Third National Republican Short Story Competition Winners Announced – 26 January 2012

In 2011 Australia’s speculative fiction writers were challenged to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic using the theme ‘Citizen or Subject’. The 2011 Judging Panel comprised Tom Keneally, Professor John Warhurst and Professor George Williams.

Valda Marshall has been awarded ‘First Prize’ in the Third National Republican Short Story Competition for ‘A Child of the Holocaust’. She is a former journalist and TV writer who has worked in Sydney, Toronto (Canada) and New York. Her television writing credits include Neighbours, and Sons and Daughters. While working with Neighbours, Valda co-authored two books based on the Ramsay Street families: The Ramsays: A Family Divided and The Robinsons: A Family in Crisis. She has been a staunch republican since the 1950s. “I am an absolutely passionate republican,” she said. “At the movies in the 50s, when they played God Save the Queen before a screening, even then I thought, why are we doing this? Why do we have a head of state on the other side of the world?” Her 2010 novel The First President is a story of love and politics in which Australia becomes a republic in 2016. Valda was born in Adelaide and now lives in Sydney.

Richard Johnson has been awarded ‘Second Prize’ in the Third National Republican Short Story Competition for ‘The King and Mister Crow’. He is an ex-Pommie who migrated from the UK in 2001. He works as a structural engineer and has been privileged to work on several iconic building such as Flinders Street Station and the renovation of the GPO. He had had a couple of prior publishing credits, most notable of which is the Gold Award at the Writers of the Future Competition in Hollywood last year, the world’s longest-running and most prestigious competition for amateur writers of science fiction. Richard lives in Melbourne with his wife and four year old son.

Harold Mally has been awarded ‘Third Prize’ in the Third National Republican Short Story Competition for ‘Royalty Reality’. He lives in Sydney and writes short fiction. A number of his stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Blue Crow, Eclecticism, Page Seventeen, Scribe, Narrator, Splatter, 21D, [untitled], The Bridge and The Lightship Anthology. A few have won awards. Many have done nothing at all.

The Third National Republican Short Story Competition has continued to foster the emerging Australian republican fiction genre. Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past. The short stories ‘A Child of the Holocaust’, ‘The King and Mister Crow’, and ‘Royalty Reality’ are exercises in imagination and help to lead the way into possible republican futures.
The Australian Republican Movement congratulates the winners of this year’s competition and extends its thanks to all entrants. The National Republican Short Story Competition will be run again in 2012.

The winning short stories entries were published on the Australian Republican Movement website on 26 January 2012.

For more information contact: Dr Glenn Davies, National Republican Fiction Convener, Australian Republican Movement, PO Box 87, Geebung, QLD, 4034 E: fiction@republic.org.au

Be a Citizen. Not a Subject'

The Third National Republican Short Story Competition closed today and the winners will be announced on 26 January 2012. The theme this year was ‘Citizen or Subject’. The difference between citizen and subject has often been glibly said to be that a citizen has rights whereas a subject has privileges. A subject owes their allegiance to a sovereign and is governed by that sovereign’s laws whereas a citizen owes allegiance to the community and is entitled to enjoy all its civil rights and protections. The difference between citizen and subject lies in where an individual places their allegiance: subjects (to a sovereign) and citizens (to a state; to a republic).

Until 1 January 1949, when the British Nationality Act 1948 came into force, at common law, to be a British subject, one simply had to be born in any territory under the sovereignty of the British Crown. From 1949 onwards every person who was a British subject by virtue of a connection with the United Kingdom or one of her Crown colonies became a British citizen. However citizens of other Commonwealth countries retained the status of British subject and were known by the term Commonwealth citizen. From 1949 to 1982, a person born in England would have been a British subject and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, while someone born in Australia, would have been a British subject and a citizen of Australia. During this time Australian passports had on the front ‘BRITISH SUBJECT Australian Citizen’.

The status of British subject was retained in Australian law until Part II of the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 was removed by the Australian Citizenship Amendment Act 1984 which came into force on 1 May 1987. Australia severed its final legal ties to Britain by enacting the Australia Acts of 1986. However it must be said we have yet to sever our final symbolic ties to Britain as represented by our head of state being the British monarch. In 1999 the High Court found British citizens to be ineligible to stand for election to our Federal Parliament because they owe allegiance to a ‘foreign power’.

Most Australians like a bit of humour and larrikinism in their politics. ‘Be a Citizen. Not a Subject’. Thankfully we can finally do this in law. As Australians our allegiance is to us, the people of Australia.

Republican challenge to Australian writers

Entry to the Third National Republican Short Story Competition is now open. The theme for the Third National Republican Short Story Competition is 'Citizen or Subject'. Short stories will use the theme to speculate on Australian republican futures.

First Prize: $500
Highly Commended: $50
Length: 2000 to 4000 words
Entry is open to all Australian residents

The Third National Republican Short Story Competition challenges Australia’s fiction writers to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic.

Speculative fiction writers deal with possibilities.
They speculate.
They make the future seem real.

However, we can’t achieve anything unless we imagine it first. Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past.

It seems strange there is no tradition of republican speculative fiction in Australia. In colonial times there were republican poets such as Charles Harpur writing in the 1840s and 1850s, and republican writers such as John Dunmore Lang and Daniel Deniehy in the 1850s and William Lane, Henry Lawson and John Norton in the 1880s and 1890s. But where have been the republican stories for the past century? There have certainly been many republican writers during this time but very few examples where republican settings or arguments have been explored in Australian fiction. Republican arguments and explorations of the past and imaginations of the future have almost always been written within the framework of constitutional debates.

Where do the people of Australia fit into this? Where are their myths and stories to tell and retell and remember about Australia’s emerging republican identity?

So, the Australian Republican Movement would like to point the way forward through Australian stories with a republican backdrop. They don’t have to be political thrillers or constitutional whodunits as long as they are an exploration of our future, our republican future.

To read more about the Australia’s emerging republican speculative fiction genre go to http://www.independentaustralia.net/2010/republic/speculating-on-a-republic

Previous National Republican Short Story winners are:

Helen Bersten, Double Lives, 2010 Highly Commended
Sean Oliver Ness, Inauguration Day, 2010 Highly Commended
Kel Robertson, Rook Feast, 2009 First Prize

The competition guidelines and entry form and list of judges are available at http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com

For more information contact fiction@republic.org.au

2011 Judging Panel announced

The Judging Panel was announced today for the Third National Republican Short Story Competition.

Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and his first novel was published in 1964. Since then he has written a considerable number of novels and non-fiction works. His novels include The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Schindler's List, and The People's Train. His latest non-fiction book was The Australains: Origins to Eureka. He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Prize, the Mondello International Prize and has been made a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, a Fellow of the American Academy, recipient of the University of California gold medal, and is now a 55 cent Australian stamp. He is also widely known as the founding chairman of the Australian Republican Movement.

Professor John Warhurst recently concluded fifteen years as Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He is Adjunct Professor at both Australian National University and Flinders University, Senior Deputy National Chair, Australian Republican Movement and was Australian Republican Movement National Chair from 2002 to 2005. He also writes a weekly column for the Canberra Times.

Professor George Williams is Anthony Mason Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at University of New South Wales. He was previously a National Committee member, Australian Republican Movement and regular reviews science fiction and fantasy books for The Book Show on ABC Radio National and for The Weekend Australian.

