Why the scandal of the royal formerly known as Prince won’t remove Australia’s King

Can you hear that sound? That incessant rumbling of republican agitation? The growing protest that Australia remains formally under the reign of the British monarchy, even as a truly dark scandal surrounds it? This disquiet over the fact that the Andrew formerly known as Prince, recently arrested, could theoretically become our head of state?

No, me neither. The odd shout, yes, but nothing to dissuade Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from so confidently reiterating this week that even Andrew’s “extraordinary fall from grace” doesn’t revive his interest in pursuing a republic. His government, he explained, had already held one referendum, soundly beaten. About nine months after that, in his first cabinet reshuffle, he abolished the portfolio he’d earlier established of the assistant minister for the republic. That portfolio was unprecedented – a signal of intent. Its abolition signalled an emphatic return to precedent.

By that stage, Andrew had faced allegations of having had sex with minors as part of Jeffrey Epstein’s circle. He denied these, and settled a civil case with his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, out of court. But since, the Epstein-Mountbatten-Windsor scandal has only deepened. British newspapers reported then-prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein had exchanged emails about a year after Andrew had said he’d cut off contact. By the end of the month, King Charles stripped him of his royal titles, including prince. In January this year, when the US government released a tranche of Epstein files, they included a photo of Andrew kneeling over an unidentified young woman. They also included emails suggesting he had shared confidential British trade documents with Epstein. That last accusation – rather than anything sexual – is the reason he was just arrested.

All this leads the prime minister to declare Andrew a “grub”. Accordingly, he’s told the British government he would support formally removing him from the line of succession to the throne. There’s also the whiff of suspicion over the royal family’s handling of all this, including the support the late Queen continued to give her favourite son financially as the scandal unfolded, and over exactly who paid for Andrew’s out-of-court settlement. King Charles has notably distanced himself from Andrew since ascending the throne, culminating in his insistence that “the law must take its course”.

You might then, if you’re an Australian republican, see this as a pivotal moment. That with the royal family’s reputation in some disrepair, and with the nature of this scandal being especially sordid, the republican argument has a new urgency. That this turns a symbolic argument about having an Australian head of state into a moral one about the institution that embodies us. It’s therefore unsurprising to see republican voices make these kinds of arguments this week. And in the interests of placing cards on tables, I hope one day they succeed.

But this is not such a moment. Certainly, there’s the fatigue the Voice referendum left behind in the electorate, and political capital it drained from the Albanese government. But notice what Albanese said next: “We’re concentrating on cost of living and on making a real, practical difference to people’s lives.”

Here, he seems to have internalised precisely the criticism Peter Dutton made during campaigning on the Voice: that such excursions are a distraction, of interest only to elites out of touch with the daily lives of struggling voters. Dutton won that argument, and won the battle. Of course, he categorically lost the war, but it’s worth remembering the gap opened late, especially after US President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” regime of tariffs. Suddenly, the Coalition, which had been aping Trumpian ideas, became associated with economic chaos. By that point, the Voice referendum felt long in the past, and polls suddenly had the Coalition less trusted on the economy than Labor: a highly unusual result.

Since then, Labor has lost the trust of some voters on its ability to handle the cost-of-living crisis. We’ve seen an interest rate rise, and this week saw yet another troubling inflation figure that raises the spectre of more rises to come. Protest politics is surging, massively to the Coalition’s detriment, but also with serious warnings for Labor. Correspondingly, Albanese is conspicuously toughening his rhetoric on issues such as the so-called “ISIS brides”.

Put simply, this is not a time for campaigning on abstract ideas with little practical relevance. It’s not a time to dream. It’s a time for sounding strong and practical at every opportunity, whether you’re being cogent or not. There is no doubt something to lament in this, but a prime minister probably doesn’t have the luxury of defying it. Whatever strength Dutton’s argument had in 2023, it would be withering now.

To draw a line from the former prince’s arrest to an Australian republic therefore requires a more reflective political moment, less dominated by frustration and angst. But it also needs Australians to draw a solid connection between Andrew’s alleged misdeeds and the royal family itself. At this point, that connection exists largely at the level of questions to be asked rather than facts to be declared. Perhaps paradoxically, that is likely to be more damaging in Britain than it is here, precisely because the royals are much more central to British public life than our own. As it stands, the Australians most avid to draw the connection to the royal family will probably be those already sceptical of the royals as an institution. Alas, those people are not going to swing a referendum, even if there was any appetite to hold one.

That’s probably why, four years ago, even as the then prince was becoming engulfed in scandal, and Harry and Megan were absconding and hurling all manner of accusations at the family, this never led to huge Australian anti-royal sentiment: support for a monarchy hovered in the 40s. Late last year, after Andrew lost his titles, support for a republic reached 43 per cent. Such numbers seem to bounce modestly around a mean in response to events, rather than surge in a direction. The same isn’t true of politics, where surges arise and events really do shove prime ministers around. Occasionally, both combine. You can tell that’s happening when what was once a calling ends up becoming a liability.

Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, author and academic.

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