Six Preambles to a Republican Constitution of Australia


By JAMES BRADLEY

The Preamble Project began as a conversation between myself and other republicans about the need to provide some imaginative foundation for the ongoing debate about an Australian Republic. In the course of that conversation we floated the idea of inviting several writers to write draft preambles to a republican Constitution as a way of giving voice to some of the deeper impulses an Australian Republic might embody.

The National Committee of the Australian Republican Movement offered their support and so it was decided that we would gather together six preambles and present them for discussion, alongside the ARM’s ‘Six Models For an Australian Republic’ document.

On this basis the six writers chosen – Peter Carey, Delia Falconer, Richard Flanagan, Dorothy Porter, Leah Purcell and myself – were asked to try and distil their personal feelings about what an Australian Republic might mean into a form of words which they thought might be appropriate for a preamble to a republican Constitution.

Technically speaking, the preamble to an Act of Parliament is a short form of words which precedes the body of the Act, intended to summarize the unifying purpose or purposes of that Act. In practice it is usually brief and explanatory, but in one case, that of the preamble to a Constitution it takes on a slightly different form, and is expected to give an outline of Six Preambles to a Republican Constitution of Australia the sources of the authority which underlies that Constitution, the processes by which it has been brought into being, and the objectives and values it is intended to embody.

In the creation of an Australian Republic, the underlying source of authority is the democratic will of the Australian people. The Constitution of that Republic will be the expression of that will and embodies our values and aspirations. And so, in setting forth its unifying purpose the preamble to a republican Constitution must give voice to the deeper impulses that underlie its creation. It must, in other words, tell us the story of who we are.

Of course to understand the story of who we are we must understand where we come from, for it is our history, both the parts of which we may be justly proud and those parts which are less comfortable which gives meaning to our present. Yet it would be a mistake to think the preamble should be solely about our history, and what sense we choose to make of it. For the creation of the Republic is ultimately an expression of our belief that we can make a better place both for ourselves and those that come after us. For this reason its Constitution, and by extension the preamble, must be an expression not just of who we are, but of what we hope ourselves capable of being. It is an act of faith in our own capacity for betterment, and our desire to achieve that betterment in unison.

In the hands of the writers represented here, this faith takes different forms. For Richard Flanagan the preamble becomes something more like a national prayer, an exhortation to find meaning in our past and in the land that we share, and to make ourselves anew through the medium of our shared love of that land. It is unashamedly romantic, not just in its language and imagery, but in its explicit belief in the idea of the republic as an act of the imagination.

Delia Falconer and Dorothy Porter by contrast offer more plainsong approaches to the question. Delia Falconer compresses her feelings into a single sentence, trying to draw together the many impulses a republic might embody, acting finally to remind our elected representatives that their power stems from our will, and no higher source. Dorothy Porter’s also seeks to express the values the republic might embody by reference to the popular will, but unlike Delia Falconer she chooses to couch her contribution in a series of commitments we choose to make as one people, commitments as to what we will try to be, thus transforming itself into a statement of principles, giving heed to our history only as a thing from which we might learn, but never be hostage to.

Peter Carey’s contribution is by turns belligerent, acerbic and passionate. Perhaps predictably for a writer who has spent his career probing the ambiguities in the Australian national identity, he chooses to make clear the contradictions in our past and our present, exhorting us to draw strength from these contradictions, and to recognise in them the bond that we must make if we are to draw strength from ourselves.

Beginning with a question asked first in the language of the people of her grandmother, the Kamilaroi and Gungarri nations, and then again in English, Leah Purcell’s preamble speaks simply and with a quiet poetry of those qualities that will enrich us all. Eschewing grand gestures altogether it enjoins us all to a shared respect for each other’s rights and histories, thereby providing a basis for the trust upon which a Republic might found itself.

As the above should indicate, the six draft preambles assembled here present six very different answers to the question of what shape the preamble to a Republican Constitution might take. It is unlikely any one will represent something able to be endorsed by all. But something that was able to be endorsed by all was never the intention of the Preamble Project or of the ARM in sponsoring it. Rather we hope that the preambles assembled here might provide the basis of a meaningful and productive discussion of what sort of preamble we would like to have, and by extension, of the meaning an Australian Republic might ultimately hold for all of us.

............