Dr Glenn Davies is Queensland State Convener, Australian Republican Movement, a republican historian and author, and a 2008 and 2009 Aurealis Awards Science Fiction Short Story judge. He reads slush pile for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

2011 Competition Terms and Conditions

1. Entry is open to all Australian residents. Entry forms can be downloaded from http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/

2. The purpose of the short story competition is to promote non-constitutional change towards an Australian republic and to remind Australians what they still do not have.

3. The theme for the speculative fiction competition is 'Citizen or Subject'. Short stories will be required to use this theme to portray an Australian republican future.

4. First prize is $500. Highly Commended prize is $50. The First Prize and Highly Commended short stories are eligible for publication in Republican Roundup and on the ARM website. Copyright of each short story will remain with the author.

5. Entry fee is $11.99 (incl GST). Each additional submission fee is $6.11 (incl GST) Entry fees are to be paid by money order or cheque to Australian Republican Movement. Please do not send cash.

6. Entries must be unpublished and not have won any other awards. Each manuscript entered must meet all of the following requirements:
* Length -- 2000 to 4000 words
* Typed -- double spaced on one side of the paper
* Title Page -- must include your name, address, phone number, story title, length, and email
* Do not submit originals. Manuscripts will not be returned.
* While appropriate colourful language might be accepted (within moderation), entries must not contain extreme foul language, racial or sexually explicit content that would render the entry unsuitable for publication.
* Electronic copies will be accepted at fiction@republic.org.au
* Deadline -- postmarked on or before 6 November 2011 (Advice: enter early -- avoid deadline crush)

7. The competition will be judged by Professor John Warhurst, Professor George Williams and Dr Glenn Davies. The judging committee will select the best short stories from the qualified entries and determine the winners. The judges reserve the right not to award prizes if in their judgement there are no short stories entered of sufficient standard. The decision of the judging committee is final.

8. The prize money will be awarded by Australian Republican Movement in accordance with the decision of the judging committee. First Prize and Highly Commended winners will be publicised on 26 January 2011. Each contestant after 26 January 2011 will receive the following information: Name of the competition winner / Name and background of the judges / The 2010 competition statistics

9. Mail signed official entry form and your manuscript (s) on or before 6 November 2011 to: Australian Republican Movement (Qld), PO Box 87, Geebung Q 4034

10. If you have any questions, please feel free to email fiction@republic.org.au or post a blog query at http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/

Best of luck!

2011 Entry Form

The Australian Republican Movement invites submissions of original short stories to be considered for the Third National Republican Short Story Competition.

How to enter
Simply fill in the entry form and send together with a cheque for $11.99 and your republican speculative fiction short story to:

Australian Republican Movement
PO Box 87
Geebung QLD 4034

Entries must be the original work of the entrant and must not have won another competition.

First prize is $500

Highly Commended prize is $50

Personal Details

Given Name(s) / Surname

_________________________________________________________

Postal address

_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

Email address

_________________________________________________________

Story title

_________________________________________________________

Please write the title of your story on each page of your submission

By submitting my entry into the competition I agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the competition. (posted at http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/ )

Signature _______________________ Date _________

Entries will be accepted until close of business on 6 November 2011.

Further information contact fiction@republic.org.au or go to http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/

2010 Second National Republican Short Story Competition Winner Announced

Helen Bersten and Sean Oliver Ness were each awarded today a ‘Highly Commended’ in the Second National Republican Short Story Competition for their short stories Double Lives and Inauguration Day.

The 2010 theme was ‘Life and Death in an Australian Republic’. Australia’s speculative fiction writers were challenged to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic.

The Judging Panel comprising Professor Brian Matthews, Professor John Warhurst and Professor George Williams decided not to award a 2010 First Prize. Instead they have awarded two ‘Highly Commended’ prizes and recommended the prize be jackpotted for 2011. This is not an unusual outcome for literary competitions. Winners will receive $50 each.

Winner of a ‘Highly Commended’ in the Second National Republican Short Story Competition is Helen Bersten. Mrs Bersten is a librarian, who has been working for the last 32 years as Honorary Archivist for the Australian Jewish Historical Society in Sydney. In 2005 she received an OAM for her voluntary service to the historical society. She has also been a voluntary reader on Radio 2RPH (Radio for the Print Handicapped) for the last 6 and a half years. She is an avid writer of letters to newspapers and an amateur poet, who proof-reads others' works and dreams of writing her own magnum opus. She is a wife, mother of 3 and grandmother of 5.

In Double Lives, Mrs Bersten tells dual stories: one set during a Presidential meet’n greet where his new team of advisers, Team PC (People’s Choice), are getting to know each other. At the same time a fictional crime story is being told about the night the Dunbar sank at South Head in Sydney Harbour.

The Judges commented that Double Lives is both imaginative and innovative. The attempt at a dual narrative – one commenting on the other, the past intruding into the present – is ambitious and difficult. They felt the complicated structure, though at times flawed, makes a genuinely ambitious and credible effort to produce a fiction. It is a story that has the required republican provenance but which tries to do other things and go to other places, both physically and psychologically.

Winner of a ‘Highly Commended’ in the Second National Republican Short Story Competition is Sean Oliver Ness. Mr Ness was born in North Queensland but his family moved to Hong Kong when he was young. He lived there until he was 12 returning to Brisbane and later study in Psychology and Information Technology at university. He works in the public service in Canberra. His interests include travelling, participating in Volunteer Emergency Services, following politics and, of course, reading and writing a lot.

In Inauguration Day, Mr Ness tells the story of James Hapeta, an Australian Federal Police Lieutenant assigned to Presidential protection detail with the Inauguration Day Presidential parade. As the Presidential motorcade travels through the streets of Canberra, Hapeta and his security colleagues attention to security is at fever pitch due to a discovered credible threat.

Ness’ sense of humour is evident in his reference to ‘Billies’. As the Presidential motorcade passes through Ainslie "an elderly couple: grey hair, plain clothes, a stiffness that stood out from the happy families [are holding] a poster-size portrait of the Queen [and] a sign that said "THE SECOND RUM REBELLION IS HERE – GOD SAVE US ALL!" Ness explains that in the early days, monarchists took the Rum Rebellion analogy and ran with it; in response, they were uniformly nicknamed Billy Blighs, or just Billies.

The Judges noted as nicely managed the following paragraph in Inauguration Day where Hapeta observes the scene around him:

The big houses faded as they turned a sharp corner onto Antill. On the left, they passed schools and public swimming pools and clusters of shops; on the right, rows of small homes and low-rise apartment blocks. State Policemen were on either side of the street, controlling the crowds. As the motorcade swept down the street, the low murmurs turned into a loud cheer that echoed off the apartment blocks. Streamers were tossed into the air, and confetti rained down like pink snowflakes.

When Hapeta breaks protocol and leaves his post to assist a ‘Statie’ the theme of ‘Life and Death in the Australian Republic’ emerges. The final scene is captured by a bystander with the photo becoming the defining memory of the day.

The two ‘Highly Commended’ entries were published on the Australian Republican Movement website on 6 November 2010.

Republican challenge to Australian speculative fiction writers

The 2010 Second National Republican Short Story Competition opened on 1 May 2010 and closed on 31 August 2010. The winner will be announced on 6 November 2010.

The theme for the Second National Republican Short Story Competition is 'Life and Death in an Australian Republic'. Short stories will speculate on Australian republican futures.

