In Defence of Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy  © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
by Philip Benwell MBE
Never before, since the Federation of the Australian Colonies in 1901, had the Constitution of Australia come under such an intense scrutiny as occurred in the lead up to the Republican Referendum of 1999. Just as there were differences of opinion on what form an Australian republic should take, there were different perceptions on what formed the modern day structures of Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy. In this collection of speeches and articles, Philip Benwell has attempted to explain the various interpretations not just of the Constitution itself but also of ‘The Crown of the United Kingdom’ under which the Australian Federation has been formed. It is the only known work of its kind and is an invaluable contribution to scholarship.
Philip Benwell started his working life as a tea planter and then became involved in trading and later in merchant banking.  He was honoured with the Order of the British Empire (Membership Grade) in 1976.
 
In 1993, with the support of the late Dame Pattie Menzies, he coordinated the activities of the Queen Elizabeth Gate Appeal in Australia raising what is understood to be the largest contribution from any Commonwealth country.
 
He was then asked to take over the leadership of the Australian Monarchist League in Australia and became its first National Chairman and developed the organisation into a   major participant in the debate on Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy.  His involvement in League activities over the past ten years has been on a full time and totally voluntary basis and now leaves no time for business whatsoever resulting in the League becoming the most active organisation promoting the role of the Constitutional Monarchy and in defending The Crown against attack.
 
The successes of the Australian Monarchist League under Benwell's chairmanship are too numerous to mention,  but they include persuading Toyota to drop an advertising campaign and the Commonwealth Bank to re-name a marketing initiative.  The League is also credited with the success of the Queen's Stamps,  the re-printing of The Queen's Five Dollar Note and the distribution of prints of The Queen as well as the—now common—celebrations of The Queen's personal birthday by Loyal and religious organisations.
 
Philip Benwell was accorded the distinct honour of addressing both the Conservative Constitution Committee and the Cross Benches of the House of Lords on the Constitutional Referendum Australia on a visit to Great Britain in 1999.  He is a popular speaker in Australia and internationally and has been a main speaker at several ‘Sovereignty’ rallies at Trafalgar Square in London and has also spoken on many occasions to meetings in the House of Lords.
 
In 2003,  his book, entitled “In Defence of Australia's Constitutional Monarchy”,  was published in the United States of America and has sold well,  particularly in the USA, Canada and the UK as a political science text book for use in Universities and schools.
 
In a message sent to the official Launch of the book in Parliament House, Sydney,  Dr Brendan Nelson MP,  Australian Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training stated:  “I have read with great interest Philip’s book and highly commend it to all. ‘In Defence of Australia's Constitutional Monarchy’ is undoubtedly an invaluable resource to anyone wanting to know more about this important topic and it is a book that should be in every school and higher education facility in Australia.
 
Philip articulately outlines the case for retaining Australia's Constitutional Monarchy and effectively debunks many of the arguments raised by those who would seek to make Australia a republic.  I commend the book to you and congratulate Philip on a work well done.”
 
The following are excerpts from reviews of ‘In Defence of Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy’:
 
 
Leolin Price CBE QC:
 
“Philip Benwell is a courageous and well informed defender of what he,  and those who voted against the changes proposed in the Referendum,  have regarded as changes for the worse.  Formidably armed and educated,  Philip Benwell is a persuasive advocate and provocatively right”.
 
 
Julian Brazier TD MP  (British Shadow Minister)
 
Benwell’s vision is large. He looks a long way back and forwards. He is not afraid to be controversial.  Behind his tightly argued constitutional theorising lies a courageous willingness to speak up for the old-fashioned values. He points out how well the Queen has personally embodied those values while the whole nature of the Australian Crown reinforces them.
 
If his historical vision is rich, Benwell’s warnings on the future are stark. He points out how Britain is losing its sovereignty to the European Union and increasingly the European Convention of Human Rights”.
 
