What the Scott??

So, hey guys something pretty epic is going on right now and people, at least from where I am sitting, are losing their minds over it. I’m in England the land of tea and scones, the Queen and a total love fest over a lady called Catherine and her baby George, and for a moment there, the UK look set to say goodbye to Scotland, the land of haggis, all in the name of independence. Now this may not seem like a huge and epic deal to those of us who live ‘down under’, but let me tell you the world almost stood still as the Scotts voted from 8am until 10pm! And in the wee hours of the morning it was declared that the Scottish people wanted to remain and continue to get the perks afforded to them, by Britain.

Now I know you are thinking what does this have to do with me? Why do I care if some country on the other side of the world wants to break away from the Commonwealth? Let me tell you why, because if they did, half our pollies would have come out in favour of Australia becoming a republic and the other half would have been flying to England to show the Queen how much we love her. It would have been splashed all over the news and endlessly debated on a scale of sublime proportions! The republican issue in Australia has been quietly debated for a long while but was most popular during the early 1990’s which forced PM at the time John Howard, much to his disgust to hold a referendum, but is was due to his total devotion to the Queen the voting public decided leaving the queen was WAY too hard and if it ‘aint broke don’t fix it.

The outcome in the end was more like what happened in Australia, when we tried for the same thing in 1999 and failed. The Australian Republican Movement (whose biggest supporter BTW was Malcolm Turnbull, one of Tony Abbotts BFFs) convinced our pollies and the voting public that the issue was important enough that we needed to have a referendum on the subject. This then would determine once and for all, whether or not Australia would become fully grown up and leave the Commonwealth or not. Apparently that was one step to far for us and the security blanket tethering us to the UK was too strong as in the end overwhelmingly the answer was a big fat no.

While obviously Scotland withdrawing from the Commonwealth would have be significantly a bigger deal than Australia leaving, both times the night before, the outcome look pretty set. One reason for this is, because it is inherently harder to cause change solely through referendum alone. In Australia, of the 44 proposed referendums since federation, only 8 have been successful and 3 of which have significantly altered the power breakdown. Through all of the Scotland Decides televised coverage, commentators continually referred to this referendum as ground breaking with no way to judge the outcome, but to an Australian the writing was on the wall. Malcom Turnbull once said that a referendum could only be successful if there was unwavering support behind the cause and in both instances there was a considerable opposition. It is one thing to support the plight for independence but it is another thing entirely to commit and follow it through. The nationalistic view that every country should be their own, and that no matter what a sense of national identity is important is at the core of why countries strive to call themselves independent. One only needs to look at Australia to see that increasingly the Queen and the Royal Family is becoming more and more redundant in the political and social sphere, and while it is lovely to have a visit from a member of the Royal Family at sporadic intervals, it is in no way a necessity. The Australian constitution was even changed to remove being able to appeal to the Privy Council in 1986, forcing Australia to decide in house, its legal affairs.

The situation in Scotland obviously has its differences, one being that it shares a land border with England, but also the financial and monetary ties mean that the separation would be more severe than discontinuing dual citizenship for residents living outside England. The individuals who said that Scotland should become independent ran their campaign on the grounds that the people would be able to support themselves financially if independence became a reality, something the “No” camp strongly detested. Comparing the possibly separation between Scotland and Australia in most respects in untenable on the grounds that land mass proximity to the motherland, but the idea that a country will only be “grown up” when it reaches independence is an ideal that long surpasses 1999. As far back as 1776, the United States declared independence and decided to forge their own way in the world and today remains one of the global superpowers influencing and controlling world affairs.

 

That is not to say that if Australia or Scotland declared and gained independence they would turn into a world superpower, dominating global talks on the international stage, but on a nationalistic level the peoples of that country would be able to aspire to the highest form of government (if however unlikely for most people!). Whether or not independence or republicanism will ever evolve into something other than a figment of a sectors imagination remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain, the more polarised and the more controversial our political representatives get the less likely a successful push for independence will be. While the Queen/Head of State, is having less and less of an influence in Australia, the fact that if something was to happen they would step in, is a comfort to many people and one that cannot be changed in a mere matter of weeks or months.