The Second National Republican Short Story Competition continues the momentum built from the successful 2009 First National Republican Short Story Competition. 2009 was a milestone as it was 10 years on 6 November 2009 since the republican referendum was lost. To commemorate this event and to remind Australians what they still didn’t have the Australian Republican Movement ran the First National Republican Short Story Competition.

It seems strange there is no tradition of republican speculative fiction in Australia. In colonial times there were republican poets such as Charles Harpur writing in the 1840s and 1850s, and republican writers such as John Dunmore Lang and Daniel Deniehy in the 1850s and William Lane, Henry Lawson and John Norton in the 1880s and 1890s. But where have been the republican stories for the past century? There have certainly been many republican writers during this time but almost no examples where republican settings or arguments have been explored in Australian fiction. Republican arguments and explorations of the past and imaginations of the future are always written within the framework of constitutional debates.

Where do the people of Australia fit into this? Where are their myths and stories to tell and retell and remember about Australia’s emerging republican identity?

This Second National Republican Short Story Competition challenges Australia’s fiction writers to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic.

Speculative fiction writers deal with possibilities.

They speculate.

They make the future seem real.

However, we can’t achieve anything unless we imagine it first. Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past.

So, the ARM (Q) would like to point the way forward through Australian stories with a republican backdrop. They don’t have to be political thrillers or constitutional whodunits as long as they are an exploration of our future, our republican future.

Tomorrow when the republic comes

M. Barnard Eldershaw was the pseudonym used by the twentieth century Australian literary collaborators Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw

Their final collaborative novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, published in 1947 as Tomorrow and Tomorrow, is considered to be one of Australia's major early science fiction novels and was highly regarded by Australia's only Nobel Prize winner for literature, Patrick White. It is set in the 24th century and features Knarf (a novelist and historian whose name is an inversion of Frank Dalby Davison's first name).

The book is essentially a story-within-a-story, with much of it comprising an historical novel, written by the character Knarf, about "old" Australia from 1924-1946. This story is basically an alternative history of an Australian socialist republic from the 1920s on flowing from a revolution during the First World War. It was, however, censored for political reasons at the time: the censors demanded that 400 lines be cut, including references to National Security regulations and how they contradicted the democratic principles for which the war was supposedly being fought.

Speculating on the Republic

On 3 August 2010 Independent Australia published the the first review ever undertaken on the republican speculative fiction genre in Australia.

It seems strange there is no tradition of republican speculative fiction in Australia. It is through speculative fiction that change can begin. We can’t achieve anything unless we imagine it first. Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past.

Republic - 'The Land Itself '

In 2000, the Australian speculative fiction writer Sean Williams published in Eidolon. The Journal of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vol.7, No.2 (No.29/30) the story he had written too late for the 1998 Aurealis Republic issue.

Williams’ decribes ‘The Land Itself’ as “not just a post-human take on the whole Republic issue, but as post-Australia (if that’s a thing).”

One of the Australian colonies wants to secede from the motherland and its envoy has to jump through several increasingly strange hoops to do it. He follows this up in 2005 with his second novel, The Resurrected Man which is set in a future Australia (2069) that was part of the United Republics of Australia in which ‘Old Stott-Despoja’ had just been voted in for another term.

Australian identity, Australian literature and an Australian republic

On 7 July 2010, David Donovan wrote in Online Opinion that a major reason for an Australian republic is to aid the further development of a distinct and unique Australian identity. This identity comes through the way we think about ourselves and our nation: the stories we tell, the songs we sing, our legends and our myths. From our literature and popular fiction, we can see that Australia has built a narrative about who we are as a nation, and new chapters are being added all the time as the national identity is updated with each new era.

As part of this process, the Australian Republican Movement runs an annual speculative fiction short story competition. Entries close in August for the current installment of this competition. This year, writers are asked to present stories about Australia’s republican future, under the theme “Life and Death in the Australian Republic”.

There is no real tradition of speculative republican fiction in Australia. A great many of Australia’s most important works of fiction look towards our past rather than ahead. Moreover, with some exceptions rather than preferring bright and optimistic tales, the stories with which we seem to most identify have a strong sense of adversity, injustice and persecution at their core.

Crown's don't sit well

In Tohby Riddle's, The Royal Guest, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1993; Puffin 2008) the Queen is planning a trip to Australia, but there is talk about the cost. Luckily, a Mrs Jones from Padstow offers to put her up. She has plenty of room, not to mention a very comfortable inflatable mattress. All the Queen needs to bring is a her own sleeping bag.

Over the next few days, the Queen experiences everyday suburban life, playing cards with Mrs Jones and her friends and helping Mrs Jones take her cat to the vet on her way to a meeting with the Prime Minister.

After a hectic round of royal engagement, the Queen returns to spend her last night at Padstow. Before she leaves the next moring, she hands Mrs Jones a thankyou gift. It is the most delicately, crafted jewelled crown, one of the Queen's old favourites. Mrs Jones, who is busy packing the Queen's lunch, accepts the crown, joking that this must make her 'the Queen of Padstow'.

Although this is where the story ends, republican historian Mark McKenna has reflected on the crowning of Mrs Jones. In Symbols of Australia (2010), p.33 he wrote:

I've often imagined Mrs Jones sitting at her kitchen table, carefully placing the crown on her head. How strange it must have felt, this crown that jarred with her clothes and refused to sit straight on her hair. If the neighbours caught sight of her, they'd probably have thought she'd gone mad. After all, what good is a crown in Padstow? We know nothing of how long Mrs Jones reigned in her realm of Padstow, or whether she managed to find any loyal subjects, although given the wry delivery of her final line it would seem unlikely she persisted with the fantasy of being the Queen of Padstow.

The sight of any Australian wearing the crown of royalty - like the sight of the crowned Mrs Jones in Padstow - seems frankly absurd. Crowns do not sit well on Australian heads.

Republic Upstairs with Nick Earls

The Republic Upstairs welcomes as its next guest speaker, Nick Earls.

The Republic Upstairs has a proud history and over the past decade has hosted some of the leading figures in sports, finance, journalism, the arts and politics.

This tradition continues with Nick Earls, speaking at the 12 Lounge at the Melbourne Hotel in West End next month.

Date: Sunday 20th June 2010
Time: 2:00pmLocation: 12 Lounge, The Melbourne Hotel
Address: 10 Browning Street, West End, 4101
Admisson Charges: $30RSVP: by 15th June email qld@republic.org.au

Nick Earls is an award winning and highly successful Queensland writer, as well as a long-standing member of the Queensland branch of the Australian Republican movement. Nick was born in Northern Ireland and emigrated to Australia when he was eight. His family settled in Brisbane and he went to school at ‘Churchie’ before completing a medical degree at the University of Queensland. Nick’s father was a GP and he worked for a time in the same profession before turning to writing full-time in his mid-20s. This decision proved to be an almost immediate success when his first adult novel, Zigzag Street, won the Betty Trask award in 1998. Then in 2000, his young-adult novel 48 Shades of Brown won the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for older readers.

Most of Nick’s writing is humorous and fun and almost all of it is set in Brisbane. Many of his novels have been adapted for stage, film and television. His first work written specifically for the stage, The True Story of Butterfish, was shown at the Brisbane Powerhouse as part of the Brisbane Festival in October 2009.

