks in policy making. As Hawkesworth explains in relation to a a slightly different context, these beliefs rest on a distinction that is often made between the hard, objective facts of a policy issue, and a more subjective realm of values, in which political judgements need to be made in response to these facts.This is a good description between the airy-fairy and the administrative. As I mentioned earlier, if liberalism is the 'values' then republicanism is the down in the trenches facts, procedures, regulations, administration etc - the hard stuff that makes the freedom is great part of liberalism a reality. Does Australian Republicanism repudiate the 'political'? its rigorous, replicable, reproducible, empirical, administrative nature means it largely has to. Where republicanism recognises the political is as an emergent property, not an intrinsic one. This is the same as James Madison's statement on faction in Federalist No.10:
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.Madison, the great political scientist, recognises that liberty [intrinsic] leads to faction [emergent] and rather than ban faction, seeks to create an intrinsic environment using technologies such as constitutionalism, separation of powers, bill of rights, representative democracy etc; such that the negative and violent effects of that emergent property are minimised. This is exactly the same approach that Australian Republicanism has to tyranny, and its perpetrator - the 'political'. This means an Australian Republican constitution must not recognize political parties, the church, the monarchy, or any other form of emergent property that is not intrinsic to maximising liberty and eradicating tyranny.
