Republic

The Great Constitutional Swindle

In an upcoming book, Peter Botsman argues the blanding out of Australian consitutional history is one of the big barriers to the Republican cause.

Its hard for Australians to get excited about constitutional change and the November referendum.

Why? The answer is that we have been gypped and swindled out of our heritage. It is not just that Australian history has emerged only since the 1960s. Not only that we have no civics lessons in our classrooms. No, the real reason for our apathy is that the most interesting figures, controversies and shortcomings of Australian Federation have been edited out. As a result, we have a story of the birth of the Australian nation that rightly bores most Australians to tears and is dominated by a small number of victors: Henry Parkes, Alfred Deakin, Edmund Barton and Sam Griffith. It is a story of great, bearded white men.

But there is another story which remains to be told. When Andrew Inglis Clark first ran for the Tasmanian parliament, the Launceston Examiner called him "the stranger from Hobart", and he has remained a stranger to us for most of this century.

Clark came to understand the principles of federalism from the captains of the Boston whaling fleet which fished the great southern oceans and regularly came to port at his home town, Hobart.

It was this man who was most responsible for "the idea of the Australian nation". Of the 126 sections of our current Constitution, Clark is directly responsible for 88. Yet there is no suburb named Clark next to the suburbs of Parkes, Deakin, Griffith, Forrest, Kingston and Barton that circle Parliament House in Canberra. But if we had a Thomas Jefferson, it was Clark.

He was a passionate republican, an engineer, founder of the University of Tasmania, designer of Tasmania's Hare-Clark voting system, editor of small, vibrant literary magazines and, above all, a believer in inalienable human rights.

Incredibly, Clark purposefully abstained from voting in the 1989 referendum to enshrine the Constitution that he had worked so hard on. He believed there was still more work to be done.

Perhaps his initial fall from grace came because it was embarrassing to our official historians that a man so central to our Constitution could admit that it was far from perfect.

Clark learned the finer points of federalism from US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

What does it say about the official history of Australia, that until recently we have known little about this seminal founding father? How was Andrew Inglis Clark swindled out of his rightful place in history?

The first reason was Alfred Deakin's myth of the Lucinda.

At the 1891 Constitutional Convention Deakin praised Sam Griffith who, with Charley Kingston, Edmund Barton and others, disappeared up the Hawkesbury on the Queensland government steamer the Lucinda and returned after just a few days with a comprehensive draft constitution that was to become the constitution we know today.

To Deakin and everyone else it appeared that Sam Griffith had performed a miracle - not only was Premier Griffith writing the Constitution over this Easter period, he was cabling instructions up to Brisbane to arrest strike leaders George Taylor and Julian Stuart during the Queensland shearers strike.

The untold story was that over the entire year of 1890, Andrew Inglis Clark had researched an Australian federal constitution, travelling to America, consulting constitutional experts, studying the Canadian and colonial constitutions and working up the comprehensive draft which was given to both Sam Griffith and Charley Kingston in January 1891. It was this document that became the backbone of the Australian Constitution. We know that Griffith made many structural improvements to Clark's Constitution but he actually made some fundamental errors that had to be corrected by Clark at later conventions.

The second reason we don't know about Clark is that the workings of the 1891 convention with its committee-style deliberations, were veiled in secrecy, and added to this, Clark himself had a propensity to stay out of the limelight. It was not until July 1958 that John Reynolds, Barton's biographer, published the original Clark draft constitution. It was only then that we could see how much of Clark's 1890 draft was reflected in the current Constitution.

Clark viewed the heart of the Constitution as a "living forum open to each coming generation to re-interpret." The significance of Clark for us 100 years later is that once we grasp his idea of the Constitution as a living force Australians will become more interested in changing, adapting and debating a moribund, horse-and buggy Constitution.

Professor Peter Botsman is executive director of the Brisbane Institute. His book "The Great Constitutional Swindle" will be published by Pluto Press in November. Peter will discuss his book at Glebe books this Wednesday October 27 at 6pm.

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  Issue 36 contents

»	Timorese Appeal to Democrats to Dump Reith�s Wave
»	Opera House Keeps New Years in the Family
»	Stressed Out: The Incredibly Shrinking Lunch Break
»	Kennett Fall a Warning to Carr
»	Combet Steps Up To The Plate
»	Thirty Hours at the Wheel - Then Sacked for Complaining
»	Reith�s Plan for Universities Exposed
»	Hockey Sticks With the Banks
»	Push to Downgrade Industrial Tribunals
»	Peace Stalks the Gong as Matters Bows Out
»	Rock the Republic - It�s Time

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Vizard Critics Peddling Lies
»	Republic Soapbox
»	Barbies and Kens Eye High Office
»	Guilty! I Agree with Howard
»	Egan Speaks - Des Moore's No Friend of Mine!

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