The admission charges will cover a modest bar tab as well as a selection of finger food. The Melbourne hotel offers $5 parking and is close to many public transport options.

Second National Republican Short Story Competition opens

The 2010 Second National Republican Short Story Competition opened today, 1 May 2010 and will close on 31 August 2010. The winner will be announced on 6 November 2010.

The Second National Republican Short Story Competition continues the momentum built from the successful 2009 First National Republican Short Story Competition. 2009 was a milestone as it was 10 years on 6 November 2009 since the republican referendum was lost. To commemorate this event and to remind Australians what they still didn’t have the Australian Republican Movement ran the First National Republican Short Story Competition.

The theme for the Second National Republican Short Story Competition is 'Life and Death in an Australian Republic'. Short stories will speculate on Australian republican futures.

2010 Entry Form.

The Australian Republican Movement invites submissions of original short stories to be considered for the Second National Republican Short Story Competition.

How to enter
Simply fill in the entry form and send together with a cheque for $11.99 and your republican speculative fiction short story to:

Australian Republican Movement
PO Box 87
Geebung QLD 4034

Entries must be the original work of the entrant and must not have won another competition.

First prize is $500

Personal Details

Given Name(s) / Surname

_________________________________________________________

Postal address

_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

Email address

_________________________________________________________

Story title

_________________________________________________________

Please write the title of your story on each page of your submission

By submitting my entry into the competition I agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of the competition. (posted at http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/ )

Signature _______________________ Date _________

Entries will be accepted until close of business on 31 August 2010.

Further information contact fiction@republic.org.au or go to http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/

2010 Competition Terms and Conditions

1. Entry is open to all Australian residents. Entry forms can be downloaded from http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com//

2. The purpose of the short story competition is to promote non-constitutional change towards an Australian republic and to remind Australians what they still do not have.

3. The theme for the speculative fiction competition is 'Life and Death in an Australian Republic'. Short stories will be required to portray an Australian republican future.

4. First prize is $500. The First Prize and Short Listed stories are eligible for publication in Republican Roundup and on the ARM website. Copyright of each short story will remain with the author.

5. Entry fee is $11.99 (incl GST). Each additional submission fee is $6.11 (incl GST) Entry fees are to be paid by money order or cheque to Australian Republican Movement. Please do not send cash.

6. Entries must be unpublished and not have won any other awards. Each manuscript entered must meet all of the following requirements:
* Length -- 2000 to 4000 words
* Typed -- double spaced on one side of the paper
* Title Page -- must include your name, address, phone number, story title, length, and email
* Do not submit originals. Manuscripts will not be returned.
* While appropriate colourful language might be accepted (within moderation), entries must not contain extreme foul language, racial or sexually explicit content that would render the entry unsuitable for publication.
* Electronic copies will be accepted at fiction@republic.org.au
* Deadline -- postmarked on or before 31 August 2010 (Advice: enter early -- avoid deadline crush)

7. The competition will be judged by Professor Brian Matthews, Professor John Warhurst, Professor George Williams and Dr Glenn Davies. The judging committee will select the best short stories from the qualified entries and determine the winners. The decision of the judging committee is final.

8. The prize money will be awarded by Australian Republican Movement in accordance with the decision of the judging committee. First Prize will be publicised on 6 November 2010. Each contestant after 6 November 2010 will receive the following information: Name of the competition winner / Name and background of the judges / The 2010 competition statistics

9. Mail signed official entry form and your manuscript (s) on or before 31 August 2010 to: Australian Republican Movement (Qld), PO Box 87, Geebung Q 4034

10. If you have any questions, please feel free to email fiction@republic.org.au or post a blog query at http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/

Best of luck!

Second National Republican Short Story Competition begins soon.

Saturday, 1 May 2010 is the launch date for the short story competition. Competition details and theme will be available here then ...

2010 Judging Panel announced.

The judging panel was announced today for the Second National Republican Short Story Competition. The short story competition will open on 1 May 2010.

Professor Brian Matthews is Honorary Professor of English at Flinders University. He has won the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland Premiers' awards for literature and the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. His most recent book is Manning Clark A Life.

Professor John Warhurst recently concluded fifteen years as Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He is Adjunct Professor at both ANU and Flinders University, Senior Deputy National Chair, Australian Republican Movement and was ARM National Chair from 2002 to 2005. He also writes a weekly column for the Canberra Times.

Professor George Williams is Anthony Mason Professor of Law and Foundation Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at University of New South Wales. He is a National Committee member, Australian Republican movement and regular reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books for The Book Show on ABC Radio National and for The Weekend Australian.

Dr Glenn Davies is Queensland State Secretary, Australian Republican Movement, a republican historian and author, and a 2008 and 2009 Aurealis Awards Speculative Fiction judge.

2009 First National Republican Short Story Competition Winner Announced

Kel Robertson is the winner of the 2009 First National Republican Short Story Competition.

2009 is a milestone as it will be 10 years today since the republican referendum was lost. To commemorate this event and to remind Australians what they still don’t have the Australian Republican Movement held the First National Republican Short Story Competition.

Short stories were required to portray an Australian republican future in a positive light and demonstrate the absurdity of a hereditary monarch as the Australian Head of State in twenty-first century Australian society.

The First National Republican Short Story Competition challenged Australia’s fiction writers to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic. Speculative fiction writers deal with possibilities. They speculate. They make the future seem real.

Mr Robertson’s winning short story was titled Rook Feast and tells the story of the final meeting between the King of England who is under house arrest and a Minister of the British government. The Minister (who is also a relative) has come to inform the last King of England “on a perfect English spring day” what is to be his fate. Set in the future where a post-tourism-age appears to have killed the monarchy, Mr Robertson’s story explores concepts of the hidden costs of monarchy through a ‘security expenditure issue’, and the theme of the inevitability of the popular will of the people. The plot is written around a discussion of what will be the individual future of the last King of England.

Rook Feast won the First National Republican Short Story Competition on the strength of the writing. The judges agreed Rook Feast was a fine, well-written short story that successfully managed to take in and make much of the required republican theme. He wins $611.99, and his short story will be published on the Australian Republican Movement website at http://www.republic.org.au/

Kel Robertson, 52 lives in Canberra, and is the author of two critically lauded crime novels featuring the Chinese-Australian Federal Police investigator, Brad Chen. On learning of his win, he commented:

“I am truly delighted to win this competition. I enjoyed myself immensely writing this story; the whole experience was entertaining. As a young man I was very much of my time and had great sympathy for the royal family whereas now I find myself bemused by their activities. It was great fun being able to have some gentle pleasure at their expense.”

The First National Republican Short Story Competition has helped to foster the emerging Australian republican speculative fiction genre. A daily blog was run in conjunction with the First National Republican Short Story Competition as creative stimulus material for writers – see http://republicanfiction.blogspot.com/ Each blog detailed an example of Australian republican speculative fiction writing.

Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past. Mr Robertson’s Rook Feast is an exercise in imagination and helps to lead the way into a possible republican future. The Australian Republican Movement congratulates the winner of this year’s competition and extends its thanks to all entrants.

The First National Republican Short Story Competition presentation ceremony will be held on Wednesday evening, 18 November 2009 during the National Republican Lecture, Southern Cross Club, Canberra.

The Republican Short Story Competition will be run again in 2010.

Republican challenge to Australian writers

The First National Republican Short Story Competition closed today. The winner will be announced on 6 November 2009.

