Constitutional preamble

Preamble for All of Us

Our Constitution says it all for all of us: it documents the limits of legislation within which our parliaments enact laws; it influences bureaucratic implementation of laws and caters for the provision of justice on issues arising from compliance with laws. Thus, and despite hugely differing capabilities and variously motivated aspirations in our lives of capriciously random opportunities, we still expect to be regarded as equal before the law.

So when politicians speculate about privileging a group of Australians above the rest of us, even to the extent of setting aside a specific number of seats in federal parliament for them, it is understandable that people take umbrage and object: any referendum proposal which attempts to entrench in our Constitution the claims of some Australians as being innately superior, or inherently more entitled, will almost certainly be rejected by a majority of Australian voters in a majority of Australian states.

This is not to say that sections of the Constitution which could disadvantage Aborigines (and others) should not be changed; they probably should. I’m thinking of Section 25 (which allows disqualification from voting by persons of any race) and Section 51, subsection xxvi (which allows parliament to make special laws deemed necessary for people of any race); there may well be other sections that demand attention.

The technicalities of wording such changes must, necessarily, be left to lawyers: that’s their province. The preamble, however, has a different purpose: it serves to say who we are, why we expect to feel free, what government can do to maintain that freedom and how the nation’s affairs might ideally be arranged. This inspirational and aspirational description of the role of the Constitution in our daily lives should, ideally, be written by a national poet: and that’s my province.

Whilst my draft preamble, below, does not purport to be poetry, it is written with a poet’s feel for the rhythms and nuances of Australian English. Five of the six lines begin with verb forms that encompass everything I’ve described above in an easy-to-read and inclusive format that says what every Australian would want to read, hope to hear, or expect to feel from the introduction to this otherwise boring, but fundamentally important constitutional document that defines Australia for Australians. I have also quite deliberately left out any reference to the god or gods, saints, prophets and other revered figures in the variety of religions practised by Australians in public and private worship. Indeed, as Section 116 prohibits the Commonwealth from making laws establishing any religion, imposing religious tests or observance, or interfering with the free exercise of any religion, it would seem both inconsistent and pointless to include in the preamble an invocation to a specific deity to look with favour upon the operation of the Constitution itself.

The wording of this preamble also allows for the substitution of the word Republic forCommonwealth, should the nation, by referendum, eventually require it.

Note, also, the reference to the Dreamtime with a capital “D”: this neatly genuflects to prior Aboriginal occupation of Australia without privileging them or any other group of Australians over anyone else. On the question of definition, an Australian in this reading is anyone born in, or made welcome to, Australia. There are other, more playful definitions: asked, on occasion, what I thought constituted an Australian, my answer, initially facetious, but these days less so, is always the same: “An Australian is anyone with a line of mine in memory.” Well, I am a national poet!

An earlier version of this preamble was first published in my book Occasions for Words(Wakefield Press, 2006). Now, however, I’m ceding copyright in this preamble to the Commonwealth of Australia if (after publication in Quadrant) the preamble is needed, to be adopted or adapted, in whole or in part, in any new preamble to our Constitution—I don’t mind being one of Shelley’s “unacknowledged legislators of the world”. The version given below contains 145 words in a title and one sentence.

Preamble to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia

RECOGNISING the humanity of peoples who have lived here from the Dreamtime and of peoples who, wherever born and whenever made welcome, have settled in Australia;

KNOWING that we belong to or are descendants of such peoples;

CONVINCED that political, religious and commercial freedoms will maximise the potential and nourish the achievements of all Australians, and

PRIZING the sciences which develop such achievements, the built environments which exhibit them, the natural environments which locate them and the arts which celebrate them,

THEREFORE and AS SOVEREIGN AUSTRALIANS we

ADOPT THIS CONSTITUTION of the COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA for democratically elected representatives to enact laws to protect our freedoms, applaud our efforts and reward our enterprise, whether of individuals acting alone or communities acting together, and which we hope our descendants will value, preserve and look to for inspiration.

Timoshenko Aslanides is a full-time, professional (and national) poet. His fourteenth book of poetry, Letterature: Verse Letters from Australian Women, was published by Hybrid Publishers in June 2014.