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.

You don't vote for Kings!

As Monty Python said, "You don't vote for Kings!" So the question is then how do you become the elected King of Australia?

On the weekend of 11-12 July 2009, Australia's own home-grown king along with his nobles and courtiers took to the Field of St Michael's, during the Abbey Medieval Festival. This is the largest authentic medieval re-enactment event in Australia. It spans a thousand years from Europe's Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages, roughly AD600 to 1600. In 2007, approximately 18,500 people participated in the weekend Tournament outside Caboolture, north of Brisbane.

The Australian Crown on the field came into being in 2000, when the Baronry's, Shire's, College's, and Canton's of Australia voted in favour to advance to Kingdom status, to split from the Kingdom of the West (the West coast US) and rule themselves as the Kingdom of Lochac. As the seventeenth kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), a historical re-creation and living history group founded in California in 1966 which recreates pre-17th century Western European history, life and culture of the landed nobility, the Kingdom of Lochac encompasses all Australian states and New Zealand.

Viscount Baronress Mistress Rowan Perigrynne said at the time, "I love the West and always will, as a child loves its parents. Yet every child grows up and makes their own way in the world, and the parents rejoice to see them stand on their own! I believe we are ready to make the next step, take the next challenge, and celebrate the dawn of the Kingdom of Lochac. This would truly be the fulfillment of my dream of so many years ago."

Yolande Kesteven also said, "I know that Lochac is a part of the Kingdom of the West, and that makes a difference to me when I swear fealty, when I give the Royal Toast, do Princess things, and when I call for three cheers in my student Heralding moments. But these are the only times it really makes a difference to me. For the rest of the time, there is only Lochac. And while the West is very dear to me, it is a separate place, far away".

The echoes of the arguments put forward for the Yes vote in the 1999 republican referendum resound clearly through these comments. As Australia matures as a nation there comes a time when the child grows up and cuts the apron strings. A year after the defeat of the 1999 referendum the Lochac Kingdom Poll was successful.

The Australian Crown of Lochac is chosen in a different way to that of the British Crown. To become King of Lochac a candidate must win a Crown Tournament, that is through combat on the field, to hold the Crown for a period of six months. Of course, this was not how medieval monarchs were chosen. Certainly many Kings were crowned after having conquered a kingdom through right of arms, but the crown tournament model of selecting Kings is purely a SCA process.

Even though Monty Python's character King Arthur said it was by divine providence that he became King through presentation of Excalibur by the Lady in the Lake, the Anglo-Saxon Kings were actually elected by the witan, a group of self-interested land holders who could raise a large enough fighting force to cause trouble if they didn't get their own way. This process of appointment through consent is not unique but certainly unusual. Britain had twice been momentarily an elective monarchy, in the sense that new monarchs were appointed by a process of consent - William-and-Mary and George 1. Maybe three times, insofar as George VI succeeded Edward VIII not strictly by hereditary right but by the explicit consent of the governments of the Empire.

Of course, a monarch ruling over Australian's is an absurd fiction, whether it is a right of arms medieval re-enactment King, or the hereditary British monarch. Although the nobles of Lochac may enjoy the pagentry of recreating times gone by, for those of us in the mundane world the sooner Australian's create a republic the better.