2009 is a milestone as it will be 10 years on 6 November 2009 since the republican referendum was lost. To commemorate this event and to remind Australians what they still don’t have the Australian Republican Movement is running the First National Republican Short Story Competition.

Short stories will be required to portray an Australian republican future in a positive light and demonstrate the absurdity of a hereditary monarch as the Australian Head of State in twenty-first century Australian society.

It seems strange there is no tradition of republican speculative fiction in Australia. In colonial times there were republican poets such as Charles Harpur writing in the 1840s and 1850s, and republican writers such as John Dunmore Lang and Daniel Deniehy in the 1850s and William Lane, Henry Lawson and John Norton in the 1880s and 1890s. But where have been the republican stories for the past century? There have certainly been many republican writers during this time but almost no examples where republican settings or arguments have been explored in Australian fiction. Republican arguments and explorations of the past and imaginations of the future are always written within the framework of constitutional debates.

Where do the people of Australia fit into this? Where are their myths and stories to tell and retell and remember about Australia’s emerging republican identity?

This First National Republican Short Story Competition challenges Australia’s fiction writers to speculate on the possible futures of the Australian republic.

Speculative fiction writers deal with possibilities.

They speculate.

They make the future seem real.

However, we can’t achieve anything unless we imagine it first. Before every great invention and before every great journey is the idea. Without ideas and imagination, we are all trapped in the past.

So, the ARM (Q) would like to point the way forward through Australian stories with a republican backdrop. They don’t have to be political thrillers or constitutional whodunits as long as they are an exploration of our future, our republican future.

One day to go until the First National Republican Short Story Competition closes.

The Night They Stormed Eureka

Jackie French’s junior fiction novel The Night They Stormed Eureka (2009) starts when Sam, a teenage girl, seeks refuge in a cemetery after having run away from her mother’s abusive boyfriend. In mental and physical pain, Sam imagines what life would have been like for the family of Percival and Elsie Puddleham, their names and dates carved on a headstone she shelters near. The depth of Sam’s longing for love and comfort reaches across the years to meet a yearning for a lost child, and she finds herself in mid-19th century Ballarat, not long before the bloody battle at the Eureka Stockade.

Now in 1854 Sam finds a warm, inviting home with the Puddlehams who run “the best little cook shop on the diggings”. But it was a time of great unrest among the miners on the diggings and Sam is swept up in the Eureka Rebellion, an iconic event on our national heritage landscape.

French’s recreation of the uprising against the British is not the Eureka of history books. She does not know if she’s changed the past or if it was another past. In Sam’s Ballarat the Eureka rebellion was really about turning Australia into a republic, rather than an uprising of miners over compulsory mining licence fees. And while there were only 120 men left in the stockade when it was eventually stormed, in The Night They Stormed Eureka this was because thousands were lured to different parts of the camp through trickery.

At the end of the story, Sam awakens in the graveyard to a concerned friend and worried teacher who, suspecting she was homeless, have been looking for her. Experiencing Eureka has changed Sam and, for the first time, she reaches out for help. What she learns at Eureka is that when you stand together, you can change the world.

Readers will be drawn into this world of treacle dumplings, pink bonnets, injustice, dreams and courage. Along with the Dickensian characters there are themes of race, equality, democracy and freedom. French states this is a story 'with historical background, not history’. Readers from 10 years and up couldn’t do better than read this novel to feel the texture of the event that almost turned us on the path to republicanism.

Five days to go until the First National Republican Short Story Competition closes.

The 1954 Royal Tour

Queen Elizabeth II is the only reigning British monarch to have set foot on terra australis. On the gold and blue morning of 3 February 1954, in the presence of a massive crowd, one million and more, she cam ashore at Farm Cove. This journey through Australia would be the longest single part of a six-month post-Coronation tour through twelve Commonwealth countries. In the eight weeks allotted to Australia, the Queen and her husband travelled to every capital city bar Darwin, and to seventy country towns.

In Janet Withers 2008 One Brisbane One Story short story “Winged Feet” it’s 1954, Queen Elizabeth is coming to Brisbane, and Flora’s school will participate in the welcome dance pageant. But how can she reconcile this with her father’s anti-royalist views? And should his socialist ideals prevail to move the family from the beautiful Clayfield home and garden that her mother loves?

When I told my father that the Queen was coming to visit he exploded. ‘The Queen! Down with the Queen and the Monarchy. She’s not even a reader, the Queen. She reads the Women’s Weekly and has trouble digesting that.’ …

‘Banish from under your bonny skies / Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies,’ quoted Dad from Henry Lawson. ‘We want a classless society, where all are free and equally educated. Down with the Queen and all she stands for!’

Conflict and loyalty are explored in “Winged Feet” amid a chorus of birds and a remembered streetscape of trees and flowers that add sparkle to this unconventional family story.

Perverse Acts

Camilla Nelson’s comic novel Perverse Acts (1998) depicts an Australian republic with a ceremonial President and a government that must build coalitions of support among the many small parties represented in parliament.

It is set in the Australian Parliament and deals with political machinations in a future republic. The narrative is related in turn by Venus and M. M is a young male Member of the House of Representatives who quickly becomes a Parliamentary Secretary and then a Cabinet Minister. His plans to become Prime Minister are eventually thwarted by Lucretia, the only female MP in ‘the Party’ and a member of a rival faction. Venus is an ambitious ministerial staffer who works for several ministers, including M, with whom she has a sexual relationship. When Lucretia wins, Venus transfers to her staff.

Until Lucretia’s leadership bid, the government has steadily lost ground in the electorate. Part of the cause of this growing unpopularity is the government’s attempt to get its Freedom from Government Bill, an advanced privatisation measure, through the Senate. There it needs the support of the Reverend Warren Weedon’s Circle of Light Party. The price for Weedon’s support is a growing list of legal restrictions on sex and fertility, beginning with a debate on his Single Mothers Obliteration Bill, which would force unmarried pregnant women to have abortions, then support for an amendment to prevent single women and lesbians from accessing IVF, and finally a law to force ‘single women to become born-again virgins’. Lucretia’s popularity as challenger for the prime ministership is boosted by her opposition to the deals between the Government and Weedon and is undiminished when she outs herself as a lesbian.

Nelson’s Australian republic seems to be based on the minimalist model, particularly with regard to the powers of the President. Presidents have simply replaced Governors-General. The incumbent President remains unnamed and hardly appears throughout the novel. He is ensconced in the old vice regal house at Yarralumla, where his official duties seem limited to swearing in new ministers.

Political power in Nelson’s republican Australia remains firmly centred on the Prime Minister and Cabinet and their ministerial and public service advisers. The major legislative challenge for governments is still to steer bills through Parliament, hence the importance of Weedon’s Circle of Light. The Republic (or later constitutional amendment) has changed some institutions--federalism has been done away with, and the High Court’s independence removed - but these developments are only mentioned in passing. They have no bearing on the activities of governing, which take place almost entirely within Parliament House.

Nelson depicts her republic as a cosmetic change to a corrupted game of politics. She sees power primarily in terms of gender rather than economic structures and suggests more open-ended possibilities for her imagined political institutions. Nelson indicates at least the chance that a new type of political leadership will emerge in an imagined future republic.