 
Index
 
Meanderings
The Role Of The Monarch In Modern Society.
An Address To The Royal Commonwealth Society
“By Our Union We Are Made Equal To Our Destiny”
“The Monarchist League And Our Role In The Current Debate”
“God Guard Thee”
After Keating – What Now?
Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy -
Its Benefits And Its Relevance For The 21st Century And Beyond
A Sense Of Identity
The Debate On Our Constitutional Future
United We Stand
 After The Convention - What Then?
The Winds Of Change  - Sweeping Away Our Democracies
In Defense Of The Australian Crown
An Address Given To Monarchist Organizations In Canada
“I Honour My God - I Serve My Queen - I Salute My Flag”.
Constitutional Concerns Over Constitutional Change
An Address To The Crossbench Peers, House Of Lords,  London
Australia:  A Young Nation - But An Old Democracy.
Address To A Meeting At Parliament House, Adelaide
The ‘Battle Of The Boyne’
Address To The Loyal Orange Institution
Why You Should Vote No
One Heritage.  One Crown
Address At The Royal Canadian Military Institute
Our Democratic Traditions
A Republic?  It’s Not A Simple Change
The Trouncing Of The Republic
The Queen’s Visit
‘Save Our Sovereignty’
Address To The St George’ Rally At Trafalgar Square
The British Peoples
The Westminster Crown And The Referendum In Australia
An Address To The Swinton Circle In Parliament House, Westminster
Our Christian Monarchy And Our Christian Constitution
The Act Of Settlement
Ideologies Behind The Australian Constitution
Kitchener  -  Last Of The Great Warriors
The Danger Ahead
The Monarchist Vote
Nineteen Seventy Five
We Are One People
Address To The St. George’s Day Rally At Trafalgar Square, London
Matters Of Sovereignty
Address To The Swinton Circle - The House Of Lords, London
Loyal Address For The Queen’s Golden Jubilee
Delivered At Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, Melbourne.
 
 
PREFACE
 
 
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Molyneaux of Killead.  KBE
 
 
 
Philip Benwell is renowned not only in Australia but also throughout the Commonwealth for his dedication to sound governance.
His first-hand experience of structures in most nations of the world,  where his judgement is widely respected,  has led to his advice being widely sought in democracies great and small.
 
For example when one of his visits to Britain followed soon after a change of government in Britain in 1997,  the new Government had,  broad-brush fashion,   committed itself to reform of the House of Lords.  Philip’s advice was sought by all parties.  In a few weeks he had identified the pitfalls into which all had stumbled during the intervening years.
 
In England there is now a reality which is almost certain to ensure that both houses linked more closely to the Crown,  will produce more effective governance for this new century.  We can rest assured that our new product will greatly improve our relationship with our sister nations of the Commonwealth.
 
That Commonwealth is becoming more and more aware of Mr Benwell’s emergence as a prototype of commonwealth citizenship who understands both the common and diverse influences,  which if not clearly understood might lessen the influence of the Commonwealth in world affairs.
 
In the course of my several visits to Australia I have been struck by the sturdy pride in their native land by all age groups.  But they are probably unaware of worldwide admiration for all things Australian.  Philip Benwell is succeeding in transmitting and receiving the truthful and accurate message.
 
From my privileged relationship with the author I have been impressed by his single minded devotion to democratic government which functions best under the guidance of the Crown.  Such stability can never be sustained by any elected president who can be removed,  as can a temporary prime minister,  imposed one day and then deposed by the whim of only a percentage of an electorate,  whose judgement can be swayed by unaccountable spin-doctors.
 
I commend this book for study by those already convinced of the merits of governance provided by our Commonwealth of Crown and Parliament and for study too,  by those yearning for sound government capable of coexisting with a less settled world.
 
 
INTRODUCTION
 
Meanderings
 
The debate on Australia’s constitutional future has been the most divisive thing ever to affect the lives of Australians since the controversy surrounding Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War.
 
The debate fuelled quarrels amongst families and friends and have now found themselves no longer friends.  Monarchists still remain disillusioned by the many sporting,  singing and television personalities who openly advocated a republic and republicans still bitterly point the finger at those politicians who opted to support the monarchy.
 
