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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2025
George Williams poses a very topical question: is a republican tradition for Australia either possible or desirable? Simply by recognising republicanism as a tradition deeply rooted in the history of Western political thought, Williams helps to take us beyond the current officially sponsored nativist campaign to rid us of our “foreign” Queen. Republicanism is a complex phenomenon that first became manifest in the world of classical antiquity. The strength of Williams's article lies in the impulse to break free from the banal parochialism of the republic promoted by the Australian Republican Movement and a compliant media eager to service the perceived legitimation needs of the national government.
In the American constitutional tradition Williams finds a rich store of ideas about the role of an active citizenry in the creation and preservation of a free republican society. The idea of the republic in America did not begin or end with the removal of a “foreign” monarch. Republicanism inspired the transformation of American society after the overthrow of the British monarchy.
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51 (1992) 177 CLR 106.
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54 Ibid at 151-152.
55 Andrew Fraser, “False Hopes: Implied Rights and Popular Sovereignty in the Australian Constitution” (1994) 16 Sydney L Rev 213; cf George Williams, “Engineers is Dead, Long Live the Engineers!” (1995) 17 Sydney L Rev 62.
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