Each and every Australian should be able to aspire to be our Head of State. Every Australian should know that the office will always be filled by a citizen of high standing who has made an outstanding contribution to Australia and who, in making it, has enlarged our view of what it is to be Australian.
In these and other ways, the creation of an Australian republic can actually deliver a heightened sense of unity, it can enliven our national spirit and, in our own minds and those of our neighbours, answer beyond doubt the perennial question of Australian identity — the question of who we are and what we stand for. The answer is not what having a foreign Head of State suggests. We are not a political or cultural appendage to another country’s past. We are simply and unambiguously Australian.
If only by a small degree an Australian republic fulfilled these ideals it would be worth it.
Follow the brilliant career of Jonathan Bradley, noted iconoclast, libertine, and man of letters. When he's not blogging here, he blogs at The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia. Jonathan is the editor of American Review magazine's daily Blog Book section and a daily editor at the Singles Jukebox.
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