One of Australia’s former prime ministers, Paul Keating, has speculated that King Charles could renounce the UK monarch’s claim on Australia because the royal family hoped that Australia would become a republic after the referendum in 1999.
The former Labor leader says he discussed his ambition for Australia to become a republic with Queen Elizabeth during a private exchange at Balmoral in 1993. He says he told the Queen he would “not involve her family” in his campaigning for an Australian head of state.
“I think the royal family would have been so glad for the referendum to have passed, to be honest,” Keating told Prof James Curran, a University of Sydney historian, during an online event on Wednesday evening.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if King Charles the Third, the king of Australia, doesn’t volunteer … to renounce his claim on Australia.
“Look at the French. The French had a revolution for their republic. The Americans had a revolution for their republic. We couldn’t even pinch ours off Queen Elizabeth the Second – who didn’t want it. We couldn’t take the title, even if the monarch was happy to give it.”
Keating, Australia’s prime minister from 1991 to 1996, said the Australian Republican Movement wanted him to re-enter the fray after the death of Queen Elizabeth in early September but he wasn’t motivated to resume his public advocacy.
“Why would you? We fluffed it,” Keating said on Wednesday. “If Australians have so little pride in themselves, so little pride that they are happy to be represented by the monarch of Great Britain, why would somebody like me want to shift their miserable view of themselves?”
Keating said the case for Australia to become a republic was so obvious it made itself.
“Who in their right mind could believe that the monarch of Great Britain could represent our aspirations here?”
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“We occupy one of the oldest land masses, the oldest continents on Earth, perhaps the oldest societies on Earth – it’s so pathetic. [Becoming a republic] barely [needs] an argument … and there was [Scott] Morrison running off to Cornwall with that other fruitcake, what’s his name … Boris Johnson.”
Keating concluded his observations by stating: “Charles the Third, king of Australia, is a constitutional aberration. That’s what it is.”
Wednesday night’s conversation between the historian and the former Australian prime minister was hosted by La Trobe University. The dialogue was wide-ranging, covering Australia’s relationships with the US and China, the Aukus submarine deal, Australia’s contemporary sense of identity, and what actions Australia should contemplate in the event of military confrontation over Taiwan.
Keating doubled down on his previous strident criticism of Australia’s decision to enter the Aukus partnership with the US and the UK, and he said it was not too late for the Albanese government to back out of the agreement to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
Curran asked Keating whether Labor withdrawing from Aukus would hand the Coalition a potent national security wedge. Keating countered: “Governments in office should make their own stories.”
Keating contended it was against Australia’s national interest to tie itself to the US in Asia when the US had “no idea what to do with itself in Asia”.
“Australia has a very poor idea of itself now,” Keating said. “Its head of state is the monarch of another country, its strategic sovereignty is being outsourced to another state, a North Atlantic state, the United States. It doesn’t know what it is or what it should be.”
Keating said the US was “not interested in thinking allies”, they wanted “dummies as allies”. He characterised the Quad – a security partnership between the US, Japan, India and Australia to counter China’s rising aggression in the region – as “a piece of strategic nonsense”.
He said if persistent tensions over Taiwan escalated to a full military confrontation, Australia should stay out of it. “Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest,” Keating said. “We should be no more interested in the political system of Taiwan that the political system of Vietnam, or Kazakhstan.”
Keating suggested the US would lose if it chose to defend Taiwan militarily against a forced reunification by China. “The chances of the Americans having a victory over Taiwan are nil in my opinion, and why would we want to be part of that defeat?”
“If, finally, the Americans walk away from east Asia, we are left behind … we can’t put an outboard motor on Australia at Broome, start the motor and move the continent off to San Diego, we are stuck here as the Americans take off back to the continent across the other side of the Pacific. We live in a Chinese world. That’s the truth of it.”
• This article was amended on 13 October 2022. An earlier reference to the possibility of King Charles renouncing “the UK’s claim” on Australia has been changed to “the UK monarch’s claim”.