James Bradley


.... was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1967. He is the author of two novels, Wrack and The Deep Field and a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus. His books have been widely translated and won a number of literary awards. His third novel, The Resurrectionist, will be published in 2004.

First and forever there is the land, the sea, the sky. It is from them that we are born, to them we shall return. It is to them we pledge our allegiance first, and foremost, and in this allegiance assume the trust to care for them as they care for us.
It is this same land, this same sea, this same sky that for countless generations were sacred to the Aboriginal peoples, who learned their rhythms, shaped them with fire and story, and drew from them their laws and customs. This heritage can neither be denied nor undone, yet in it we find the beginnings of a new future, for by this Act forgiveness for the wrongs they have suffered at the hands of those who came later is honestly sought and freely given.
And so, though born of many lands and races we the people of Australia, cognisant of our past, hopeful for the future, acknowledging no dominion save that of our shared trust, affirming that the rights of every individual to life and liberty are equal and inviolable and worthy of protection, and entrusting those we elect to govern with the power to make such laws as are necessary to ensure those rights, do hereby give our assent to the creation of a Commonwealth of Australia in our name, one nation, united and indivisible beneath the southern sky.

............

Peter Carey


...was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria in 1943. He is the multi-award-winning author of eight novels, plus two highly acclaimed collections of short stories now all in Collected Stories. His books have won or been short-listed for every major literary award in Australia. He has won the Booker Prize twice – in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang, and in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda – and the Commonwealth Writers Prize twice – in 1998 for Jack Maggs, and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. His new novel, My Life as a Fake, will be published in August.

We are a nation made in a land which was, for tens of thousands of years, sacred to the most ancient culture on this earth, itself the complex creation of a people who once travelled here from far away.
We are also a nation forged by prisoners in chains, dispossessed of their motherland, rejected, spat out, unloved. Our sympathy for the sufferings of our fellow citizens will be forever determined by these circumstances which have also proved to us that that our human possibilities can never be curtailed. We are a nation engendered by a foreign king, by foreign wars, by happenstance, by a once great empire which also bequeathed us our first rich cultural inheritance.
We are a nation, most of all, made by people whose ancestors gambled everything to travel through storm, through war, through the dreary deadly ocean, who abandoned everything familiar to reach this continent. We are a nation of immigrants, united by our fierce love of this land. Given the experience of unfairness and persecution that mark the lifelines of our individual histories, we are forever determined to nurture and uphold the liberties of our fellow citizens. Set against the implacable truth of our vast and fragile continent, the differences in our beliefs are very small indeed and we, having been melded in the fires of history, are now determined to guarantee each other the mutual protection afforded by a republic of free citizens who proudly stand side by side, inseparable beneath the Southern Cross.

............

Delia Falconer


...was born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1966. A novelist, essayist, and critic, her first novel, The Service of Clouds, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, The Age Book of the Year, the Kibble Award, and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and has been published in the USA and Germany. A recipient of the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, the HQ short story award, and the Island Essay prize, she holds a PhD in English Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Melbourne. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Best Australian Essays, The Best Australian Short Stories, Nest, The Australian’s Review of Books, and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories.

We, the citizens of Australia, recognising that this land was given to us by no God and existed first as country, then as colony, and last as a Federal Commonwealth created in 1901 by the federation of six states; honouring equally the system of law inherited from England and the continuing laws and cultures of the Aboriginal peoples who never ceded ownership; affirming our duty of care toward this ancient landscape and its creatures; upholding the liberty of each individual regardless of ancestry under the laws of our democratic system; cognisant of our history; accepting our special status as an island continent, generous in expanse and heart, linked and looking outward to the ocean; charge each government to uphold the rules and ideals of this constitution decreed by us, the Australian people.

............

Richard Flanagan


...was born in Longford, Tasmania in 1961. His multi-award winning novels, Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping (which he also directed the feature film of) and Gould’s Book of Fish, (winner of the 2002 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize) have been published to acclaim in twenty-two countries.