Melbourne, 12 August 2992

Henry Crocker Marriott Watson wrote a number of novels during the late nineteenth century in the utopian genre. He was born in Tasmania in 1835, but lived mainly in Victoria where he was ordained as a clergyman. His first novel was Erchomenon, or the republic of materialism (1879). Eutopia is set six hundred years in the future in which everyone lives in cities, there is a religion of humanity based on Auguste Comte (1798-1857), and children are raised by women other than their natural mother.

In 1890, Watson wrote The decline and fall of the British Empire or, The witch's cavern. The novel is set in the future and begins with “A letter of explanation”, dated, “Melbourne, 12 August 2992” by William Furley. Furley’s letter sets the scene for the narrative of his experiences.

In the world of 2992 British civilisation survives most strongly in Australia, which is now an independent republic with an elected president. The continent has been developed extensively and is a garden spot, with Eyreton as a new inland capital. Trade flourishes extensively with China, which provides raw materials in exchange for Australian manufactures. While Furley does not describe material culture extensively, there are electric land cars and fairly fast air transportation.

Having finished his education in 2988 Furley decides to travel, first visiting Tasmania and then Africa where the population shows signs of racial mixture. Along with his fiancee and Professor Fowler, a historian, he next visits England, the home of the British people. England has gone primitive. Population has decreased enormously, with London consisting of some twenty thousand people who live amid ruins, and with little evidence of the high civilisation of a thousand years earlier. Wolves range through the land and are a particular menace in the north. The land is ruled by Prince Albert, and rank is still important, despite the overall shabby, neo-primitive nature of the culture.

As the travellers wander about they find that Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament have completely vanished. One of the causes for the degeneration of England was a change in the Gulf Stream, which with the opening of the Panama Canal altered its course and now flows into the Pacific.

As Furley wanders about he sees a large white hare which he follows down into a great cavern where he meets the witch, or Sibyl, as she is sometimes called. She shows him visions and gives him a ring to protect him. He then awakens along with certain of his Australian friends and companions in London of the 1890s.

The heart of the book consists of Furley’s experiences and observations in the collapsing late nineteenth century world. He obtains a job as a journalist on the London Express and sees much of the contemporary misery. While admitting that society is in a bad way, the author takes a conservative position on political economy and religion. When a speaker at a public meeting states the socialist interpretation of history with recommendations for improvement, Furley stands forth and addresses the meeting in reply. His rejoinder to the thesis that capitalists are parasites is that wealth was really created by the capitalists through hard toil. As remedies for the nation’s ills he recommends hard work, thrift, and temperance. England collapses. Strikes break out. In a short time a mammoth demonstration ushers in the Great Revolution. The Sibyl shows Furley spot scenes of the future debacle. Eventually, the better people leave England, migrating to the colonies.

Furley awakens back in his own era. He declares that when Australia becomes overpopulated, he and his fiancee will return to England to repopulate and recivilise it. The author’s point of view is a mixture of social democracy, laissez faire capitalism, and limited reform.

A Song of the Republic

Henry Lawson was one of Australia's greatest writers. His interest in the republican movement was sparked by his exposure to the radicalism of friends of his mother, Louisa. In 1887 he became titular publisher of the Republican. In the aftermath of the republican riots in Sydney in 1887, he penned his first published poem "A Song of the Republic". The poem appeared in The Bulletin, 1 October 1887 and on Saturday, 15 October 1887 in The Republican. Other republican poems by Lawson included “The Statue of Our Queen” (1890), and “The English Queen” (1892).

Lawson was of course not a political theorist; rather, he was the voice of an "Australian sentiment" that put to words the yearnings of the radical nationalists of his day. Lawson was aware that to achieve independence, identity and a just social order, a Republic was the only form of government.

Sons of the South, awake! arise!

Sons of the South, and do.

Banish from under your bonny skies

Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.

Making a hell in a Paradise

That belongs to your sons and you.

*

Sons of the South, make choice between

(Sons of the South, choose true),

The Land of Morn and the Land of E'en,

The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green,

The Land that belongs to the lord and the Queen,

And the Land that belongs to you.

*

Sons of the South, your time will come –

Sons of the South, 'tis near –

The "Signs of the Times", in their language dumb,

Fortell it, and ominous whispers hum

Like sullen sounds of a distant drum,

In the ominous atmosphere.

*

Sons of the South, aroused at last!

Sons of the South are few!

But your ranks grow longer and deeper fast,

And ye shall swell to an army vast,

And free from the wrongs of the North and Past

The land that belongs to you.

Kisses of the Enemy

Rodney Hall’s Kisses of the Enemy (1987) is set in the future in the newly created Republic of Australia headed by an elected president whose power finally diminishes that of parliament. Hall portrays his republic as corrupted from birth by the power of international capital and specifically satirises and warns against the dangers of a powerful directly elected President.

The central political story begins with the success of the 1992 Republic Referendum and the election in 1993 of Bernard Buchanan, a real estate developer, as the Republic’s first President. Buchanan’s selection as candidate and his campaign are organised by the political minder Luigi Squarcia and business leader William Penhallurick. Both Squarcia and Penhallurick in turn work on behalf of IFID (Interim Freeholdings Incorporated of Delaware) a shadowy multinational corporation. IFID has worldwide strategic interests that include the Paringa military and communications base in Australia.

The Republic is marked by growing authoritarianism, military control and social squalor. It is punctuated by disasters, such as the tidal wave that smashes into Eden as a result of IFID experiments with gravitational weaponry.

As the state becomes more self-propagating, Buchanan fearful of real and imagined enemies. He grows so huge that he cannot see the ground and must be carried even to the bathroom by six aides, while he declaims: "I am the State." By now, he is infested by mice that gnaw at his entrails but at least, he thinks, he is feeling something.

While he has opponents within the political elite, his position remains safe as long as he retains IFID’s support. Resistance to Buchanan and IFID comes from a guerrilla group led by Peter Taverner (‘the Wild Dog’). Tensions between Buchanan and IFID grow. Buchanan attempts to govern alone, leaving the power to issue a licence required by IFID solely in his hands.
Buchanan is eventually brought down from a different quarter, during nationally televised divorce proceedings initiated by his wife Dorina. his sensitive, enigmatic wife Dorina, who lives separately, is inspired by disgust for Buchanan to provoke, in an uncharacteristic move, a "showdown" - enough has been enough. At the novel’s close, new presidential elections are under way, with a new unsuspecting front candidate for IFID the likely winner.

Kisses of the Enemy depicts the development of Australian political institutions under a directly elected President in nightmarishly authoritarian terms. Hall’s novel anticipates many of the fears expressed by opponents of a direct election model in Australian republican debates during the 1990s. Rather than a US-style balancing of powers between legislature and executive, in Hall’s republic the presidential powers simply overwhelm Parliament.

Preambles - imagining the republic

In 1999 a preamble written by Les Murray was offered to, and rejected by, the Australian community as part of the referendum on a republic. On 8 June 2003 the Preamble Project was launched at the Museum of Sydney.

The Preamble Project began as a conversation between the writer James Bradley 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 the idea was floated of inviting several writers to draft preambles to a republican Constitution as a way of giving voice to some of the deeper impulses an Australian Republic might 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.

Six writers offered individual statements reflecting their vision for Australia, its land and people.

James Bradley begins his statement with a pledge of allegiance to "the land, the sea [and] the sky".

