Editorial
Ambition is dead, long live the king

Six years ago, while he was still opposition leader, Anthony Albanese addressed the Australian Republic Movement at a dinner in the King’s Hall of Old Parliament House. You can find the speech tucked away on his website, in the same way you can read Prince Andrew’s emails.

“If you’d asked me a couple of weeks ago what I planned to say to the Australian Republican Movement tonight, I would have had a couple of ideas. Modest ideas but, I like to think, hopeful ones,” Albanese told the crowd.

“Then the Prince Andrew interview happened. Everything changed at that moment. So here’s my revised speech: Congratulations everyone, we’ll become a republic next year. You can all just put your feet up now – you’ve all earned it.”

The dinner was organised to mark the 20 years that had passed since the failed republic referendum. It was an event for “a renewed and unified movement of Australian republicans … re-committing to advancing these important and overdue reforms”.

Albanese said the room was crackling with energy. He said a republic was “likely, as long as it’s fought for”. He said he had “hope we will get there on the republic, and that eventually, our head of state will be one of our own”.

Today, Albanese is prime minister and a republic is off the table. Prince Andrew has been exposed for lying sweatlessly in the interview to which Albanese referred. More lurid details have emerged of his sex offending and his links to Jeffrey Epstein. A once-loved monarch has been replaced by her frankfurt-fingered son who refuses to condemn his brother’s paedophilia. King Charles III wants to focus on duty and service, without considering the word’s other meanings. He visited the Vatican, as if associating with the Catholic Church would change the subject.

As Albanese once said, this should be the republic’s moment. With him as leader, it is not. The assistant minister responsible has been quietly relieved of his duties. Proper democratic representation has been put into a bottom drawer. Ambition is dead.

When Queen Elizabeth II died, Albanese bristled at the suggestion Australia should be free of the monarchy. He entered a period of observance unmatched in the Commonwealth. “I’m not quite sure,” he said, “why I’m being asked about it.”

Last month, Albanese travelled to meet with Charles at Balmoral Castle. He did not raise the issue of a republic. He said only that he respects institutions and that the royal family is deserving of a great deal of respect. He was plain that there would not be a constitutional change while he led the country. “I think I’ve made it clear that I wanted to hold one referendum while I was prime minister and we did that … we did that.”

With each passing month, Albanese shrinks into his leadership. The meek ambitions of his first term look now fearless by comparison with his second. A few weeks from the anniversary of the Dismissal, from that most appalling intervention into this country’s politics, secretly aided by the current king, he is unable even to talk about an Australian head of state.

At that republic dinner in 2019 Albanese remembered the old bumper sticker, the one that read “A resident for president.” There is a note at the top of the speech, all in capitals: Check against delivery. The irony is almost too much to bear.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 25, 2025 as "Ambition is dead, long live the king".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

Send this article to a friend for free.