From a political perspective, the great success of the monarchists in the republic referendum of the nineties was transforming the issue into one of giving the “politicians” a good kicking. Canny campaigning, but it was made possible by the lousy arguments put forward by some of the more, um, globalist voices in the republican movement. To take one example, Dick Woolcott, who seemed to think his difficulty in explaining the role of the GG, Queen, and PM in the events of 1975 to Suharto was somehow a convincing argument in support of a republic1. Yes, Australia’s constitutional eccentricities may cause occasional embarrassment to Australian professional diplomats, and the odd bit of perplexity and/or mirth in foreign capitals, but as an argument for supporting a republic it rightly went down like a lead balloon.
The recently-retired (in the footballer sense) Maxine McKew makes a case for a larger, denser Sydney in a speech reprinted in the SMH today. While cased in some unobjectionable sentiments, its core centers on two debatable propositions: the “relevance” of cities is measured, in large part, in their global recognition and influence, and that such “relevance” is primarily related to a city’s population.
McKew draws comparison between the emerging mega-cities of Asia with the stably-populated cities of Europe:
Cities that lose heart, are timid, or feel unwelcoming, are places that will gradually lose relevance. And in that context, I’m worried about Sydney. It is still brash but it certainly is not bold.
This when a new urban age has been proclaimed and when more than half the world’s population live in cities. Foreign Policy magazine makes the point that in the 21st century, cities, rather than states, are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. Alongside the global giants of London, New York and Hong Kong, is an emerging new category of mega city – city-states along the Persian Gulf and the super-populous cities of Mumbai or Shanghai. By 2025 China is expected to have 15 super cities with an average population of 25 million, where Europe will have none.
Talk of mega cities is the sort of thing that drives Dick Smith to produce Hobbesian-style nightmares that are aired on your ABC. He is part of the ”shrink Australia” crowd. We can, if we choose, sit at about 22 million, and say to the rest of Asia, ”sorry, we’re full.” And when they stop laughing in Shanghai and Manila and Jakarta, we’ll start to slip into irrelevance, just like Europe.
So, let us discuss the “irrelevance” of Europe. To whom is Europe going to become an “irrelevance”? Certainly not its citizens. So what about them? Are the citizens of Europe going to be impoverished? No. Is their enviable lifestyle (by world standards) going away? No. Their health care systems suddenly evaporate? No. What about their industries? No.
If by relevance, one means the ability of Europe’s political elites to bully the rest of the world, sure, that’s gone. But so what? Given the continued decline in military spending in Europe and the lack of interest of the European populace in assisting in American wars of choice, I think it’s an arguable hypothesis that most Europeans don’t give a toss about their wider “relevance” or otherwise.
Now, I’m sure that if you’re on a politician on a winter break study tour, a smaller Australia will undoubtedly get even shorter shrift in Beijing than it presently does.
But as an argument for a larger Sydney (and by extension Australia), this latter-day version of Manifest Destiny is about as convincing as Dick’s Suharto anecdote and deserves about the same level of respect.
1. Of course, the difficulty of explaining it does say something about the absurdity of our current constitutional arrangements. But whether our constitutional arrangements are difficult for professional diplomats to explain to impatient foreign leaders is the height of irrelevance, if Australians are genuinely happy with them.