Anthony Albanese came away from his visit to the King’s Scottish pile at Balmoral conceding he would become the fifth successive republican Labor prime minister who has failed to advance the republican cause. This did not appear to outwardly trouble him.
Anthony Albanese shares a joke with King Charles at Parliament House last October. Credit: Getty Images
Maybe this one-time tribune of the Labor left was seduced by the magic of the monarchy. Or simply cowed by its sheer magnitude, given how it sits at the pinnacle of global celebrity culture. Maybe in King Charles he eyes a left-wing kindred spirit, who, probably like him, would prefer to speak more passionately on progressive issues but opts instead for self-censorship so as not to scare the horses. The joke in royal circles is that King Charles is more radical even than George Monbiot, one of The Guardian’s more leftist columnists. Almost certainly, the King of Australia is more radical than the prime minister of Australia on issues such as global warming.
Rather than mimicking Menzies-style deference, Albanese’s shelving of republicanism stems primarily from an understandable aversion to referenda. Losing the Voice referendum marked the low point of his tenure, and one from which he did not fully recover until election day in 2025. In an interview with David Speers on ABC’s Insiders, he announced the country would not be asked another referendum question for the duration of his prime ministership. “I think I’ve made it clear that I wanted to hold one referendum while I was prime minister, and we did that,” he said. Then he twice reaffirmed the phrase “we did that”, to shut down further discussion.
In America, the US Senate has long been the graveyard of much-needed reform – a body which up until the mid-1960s killed off civil rights bills aimed at ending Jim Crow segregation and which this century has blocked stricter gun controls. In Australia, referenda have become the burial ground for reformers’ dreams: the Voice in 2023, a republic in 1999, and a commonsense change urged upon voters by Bob Hawke in 1988 lengthening parliamentary terms to four years rather than three, which would have made politics less of a permanent campaign.
Of the 45 nationwide referenda, only eight have been carried. No prime minister – even one with a whopping parliamentary majority – wants to suffer back-to-back defeats. So “we did that” has become his fatalistic mantra.
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This is the same prime minister, of course, who has championed “progressive patriotism” as a counterpoint to nationalistic populism. It provided the overarching theme of his speech in June to the National Press Club in which he sought to vest his election victory with larger meaning. In his speech last month to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, he spoke again of “embracing patriotism as a truly progressive cause.”
That’s become a common refrain on the centre-left as it confronts an insurgent far and hard right. Keir Starmer, facing a threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, has called for “patriotic renewal”. During his own Labour Party conference speech, he urged compatriots to wave their flags with pride. Beforehand, his audience had been handed national ensigns to create a sea of flags, much like the Last Night of the Proms.
Britain would suffer a nervous breakdown without its monarchy. Jeremy Corbyn is the only Labour leader to have been openly republican, making him unelectable. In the Australian context, however, “progressive patriotism” is intellectually incoherent without republicanism. Albanese’s abandonment of republicanism feels more like regressive patriotism. Or maybe we should call it “pusillanimous progressive patriotism.”
