‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,’ is a well known quote from Mark Twain. This quote came to mind while reading Craig Emerson’s column – Why Australia Day will just die of old age – in Monday’s edition of the Australian Financial Review.
Emerson’s column argues that the Grim Reaper of demographics is stalking old Australia, its people and its national day. A new cohort of settlers will arrive to replace us and usher in a republic, he asserts. When, you may ask, will this happen? The answer: sometime in the middle of this century.
Reading Emerson’s column reminded me of another prophet of doom, aka a frustrated republican. Some decades ago, the author Thomas Kenneally blamed the lack of movement on an Australian republic on an older generation. Musing about the coming death of that generation, who he saw were holding back republicanism, Kenneally’s appeal was to their children who he thought would readily throw off the “colonial shackles,” once their parents were gone.
With still no actual movement for change on the horizon, Emerson realises a “Plan B” will be needed. To see in an Australian republic and deliver the coup de grâce to our constitutional monarchy and national day, immigration, he argues, will be that weapon.
Quoting from the most recent Intergenerational Report, Emerson writes:
‘It’s not that the citizens who oppose change to any of these absurdities will have changed their minds by 2050, it’s that there won’t be many of them around.
…net overseas migration is projected to contribute a whopping 75 per cent of Australia’s population growth in 40 years’ time.
The two biggest source countries for immigrants nowadays? China and India. And the fastest growing countries of birth between the 2016 and 2021 census periods were India, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam and China. Not many monarchists there.‘
To assert that our Constitution and national day will not last, because we will not last, shows how unconvincing is the republican case for change.
Moreover, the lack of grace to his fellow Australians and exultant wish to replace our people – our families, friends and neighbours and those who have fought for this nation, who have protected its people from natural disasters and from wars and conflicts- to bring in a republic, is distasteful.
Distasteful as well and also presumptuous, is to assert that new immigrants, wherever they may come from, will not share a regard for our institutional arrangements, traditions and culture. What Craig Emerson forgets is that some of the most ardent supporters of this nation and our way of life are its most recent arrivals who see a just people and place of opportunity and safety. But like all collectivists, Emerson does not accept that everyone is an individual and differences of opinion can and do exist.
On one thing Emerson is right: death (like taxes) is certain. But he should know that nothing else in life is inevitable. I can think of many things that were claimed about the future, until they were not. And what about Global Warming in all this? Are we not all due to expire well before mid century, thereby making a future republic academic?!
Left out of Emerson’s presumptions about what Australia will be like mid century is that medical advancements and better nutrition have greatly increased the span of human years and made old age a much more active and engaging experience. Maybe our immortality will be just around the corner, to the chagrin of every republican who, with Craig Emerson, desires to be rid of us all and the old Australia!
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