‘The key thing I wish to say today, is we are putting the band back together.’ Thus spoke Peter FitzSimons, as he and his old pal Joe Hockey announced their renewed push for an Australian republic. Which is very probably the best possible thing that’s ever happened to Australia: our two most beloved public figures forming a coalition for ‘an independent sovereign nation’—to wrest us at last from the tyrannical rule of Queen Elizabeth II. Fitzy’s already written the chorus for the movement’s official song (to be adopted, perhaps, as the new republic’s national anthem?): ‘Beneath the Southern Cross we stand/ A sprig of wattle in our hand.’

This couldn’t come at a better time. The economic crisis has been sorted out, so Joe doesn’t really have anything better to do. After proving himself as Treasurer and earning the love and respect of the Australian people, he’s uniquely positioned to lend moral authority to this long-overdue push to dump the crown. All the better that he’s teaming up with Fitzy, who many of you will know as Bob Katter’s only rival for the title of Australia’s greatest living historian. With Joe Hockey’s impeccable statesmanship and Peter FitzSimon’s sterling credentials as a public intellectual, Australia’s sure to claim its place as a bold, modern paradise. At last, her fashionable leftists won’t flee in droves to the UK! At last, she’ll amount to something in Americans’ eyes besides Hugh Jackman and the Bloomin’ Onion!

Oh, sure, the cynics will ask, ‘How dare FitzHockey imply that Australia isn’t already a proud, independent country, forging its own destiny, well-loved and respected in the eyes of the world in her own right?’ All willful ignorance on the part of the cynics. Australia’s great. They love Australia. They love its, ah, rugby. And some other things. They’re just not keen on its national heritage or its Constitutional democracy—both trifles, really, when you think about it. They wouldn’t change very much—just the bits that make it the embarrassing vestige of a ruined empire. Which, if we’re being honest, is how we all see Australia, isn’t it?

The FitzSimons Experience ft. Havana Joe doesn’t go on tour for another five years or so, which means they’re going to wait until the Queen dies. Good form: they can devote that time to writing nasty jokes about Prince Charles, keep them in a manila folder, and break them out at his mum’s funeral. Hopefully by then Prince George will have started to go bald, so the Australian people won’t feel too badly about putting him out of a job before he turns eight.

Besides, if Pete ‘n Joe have their way, George could just move to Australia. There are heaps of jobs—jobs everywhere—high-wage, white-collar jobs dropping out of the sky like glue-huffing ibises. It’s been the cornerstone of Hockey’s ingenious economic recovery. With any luck, The Hock will be President of Australia by the time His Hitherto Royal Highness comes of age. George can get a degree from the University of Sydney’s Ernesto Guevara Center for Liberation Studies, land a job in IT or something, and buy a $6 million cardboard box in Point Piper. (The view of the Chinese Premier’s beach house is just stunning.)

Hopefully the new republic will follow closely on the heels of a successful referendum to recognise aboriginals in the Constitution and new federal laws instituting gay marriage. It’ll be like, fifty thousand years of aboriginal settlement, then a big gap, and then, BAM! a progressive utopia.

It will also give the government new license to revoke citizenship from Australians who travel overseas to fight for Isis. With citizenship being granted then at the state’s pleasure rather than Her Majesty’s, we can put this due process nonsense in the dustbin of history where it belongs, along with Australia Day (which will then officially be known as ‘Burn An Australian Flag Or Else You Think It Was Great To Oppress Indigenous People You Absolute Bastard Day’). Hell, why stop at Isis supporters? Say Pop finally scrapes the money together to visit the Vatican, and—what’s that? He gave money to the National Civic Council? Those religious extremists give real Catholics like Bill Shorten a lousy name. Un-bloody-Australian. Citizenship: revoked. He’s the Pope’s problem now.

All a bit far-fetched? Maybe. But once you start tampering with the most unobtrusive, strictly functional clauses of the Constitution—once you swap pragmatic, democratic principles for highfalutin ideology—anything’s possible. Liberal democracy is, happily, a fragile thing. If you get everyone comfortable with the idea of throwing a bit of fashionable gobbledygook into their country’s core institutions, they’re apt to get a taste for it, and before you can say ‘Obergefell’ (go ahead, sound it out), it’s business as usual.

Of course, this is all for naught if Hockey can’t persuade his Liberal Party colleagues to join him in taking a holiday from their ordinary duties to join the crusade for a New Australia. He’ll probably be able to count on the support of Christopher Pyne, another long-time republican, best known for having fixed Australia’s university fees debacle. He’s basically got nothing to do either. He’s cleared the way for an American-style tuition scheme; no doubt he can clear the way for an Americ—sorry, an Australian-style republic, too. Malcolm Turnbull will be a bit more difficult to get on board: sources close to the Minister suggest he intends to take a backseat this time ‘round, with the intent of launching a Napoleonic coup to overthrow the young republic and crown himself Emperor.

So up the republic, I say, and vive l’Empereur! It’s time Australia joined the rest of the world in the 21st century, with the politician heads-of-state it loves so well. Lizzie, Charlie: it’s been a good run, but until great Aussies like Fitz and the Hockster can claim her highest office, who can honestly say, ‘Australia’s a wonderful country, and I love her just the way she is’?