Peter Carey declares that Australia is a nation "engendered by a foreign king, by foreign wars, by happenstance [and] by a once great empire which also bequeathed us our first rich cultural inheritance". 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.

For Richard Flanigan 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, buth with 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 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.

Leah Purcell's contribution opens in the language of the Kamilaroi and Gungarri people and continues in English, calling for respect for pioneers, immigrants, the land and its first peoples. 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 find itself.

Through productive discussions of what sort of preamble we would like to have comes a discussion of the meaning an Australian Republic might ultimately hold for all of us.

The full text of the six preambles can be read at http://tasmaniantimes.com/jurassic/preamble.html

Republican dogfights

Anthony Nguyen's short story 'Australia's Raptors' opens on Friday, 12 August 2016 in the airspace above the Taiwan Straits where the F-22 Raptor in service with the Federal Republican Air Force of Australia during WWIII.

Strap on your flight suit and helmet, sit back on your ejection seats and propel yourself into the world of 21st century dogfights as a combat pilot in the Federal Republican Airforce of Australia. Read full story at http://www.scribd.com/doc/13083571/Australias-Raptors

The First President

In Valda Marshall's 2009 novel it is the year 1920. The Prince of Wales is visiting Adelaide as part of his royal tour of Australia, and the royal party is staying at Adelaide’s Government House. Extra house staff is hired for the important visit, and Lily, a beautiful young country girl, is one of them. When Lily comes face to face with the Prince, history is forever changed.

Fast forward to the year 2016. Noelene Jones, one of Australia’s most celebrated opera singers, has decided to retire from the world of entertainment and is looking forward to the quiet life. She decides that her first project as a regular citizen will be to renovate and bring back to life her grandmother’s dilapidated cottage in the Adelaide Hills.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, a man of cunning with an over-inflated ego, is busy trying to orchestrate the country’s historic and complicated transition from Monarchy to Republic. The biggest question on everyone’s lips is: who will become the First President?

Noelene, although a staunch republic supporter, has no interest in the job. But the Australian public has other ideas … and Mike, a friendly reporter who is making a documentary about Noelene’s life, is overly encouraging. But when Mike and Noelene investigate an interesting discovery at her Adelaide Hills cottage, the line between Monarchy and Republic becomes inextricably tangled...

Part love story, part political satire, The First President: An Australian Story of Love and Politics provides an interesting preview of the possible future of our nation as a republic.

Republic of women

Republic of Women is a novel that questions the basis of contemporary Western thought. Merrill Findlay's novel rejects Plato's Republic and its influence on modern life and chooses an ideal made from the interwoven beliefs of a pseudo-family of distinctive characters.

Republic of Women centres around a small community of friends and neighbours in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Findlay comments that she wrote much of her first novel at "one of Melbourne's most significant cultural institutions," Leo's Spaghetti Bar, located in the bayside suburb of St Kilda, the area where she resides.

Republic of Women is a continuous celebration of women’s creativity, in the meaning of both women’s skills and artistic talent, and capacity to procreate. The lives of Marie, Elle and Lillian constantly intersect with the lives of the goddesses of Sumerian-Babylonian, Greek and Roman mythologies; they develop in parallels with the lives of historical figures such as Alphonsine Plessis, Anita Garibaldi, Giuseppina Strepponi and Nellie Melba. Findlay makes sure she always foregrounds these women, reaffirming various forms of greatness, which have all too often been understated in public history written by men.

There are affinities between Merrill Findlay's Republic of Women and Plato's Republic. Neither has a plot, although both contain novelistic elements such as characters, conflicts and themes. In both texts the dynamic discussion of ideas comprises the action. Findlay also derives her central focus - the oppression of women throughout history - from Plato, charging that when he "defined the future in his own image," he paid little attention to women who, during the Athenian period, were a suppressed lot. Confined to their houses and not formally educated, they could play no part in politics, vote, hold property, participate in or even attend (some say) athletic games or theatrical performances. It was also Plato's student Aristotle who recorded in his Poetics that women may be said to be "inferior beings, mere vessels for male seed". Yet Findlay's imagined recreation of the lives of dozens of brilliant women artists and musicians (drawn from both fiction and "real life") demonstrates that it was their marginalized status that proved disadvantageous. She tells the stories of these talented women in the form of discontinuous narratives, a style many readers will appreciate, for their lives were unrelentingly bleak. At every turn, they were betrayed.

The novel is not entirely bleak, however, for like Plato's disciples, Findlay's characters also consider how to construct a successful society. As they work and love and play, Marie and her friends explore alternative ways of living in their threatened inner-city environment. In doing so they question the philosophical basis of much contemporary western thought, rejecting the tenets of Plato's ideal republic and its continuing hold on the politics of today. The shared joys and tragedies of their daily lives are interwoven with a rich plenitude of stories and myths from the past, in a compelling narrative that culminates in an emotionally charged and satisfying finale. The women conclude that, although much of St Kilda is being destroyed by postmodernist trendiness, it nonetheless remains a vital and fulfilling place to live. Further, they view the community as contributing to a new country which has the potential for greatness, to be the kind of society that has never existed before. And they might be right.

In his Republic, Plato had put forward a model of an ideal, and therefore difficult to implement society, in a period in which he, himself, was forced to acknowledge the flaws of Athenian democracy, as well as the decline of the Greek empire. In a century, which until its very end, has witnessed unspeakable atrocities, in a world where it does not yet seem possible to end racial and sex discrimination, and in a country – in this novel, Australia – which is yet to make a public apology for the massacres and mistreatments of its indigenous people, how could it be possible to envisage a community truly free from prejudice and violence, and supported by the creativity and imagination of its members?

A Republic of Women is the notion conceived by the three protagonists of this novel: an optimistic, rather than utopian, notion. The envisaged society is one where marginalisation, on any ground, would be ruled out, and where the accepted idea of “freedom” would be inseparable from principles of ethics and harmony. Above all, this society would be bold enough to go beyond the barriers of the conventions established by still-patriarchal community structures, and would rely instead on women’s creative potential.

In Republic of Women Findlay asks the questions - "Who are we, where have we come from, where are we going to?" and ultimately proposes some fascinating possibilities.

Australia's first directly elected president

Alternate history is a subgenre of science fiction that contains elements of historical fiction and sometimes time travel, but is unique in that it extrapolates upon how, if a given event is changed, the course of history will be altered from that point forward.

In A. Bertram Chandler’s Kelly Country the narrator is sent back in time, into the mind of his great-grandfather, in order to be able to write an eyewitness account of the Siege of Glenrowan, his ancestor having been among those present in Ma Jones’s pub on that occasion. He somehow gets control of his great-grandfather’s mind and interferes, stopping Thomas Curnow from flagging down the special train, not realising that by doing so he has changed history. As a result of his intervention the Australian Revolution succeeds because the rebels receive considerable help from the United States. The Harp in the South Committee – with Ned Kelly’s famous cousin, Buffalo Bill as its figurehead – raises money and volunteers. Francis Bannerman – the world’s first international secondhand arms dealer – supplies weaponry. Certain officers of the American army regard the war in Australia as an ideal opportunity for trying out newfangled devices in somebody else’s country – Andrews airships, steam-operated Gatling cannons, and primitive tanks with steam-driven, armoured traction engines. When the narrator returns to his present he realises the success of the Australian Revolution has changed the history of Australia and to a lesser extent the world.