The sort of insults thrown about by embittered protagonists demeaned the camaraderie for which Australians are usually renowned.  It is a matter of regret that many elderly people will remember forever the feral remarks openly espoused by republicans that they only had to wait for the old to die for them to have their republic;  itself a misguided yearning with so many of the younger generation against constitutional change.
 
For some time I have been asked to record the events leading up to the Constitutional Referendum of 1999.  I am not ready to do so yet,  if ever.
 
However,  what I have done is perhaps something more important,  and that is to compile a selection of speeches or essays,  call them what you will,  written both before and after the Referendum.  There are a few books which had been published around the time of the Referendum but most deal more with personalities.  Hopefully this collection will provide an insight into the actual issues and thinking involved.
The main thread which you will see winding its way through this book is the way in which we have come to view the concept of the Crown,  an entity which I have come to believe is not simply an ingredient of our constitutional monarchy,  as some would have us consider,  but rather the fundamental nucleus of our own particular brand of democracy which has become not just an ideal but rather a lifestyle to which we have grown so accustomed to that it is often taken for granted.
 
It is difficult when compiling essays essentially dealing with a single subject to avoid repeating oneself and although I have tried to eliminate duplications it has not always been possible and I apologise if this may prove to be somewhat irritating.
 
I have frequently referred to our constitution as a clock and by that I mean that the clock is always ticking in the background telling us the time and yet however much we rely upon it to guide our lives,  most of us wouldn’t have a clue as to how the various pieces go together to make it work. 
 
So it is with our Constitution.  It is always there in the background protecting our democracy in a way that few other constitutions are able to do,  for the authority to change the Constitution and remove the Crown and thus eliminate the protective checks and balances has been placed into the care of the people and kept from the hands of the politicians.
 
The Crown however means far,  far more than the legal phrases which comprise our Constitution – that being (actually) more a treaty between our states than a detailed judicial code.
 
Indeed without the Crown our Constitution is meaningless which was why simple amendments or ‘tippexing’ out of monarchical words from the Constitution were never going to work.
 
The Crown encompasses the centuries long tussle between the King, the Parliament and the people resulting in a fine balance of control between the Monarch whose personal and political ambitions have been totally sublimated and whose constitutional duty is now to protect the rights of the people,  and the politicians whose vested interests in winning the next election often take priority over the benefit of the Nation.
 
The past ten years or so have been a learning curve for me personally.  If anyone had told me a decade ago that I would have been talking about such matters as the royal prerogative,  I would have thought them mad or at least lacking in prescience for whilst history has admittedly been one of my main interests,  the complexities of the Constitution were as foreign to me as brain surgery!
 
Having said this I must admit that I have lived in two former colonies and actually experienced the constitutional change of one to a republic,  commencing with what the people thought was the simple removal of the Crown and changing the name of the ‘Governor-General’ to that of ‘President’.
 
There was no catastrophe at the time;  there were no earthquakes or riots in the streets:  just a simple mourning by older people of times past and a rejoicing amongst the young in a newly created nationalism.  However after a few years had passed,  the politicians amended their Constitution time and time again largely for the express purpose of ensuring that they increased their power and that their party retained total supremacy.   The ultimate losers at all times were,  of course,  the people together with their freedom and their democracy.
 
This experience,  however,  had given me an irreplaceably unique insight into the duplicity of politicians and the ultimate importance of retaining constitutional integrity and the effect on the democracy and freedom of the people should that integrity be weakened.
 
The issue of Head of State is one which caught the imagination of many people as it was a question which could not effectively be answered by monarchists.  According to our constitution,  we have no Head of State.  We have a Sovereign,  a Governor-General and a Prime Minister and it is the Prime Minister who,  as Head of Government,  is the most actively powerful person in the country.
 
At the time the constitution was drafted,  Head of State was not really a term widely used.  Republicans claim that the Queen is Head of State and must be replaced by a home grown Australian.
 