We were born of a dreamtime that foretells our future, we arose out of a war that pitted a new world fettered in chains against an old world fallen from the southern heavens.
Yet leavened by the glory of this world cast as earth and sea, we came to see our own image as wind and light and dust, as tree and spinifex and coral, as animal and bird and fish. As in the play of light and dark we saw our world slowly shape, we came to recognise in our fellow humans suffering our own unredeemed past, to prophesy in the hand we hold out to others our own future.
From the ancient painted gorges of the Fitzroy River to the ever-new rainbow of the Great Barrier Reef, from a Manly ferry at dusk to Uluru at dawn, from the many dreamings and the many nightmares, from the rainbow serpent to the Burma Railway to Kuta Beach, we strove to make a nation of free and generous people united by a belief in liberty and in truth.
And we, the issue of every land and every past, did so knowing that nations become great not by force of arms nor by dint of wealth, but by never ceasing to battle for human dignity, for freedom, and for justice; by seeing the most powerless as entitled to as fair a go as the most powerful; by recognising that the measure of the strongest must always be their care for the weakest; by asserting through our lives that Australia is never a fact, but a dream each of us must make anew every day.

............

Dorothy Porter


...was born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1954. She is a poet who has published twelve books, including four verse novels. The best known of these, The Monkey’s Mask, has been adapted for stage, radio and was internationally released as a feature film in 2001. Her most recent verse novel, Wild Surmise, has just been shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award.

We are fortunate to live and prosper in the expansive light of a unique and ancient continent. It is our duty and privilege as a people to nurture and protect this natural landscape as has been done for millennia by the indigenous Australians.
We are a country of many and diverse peoples. We welcome strangers, innovators and those escaping persecution. We do not live by division, timidity or bigotry. We are a secular democratic republic united by imagination, courage, equal opportunity and a sense of fair play, with a vigilant respect for our individual freedoms.
We have learned from tradition and our history, but are not hostage to them. We will rise to the challenges of the future by providing opportunities for work and a free and vigorous education to all Australians.
We pledge to be peacemakers and good neighbours in the international community of nations.

............

Leah Purcell


...was born in Murgon, Queensland in 1970. A Goa-Gungarri-Wakka Wakka Murri woman, she is the award-winning writer (with Scott Rankin) of the semi-autobiographical play, Box the Pony which has played to sell-out seasons in Sydney, London and Edinburgh and which won both the 1999 NSW and 2000 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards for Best Play and was awarded a Human Rights Arts Award in 1999. Her most recent book, Black Chicks Talking has become a best-seller and the documentary film of the same title, also written and directed by Leah, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in May 2002 and won the 2002 IF Award for Best Documentary. As well as her work as a writer Leah is an acclaimed actor, singer and director, and has worked widely on the Australian stage and screen.

Malo karbilli guyungungun Pamanyungun yumba, diarai.
Narlie winunguldul gailun.
Yumunjinda winungul
Ariellai.
One day we will all stand strong on this land, Australia, our home, come.
I understand what has to be done.
Do you know?
Toget her.
Together we shall:
Acknowledge and embrace the diversity of Australia, of its land and of the peoples that inhabit it.
Understand the joys and sorrows of our fellow citizens, for only by so understanding shall we find the compassion for each other that will make us strong.
Allow ourselves and all others to live life in peace and harmony, for all will prosper as a consequence.
Learn from our pasts so we may have hope that our futures will bring change, for in the truth we will find the strength to make this possible.
Acknowledge that there is not one god but many. No one belief is superior to the other and all are free to worship as they choose.
Strive always to empower all of us, both as individuals and as the nation created by this Act.
Respect our pioneers, both men and women, of every creed and colour for their efforts in building this country they have given us.
Give homage to the struggles and deeds of the immigrant.
Respect and acknowledge the land and its first peoples.
Respect and acknowledge the suffering and the injustices of the past for it is only by doing this that we shall move forward together as a nation, united and indivisible.

............

The ARM says it ...
is grateful to the Museum of Sydney for their assistance in hosting the launch of the Preamble Project. The launch of the Project on this site holds special significance, for it is here that the first seat of government in Australia was established in May 1788 by Governor Arthur Phillip, in a prefabricated canvas building brought from England for that purpose. Prior to that it was part of the lands belonging to the Cadigal people, and archaeological evidence testifies to their occupation of this area over many thousands of years. It seems fitting therefore, given the complexities of the history attaching to such a place, that a project aimed in part at repairing that history by giving imaginative dimension to the creation of a new Australian Republic should be launched upon it.

Australian Republican Movement
Phone: 1800 802 000
Email: info@republic.org.au
Website: www.republic.org.au

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

RETURN TO CONTENTS