At Othertimelines.com there have been a number of alternate history timelines written that explore an alternate Australian republic. Below is an extract from an alternate history where the Sir John Kerr is the last Governor-General of Australia and elected as the first Australian president in 1975:

Event Date: 1-1-1975
An election called by Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to end the stalemate results in a victory for his Labour Party. The Labourite majority in the House is increased and the Liberal-Country coalition loses its control of the Senate.

Event Date: 28-2-1975
The Australian House of Representatives passes a bill calling for a plebiscite on the issue of the monarchy and Australia's ties to Great Britain.

Event Date: 3-3-1975
The Senate passes the same bill by a sizable margin.

Event Date: 27-5-1975
Australian voters decide to abolish the monarchy and declare Australia a republic. A presidential election will be held on September 1st.

Event Date: 1-9-1975
Sir John Kerr, the last Governor-General of Australia, wins the presidential election over 2 Liberal opponents, former Prime Ministers John Gorton and William McMahon. Kerr gets 53%, followed by 35% for McMahon and 12% for Gorton.

See http://www.othertimelines.com/viewtimeline.php?timelineID=660 for the full alternate history timeline.

What if?

Historians seem to enjoy imagining history as it might have been, and it's this 'what if' theme that is taken up by prominent Australian historians, in a collection of counterfactual histories edited by Sean Scalmer and Stuart McIntyre called What if: Australian History as it might have been.

In Stuart McIntyre's counterfactual, Australia's entry into the First World War is pre-empted by a Pearl Harbour-like attack on Australian troop ships in the Cocos Islands, well before they reach Gallipoli. In the shock that follows, Billy Hughes stubbornly rallies his nation to the cause of empire.

On the other hand, Helen Irving imagines what might have happened if Australia's initial attempt at Federation did not win British approval, and was therefore deferred until 1910. Rather than Alfred Deakin, Irving has the irracible Billy Hughes bring Australia together as a nation. Greater confidence in nationhood leads to a less obstructionist senate, paving the way for Australia to become a republic by 1980.

What If has the consequence of essentialising history, creating an opposition between what really happened and what writers imagine might have happened.

Australia is still at heart a speculative enterprise.

The Whitlam Republic

Alternate history is a subgenre of science fiction that contains elements of historical fiction and sometimes time travel, but is unique in that it extrapolates upon how, if a given event is changed, the course of history will be altered from that point forward.

On Tuesday, 11 November 1975, the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister and appointed Malcolm Fraser as a caretaker Prime Minister. For the first time, an unelected vice-regal representative had removed from office a government which commanded a majority in the House of Representatives. As a result a double dissolution election was held on 13 December 1975, at which the Whitlam Government was soundly defeated.

The Dismissal of the Whitlam Government on 11 November 1975 was the most dramatic political event in the history of Australia's Federation and remains a controversial subject in Australian history. The dismissal is central to any understanding of the current debate about becoming a republic.

At http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/3771/ind.html David Atwell has written an alternate history timeline that explores the creation of an Australian republic after the events of the 1975 Dismissal.

Who’ll hoist the Flag of Stars

Ned Kelly has become an Australian folk hero for his defiance of the colonial authorities. Born in Victoria to an Irish convict father, as a young man he clashed with the police. Following an incident at his home in 1878, police parties searched for him in the bush. After he murdered three policemen, the colony proclaimed Kelly and his gang wanted outlaws. A final violent confrontation with police took place at Glenrowan. Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armour and helmet, was captured and sent to jail where he was hanged for murder at Old Melbourne Gaol in 1880.

The Kelly gang had many active supporters and a wide following. It has been said Kelly was forced into bushranging by the police who were looking to shoot him. Kelly and his gang robbed banks rather than robbing common folk. The radical thoughts of the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly were evident in the hour of his capture when the police took from his pocket a declaration for a Republic of North Eastern Victoria!

It was Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter that showed elements of a manifesto and a foreshadowing of a rebellion. In 1879 the Kelly gang held up the town of Jerilderie, New South Wales. Months prior to arriving in Jerilderie, and with help from his mate Joe Byrne, Kelly had dictated a lengthy letter for publication describing his view of his activities and the treatment of his family and, more generally, the treatment of Irish Catholics by the police and the English and Irish Protestant squatters. The Jerilderie Letter contains language that is colourful, rough and full of metaphors and has become a famous piece of Australian literature.

In the time since his execution, Ned Kelly has been mythologised among some into a Robin Hood, a political revolutionary and a figure of Irish Catholic and working-class resistance to the establishment and British colonial ties. This can be summed up in the lyrics from 1980s folk rock band, Redgum

But no one single handed
Can hope to break the bars
It's a thousand like Ned Kelly
Who'll hoist the Flag of Stars

Assassinate the President

In the Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine Aurealis, 20/21, April 1998 a special double issue speculated on the possible futures of an Australian republic. SF is, afterall, the 'literature of ideas'. Below is an extract from Robert Hood's, 'Occasional Demons'

.... I toss the antique magazine back to him. "Impossible. She's been dead for what? A decade or so?"

"Security ID gives an 94.7% verification. Do you know what that means?"

Of course I did. But it was still impossible. "Has to be a genetic remake. I saw Elvis Presley at the New Trocadero last week. Dead spit, he was." Digalle huffs, but the scorn's gone before I can protest. "A hologram?" I suggest.

"Do you think we wouldn't sift out the obvious, long before we'd resort to you? Genetic remakes can't catch the nuances. Holograms are unstable. Security ID says it's her."

"The real thing?"

He shrugs. "As you say, it can't be her. But we don't have any alternatives that the analysis programs like."

I get up from behind my desk and wander to the window. Canberra looks stark under the exposed sun, even with the filters running at maximum. "So Princess Di is skulking about the President's house. What's he worried about? That she wants to assassinate him?"...

Republic referendum wins!

At Othertimelines.com there have been a number of alternate history timelines written that explore an alternate Australian republic. Below is an extract from an alternate history where the 1999 republican referendum was successful:

Event Date: 16-11-1999

In a nationwide referendum the Australian public chooses to become a republic and no longer become a member of the British Commonwealth. The majority is slim however. Only 52.3% are for and 47.7% are against. The Prime Minister, John Howard and Governor General both step down in honor of the new Australian Republic.

Event Date: 17-11-1999

Immediately new elections are to be held for The Australian Republic on the 4th of February. John Howard will remain caretaker Prime Minister until then. The result has sent shock waves throughout the Commonwealth, most people expecting Australia to stay a member. Many in New Zealand expect a referendum soon, as do many in Papua New Guinea and Canada.

Event Date: 21-11-1999

A new Australian flag is commissioned. Its design is that of which many expected should the Republican camp win - dark green in the top left corner and gold in the bottom right corner. A white Southern Cross constellation is in the green half and a large ten-pointed star is in the gold half. Most Australians seem content with the decision to become a republic, although there is talk amongst the native aboriginal community of harsher treatment now that Australia has left the commonwealth.

Event Date: 4-12-1999

The Australian Labour Party (currently in opposition) says that their leader, Kim Beazley will run for President in the February elections. There is speculation that young Liberal party member John Hobbs may run for the Presidency. This speculation has worried many poor and aboriginal people due to his hard line poverty and race relation’s ideas.
See http://www.othertimelines.com/viewtimeline.php?timelineID=3231 for the full alternate history timeline.