Other than differences in a recognition of the importance of the Crown within our constitution,  it is this issue which has created the greatest division amongst anti republicans.  The constitution specifies that:
 
Part I General
1. The legislative power of the Commonwealth shall be vested in a Federal Parliament, which shall consist of the Queen, a Senate, and a House of Representatives, and which is herein-after called: “The Parliament,” or: “The Parliament of the Commonwealth”.
2. A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty's representative in the Commonwealth, and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen's pleasure, but subject to this Constitution, such powers and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.
 
There have been no constitutional amendments to this section and neither the Statute of Westminster not any Act of Parliament has effected its intent.
 
Therefore,  according to the Constitution:
 
The Federal Parliament consists of:
the Queen
the Senate and
the House of Representatives
 
The Governor-General:
is appointed by the Queen
is the Queen’s representative in the Commonwealth
 
It would thus seem that the Queen must be the Head of State as it is the Queen who appoints and who empowers the Governor-General.  However, both constitutionally as well as by convention and now precedent,  once appointed by the Queen,  the Governor-General assumes supremacy as guardian of the Constitution with the Queen now relegated to the sole but constitutionally vital act of his or her appointment and dismissal,  vital because this very act restricts the prime minister from assuming total dominance over the Parliament and the armed forces and furthermore ensures that the loyalty of the Governor-General is to the people and not to the prime minister.
 
The Queen is determined by its (uncodified) Constitution to be the Head of State in the United Kingdom,  but there she plays an executive part in the process of government.  In Australia however,  once the Governor-General has been appointed the Queen plays no further part in the executive governance of the Nation for the authority of the Crown is thereafter held by the Governor-General who is responsible for his acts only to the Constitution and not to the Queen as was proven by the fact that Sir John Kerr did not confer with or even advise the Queen prior to his action in dismissing the Whitlam Government in 1975!
 
Following his appointment,  it is the Governor-General and not the Queen who performs all the actions of a Head of State.  Any interregnum is filled not by the Queen but by an administrator who is usually the longest serving state governor.
 
Therefore it is reasonable to assume that if we are to have a Head of State of Australia,  it should be the Governor-General.  This assumption in no way detracts from the position of the Queen as sovereign.
 
What many people do not realize is that we use the Queen as a guarantor of our Constitution.  Politicians and some nationalists reject this statement as an insult to Australian politicians but it is nevertheless true as is the fact that the people of Australia can at any time vote to remove the Queen and the Crown by referendum.
 
The checks and balances inherent within our constitutional system should be taken as an affront only by those who intend to abuse their positions under the Crown.
 
Having said this,  the personal popularity of the Queen as evidenced by the tremendous success of the Jubilee and enhanced in this country by the tens of thousands of Australians who came out onto the streets to greet Her Majesty during the two recent royal visits in 2000 and 2002,  has made it very difficult for Republicans to mount another challenge during Her Majesty’s lifetime.  Indeed the flagging attempts by the media to revive this issue have since met with indifference and even hostility by their readers.
 
Obviously such a dramatic proposal as altering the manner in which a country is governed would give rise to any number of conspiracy theories and it would be nothing less than truthful to admit that my essays include suspicions on the active involvement of ‘big business’ in support of a republic.  However,  I suppose that it is in the scheme of things that future fiction writers will weave sensationalist and tangled stories about supposed military and political conspiracies.
 
The truth is that at the end of 1991,  Republicans,  who had been trying to build up support for their cause since the 1960s,  found an ally in the new Prime Minister Paul Keating and used this powerful connection to the maximum.  It was a two-way street and as Keating found  it,  useful to camouflage his government’s problems with the distraction of Republican change;  a factor which never made it into the top ten of the priorities of the electorate.
 
Keating was an ardent admirer of the arch imperialist Napoleon Bonaparte and from humble beginnings,  including a spell as a department store counter assistant,  so honed his political skills that he was able to snatch the prime ministership from the incumbent Bob Hawke and go on to win,  in his own right,  what was thought to be a totally ‘unwinnable’ election in 1993.
 
