Friday 27 August 2010

Australian of Year Patrick McGorry calls for a republic

Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry has criticised Australians for failing to seriously address the issue of a republic.
He likened the country to a 27-year-old who just won't leave home -- "a Gen Y nation".
Delivering the annual National Republican Lecture in Canberra last night, Professor McGorry said Australia needed to "emerge from its prolonged adolescence" and become a republic sooner rather than later.
Professor McGorry, who was chosen as Australian of the Year for his 25 years of service to youth mental health, said he saw parallels between his work with young people and Australia's path to full nationhood.
"Australia's adolescence has lasted more than 100 years since Federation," he said.
On the election campaign trail in north Queensland last week, Julia Gillard said she wanted Australia to become a republic when the Queen, now 84, no longer reigned, and said she planned to lead a national debate on the form the republic should take if she were re-elected prime minister.
"I would think the appropriate time for this nation to move to being a republic is when we see the monarch change," Ms Gillard said.
Asked yesterday if she would consider a referendum on a republic before the Queen died if there were a big enough public push for change, Ms Gillard responded that the issue was "not a priority".
"The Prime Minister supports a republic for Australia but it is not a priority at this time," Ms Gillard's spokesman said.
Tony Abbott, who was at the centre of the pro-monarchist cause in the 1999 referendum that rejected the notion of change, said last week he was certain Australia would never abandon the monarchy in his lifetime.
His spokeswoman said yesterday: "I've got nothing to add to his answer of last week."
But other prominent Australians, including Wayne Goss, Greg Barns and Mungo MacCallum, expressed their strong support for Professor McGorry's Republican appeal.
"While we have come far, we need to finish the journey by showing the world -- and, more importantly, ourselves -- that we proudly and independently stand on our own two feet," former Queensland premier Wayne Goss said.
But David Flint, national convener of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, said comparing Australia to an adolescent was "curious".
"We are one of the world's oldest and stable democracies, we have a Constitution which has been successful," Professor Flint said yesterday.
"Nations aren't individuals on a psychologist's couch . . . nations exist on sound institutions, and it would be foolish to change those institutions purely on the basis of a flippant psychologist's analogy."
Lanai Vasek @'The Australian'

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