A Newspoll conducted for The Australian last month suggested that the Royal wedding had turned people off the idea of an Australian republic, with only 41 percent in favor, the lowest level of support since 1994.
But Professor Ryan believes the Republican movement can learn valuable lessons from the wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton in London last weekend.
“It was an event that every viewer felt part of. It was about pageantry and it was a public event, and I think it was an event that everyone felt some connection with,” she said.
“While I am a Republican myself, one of the key aspects missing from the Republican movement in Australia is the understanding of ritual and [the] ceremonial.”
Professor Ryan is a specialist in the social and cultural aspects of the republic debate, and is based at Newcastle University. She said it is often stated that Australians don’t like ceremony and official occasions, but the wedding had proved them wrong.
According to OzTAM, 5.7 million Australians tuned in last weekend to watch the Royal wedding, with many holding parties across the country. Some even flew to the U.K. specifically to bear witness to the event.
Professor Ryan said: “Australians want to feel part of something,” but the Republican movement had not been able to capture the public’s imagination in that way.
There is “a vacuum between what the Queen represents to us and what this future republic might represent,” she said.
Professor Ryan said the mystique of ceremonial roles had made an impression on her after spending time with South Australia’s Dame Roma Mitchell who, as Governor of South Australia from 1991–1996, was always “impeccably dressed” and exhibited an “incredibly warm manner.”
“She encouraged us to aspire to be better people than we really are and I was very taken by that,” she said.
The role of Queen Elizabeth II had a similar effect. “People want to be on their best behavior in front of a queen, they want to be good in front of a queen,” she said.
Having a monarchy is not the only way to achieve these roles, as republics can also incorporate rituals and role models into their cultures. “Like France, for example; in France, the republic requires us to have virtue, to be people who are better than we really are,” she said.
Governor General
While many in the Republican movement are anti-monarchist, Australia’s own popular governor general, Quentin Bryce, is a declared Republican. The GG is the Queen’s official representative in Australia.
Professor Ryan believes Bryce has “a very keen understanding” of what the Australian people might expect in a head of state, not only to be there in times of trouble, but also “to make them aspire to be better than they really are.”
And certainly Bryce has been refining the governor general’s role into a more Australian creation.
Writing in Fairfax Media, correspondent Peter Hartcher noted that Bryce has been making subtle changes to the role, no longer sending semi-annual updates to Buckingham Palace as protocol required and replacing “Your most humble and obedient servant” with “yours sincerely” in her correspondence to the Queen.
She will also break protocol by attending a government function for the Queen and possibly hosting an official function on Her Majesty’s visit to Perth in October for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Hartcher reported.
The governor general’s role is traditionally “extinguished” when the Queen visits, the role as her representative, at that point, not required.
Professor Ryan believes these steps are important, but the process of defining the role of a head of state will take time.
“While Quentin is trying to do that, it is not really acknowledged by Government that that is what she should be, so we have a few more steps along the process to go yet,” she said.
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