Bob Hawke was a former trade unionist who himself,  in 1983,  snatched the leadership of the Australian Labor Party from Bill Hayden (later appointed by Hawke to the office of Governor-General) and went on to win victory against the Liberal/National Party Coalition Government a few weeks later.
 
Even Keating himself astutely realized that there was no real penchant amongst the electorate for constitutional change and indeed that there was a very real danger in having a president who could compete in power and authority with the prime minister.  Keating’s preferred view,  according to his biographer and former senior staffer,  John  Edwards in his book: Keating the Inside Story (Penguin Books Ltd 1996) was for the prime minister to have the right to select the name of the Australian president, with the requirement that the choice be agreed to by both houses of Parliament.  It is interesting that,  according to the book’s index,  out of 594 pages,  the mention of the republican issue can be found in only four pages!
 
Shortly following his election as leader of the Liberal Party,  John Howard immediately sought to neutralise the Republican issue in the 1996 election campaign by announcing in the House of Representatives,  on the 8th June 1995,  that a Coalition Government would establish a people’s convention to examine the question of whether or not Australia should become a republic.  Thus began the long,  arduous,  divisive and disruptive process which led to the Constitutional Referendum of November 1999.
 
The end of 1999 also heralded the entry of the third millennium and provided an emotional window of opportunity for change which the Republicans naturally used to the fullest.  The sad fact,  for them,   is that had their publicity machine been more attuned to the immature emotions of younger people,  instead of promoting the bitter resentments of aged and decrepit politicians,  they might have succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of enough voters to gain one or two states.  Not enough for victory,  but sufficient to legitimately demand a continuation of the debate.
 
As it was,  after ten years of intensive debate in the media,  the Republicans failed to obtain a nation-wide majority and they failed to win any of the six states!
 
Their complete devastation at their defeat was,  of course,  because they realized that a unique opportunity had been lost forever and I doubt whether any future government,  whatever its political colouring,  would hesitate to officially open this ‘can of worms’ again;  certainly,  as I have said before,  not during the Queen’s lifetime.
Not only is Her Majesty’s popularity such that it would be electorally disadvantageous to make any move against the monarchy but also,  due to the Referendum campaign,  the people themselves have also become more aware of the implications involved in tampering with our system which,  under the Crown,   has created and guaranteed their rights and liberties.
 
Australia is no longer an isolated country and many hundreds of thousands of young people now travel to the United Kingdom where they have forged many warm friendships.  As a consequence the attempts by some Republicans,  fuelled by their hatred of all things English,  to fashion Britain as an ogre which continues to exercise power and authority over Australia is now recognized as a fabrication and dispelled as a myth.
 
However,  whilst the period of the Golden Jubilee has shown how much the Queen is beloved by her peoples throughout the Commonwealth,  this has not deterred the media from snatching at every opportunity to attack Her Majesty.  Indeed they feast on the merest scrap of gossip,  turning malicious tittle-tattle into major headlines.
 
Disloyal servants, past and present,  have,  in a betrayal of their own promise of confidentiality,  manufactured scandal for the sake of thirty pieces of silver.
 
The onslaught caused by these lost souls lusting after their filthy lucre in league with their paymasters in the press will not succeed,  however destructive and apparently damaging their attacks may appear to be,  for the Queen is always above reproach.
 
However,  in the period following Her Majesty’s passing,  the media will,  in indecent and inconsiderate haste,  doubtless launch a devastating attack on the new King paying particular attention to his relationship with Mrs. Parker-Bowles.
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is an unstinting worker,  particularly in the cause of the young and the disadvantaged,  yet the media in Australia rarely portray him as such.  I do not blame the media,  for they are what they are.  I blame those who advise the Prince of Wales for rebuffing every request to promote the good works of His Royal Highness in the Realms preferring,  it seems,  to concentrate on a public relations campaign directed almost exclusively to people in the United Kingdom.
 
Prince Charles was the first Royal to spend some schooling in Australia.  It was an experiment which seemed to work,  for His Royal Highness enjoyed great popularity in this country.  However the tragedy of his marriage with Diana and the resultant divorce devastatingly soured the friendly and warm relationship between Australia and Prince Charles and it is to be very much regretted that that relationship has not been re-established.
 
The Prince of Wales will undoubtedly be a very good King.  He is working hard to establish himself as the People’s Prince in the United Kingdom but if his reign is to be properly accepted,  he must do the same in the Dominions.
 
 
 
 
Philip Benwell MBE
Sydney 2003
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
 
 
 
THE ROLE OF THE MONARCH IN MODERN SOCIETY.
An Address To The Royal Commonwealth Society
 
This collection of speeches and essays commences with an address to the Royal Commonwealth Society in Sydney in October 1995,  roughly a year prior to the Federal General Election which resulted in the Coalition Government being returned to power after an absence of thirteen years.  However in 1995 Paul Keating was still pushing a republican agenda,  not essentially because he was a declared Republican but more to create a diversion from the problems being encountered by his government.
 
 
From the programme, I can see that I have been listed to speak after everyone has eaten - and this somewhat reminds me of the story of a senator in ancient Rome who, having offended Emperor Nero, was thrown into the arena where hungry lions were waiting to devour anyone and anything which came within their reach.
 
The senator stepped forward and said something to the ferocious lions - and immediately they lay down and, despite the furious urging of the crowd, refused to attack.
 
Finally, Nero called for the Senator to be brought before him and demanded: “What is it that you told the lions?”   To which the Senator replied: “I simply told them there would be speeches after the meal!”
 
It was just 52 years ago, in 1943, as the Third Reich was drawing to a close, that in London a  group of concerned citizens gathered together as it became more and more apparent from the meetings between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill that the United States was not in favour of the return of the exiled monarchs of the Eastern European Nations which had been over-run by Nazi Germany.
 
The position taken by the United States was that these countries were to be used as  bargaining tools - or rather, as history has proven, in acquiescence to the increasingly aggressive demands of Stalin who, once an enemy of the Allies, had entered the war against Germany in 1941.
 
These concerned citizens felt very strongly about the value of monarchy - most of the exiled Monarchs had sought refuge in Great Britain and many were, in fact, descendants of Queen Victoria - and after all, the Eastern European Monarchies invaded by Germany had already adopted - or had been steadily progressing towards - a stable system of constitutional monarchy. 
 
The constitutional stability of these countries after the War seemed to be of no consequence in the greater scheme proposed by the Americans.
 
It was therefore felt that an organization needed to be established to support the principles enshrined in the monarchical system; and thus it was that the Monarchist League was established: to promote the concept that the stability and political impartiality inherent in a soundly-based monarchy will always secure for its people freedom from civil or military dictatorship and ensure a genuine concern for the welfare of the entire community.
 
It is interesting to note in this regard that the Constitution of the Republic of Germany - the drafting of which was greatly influenced by the American Government - still forbids and even makes it illegal to call for the restoration of the Monarchy!
 
Whilst the League has in the past had its fair share of leadership and committee problems,  its membership has for years been drawn from all walks of life in many countries and includes supporters from the whole political spectrum, as well as many without political alignment.   I may mention that in Australia we have members from all parties, including Labor, the Democrats and even from the Greens Party.
 
I rather think it to be somewhat remarkable that in the days before ‘multiculturalism’ was even a word, an organization had been established which embodied what multiculturalism should actually be - rather than the political ploy it has become.
 
Ladies and gentlemen: as you can see, the League was established with very real and very pertinent objectives to meet a very real and very pertinent situation.
 
Over the years, the Monarchist League has waxed and waned in its membership and activities.   The League of today is still an impecunious organization.   Although our members are spread throughout the world, we do not have a paid Secretariat and exist predominantly on voluntary assistance.
 
The League has had members in Australia for many decades, although it was not until the early years of this decade that it was decided that something had to be done to protect the honour and integrity of the Crown in the increasingly divisive debate on Australia’s constitutional future.
 
Once again the League has entered the fray in support of monarchy.   Today the total efforts of the League in Australia are totally dedicated towards the preservation of the constitutional monarchy of Australia, which - although we have as our Sovereign a lady who is also Queen of the United Kingdom - is nevertheless something which is uniquely Australian.
This brings me to Prime Minister  Paul Keating’s statement: “Do you want an Australian as our Head of State?”  A very divisive and devious statement,  particularly as Mr Keating himself has held the Governor-General to be head of state.  Indeed we cannot have anyone who is more uniquely Australian than Bill Hayden.
 
It is doubtful that this statement is meant solely as an attack on the Queen,  but I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the very moment Her Majesty succeeded to the Throne she became - de facto - an Australian citizen.   She became - de facto - a citizen of all those countries who should be proud to have such a wonderful lady as their Queen.
 
The Royal Styles and Titles Act of 1954 constituted the legal status of Her Majesty as “Queen of Australia” and the Whitlam and Hawke Acts only tended to further establish the Queen in this position.  Her Majesty does not travel on a British Passport - or indeed on any passport at all.   She is the Sovereign of several nations.   Sovereigns do not travel on passports - they issue them.
 
Perhaps the most disturbing factor to come out of this debate is the increasingly apparent fact that this is not a debate emanating from the people themselves, but rather from the politicians - regrettably, politicians not only from the Labor movement but from all parties in Canberra and the States.  It is clear from this that many politicians object to having above them a non-political, non-partisan authority which is able to act as a check on the aspirations of a zealous few, preferring instead one of their own. 
 
I’ll warrant that if Australia ever does become a Republic, there will be crisis after crisis, feud after feud; because under no circumstances will you ever get a non-partisan, non-political president - and under no circumstances will you ever get as conscientious and as dutiful a Head of State as Her Majesty our Queen.
It is interesting to note, ladies and gentlemen, that in his comments on the flag, Keating rarely - if ever - refers to the flag of the republic of Victoria, first flown at the Eureka Stockade where, on Sunday the 3rd December 1854, 276 police officers and soldiers faced 500 men led by Peter Lalor at Bakery Hill: a stockade made of higgledy-piggledy slabs of wood, above which was flying a strange flag - a blue background with a cross of five white or silver stars - the flag proclaimed to be of the Republic of Victoria.
 
Peter Lalor survived the battle and eventually became Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly.   However, he is immortalized for his words at the Eureka Stockade: “We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.”  Men like Peter Lalor were loyal to the Regime, but angered at the oppressive laws to protect the 50,000-odd persons on the sheep farms against the 250,000 workers in the goldmines.
 
It is interesting to note that the ardent revolutionaries of the time were not predominantly embittered Irishmen, but American goldminers who sought to export their new-found republicanism.
 
 Attempts were also made, around the same time, to export republicanism to England.   However, as one aged Lord said when asked about republicanism in England: “Republicanism means a revolution.   I can’t imagine a revolution in England.   It rains too much!”
 
Whilst this rationale does not apply to Australia, what does apply is complacency.
It is amazing how lethargic many Monarchists generally are when asked to do something - and to me this is especially worrying, because what we are talking about is essentially what sort of future you want for your children and for your children’s children. 
 
I am afraid that there are many organizations - fortunately, I may mention, not the Royal Commonwealth Society - which have a Royal or Vice-Regal patron, but who have decided that this debate is not for them.  They excuse their disloyalty by saying that they may have members who are of a republican sympathy,  but what about their Monarchist members?
 
Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, we are not only fighting against the Republican movement,  but we are also fighting against politicians who are seeking to remove the very essence of our Constitutional Monarchy BEFORE THE PEOPLE HAVE HAD THEIR SAY. 
 
That is what we are protesting about - and if you are a member of any such organization which is prepared to sit back and allow our Queen, our Governor, our Constitution and our flag to be denigrated, to be derided and defamed, then I suggest that you go in a group to the president or secretary and tell them to stand up and be counted, or you will resign.  Remember, there is only one thing that will be achieved by sitting on a fence - and that is, falling off it!
 
The British - and consequently the Australian - Monarchy is unique in having as Sovereign, a lady who is totally dedicated to the strengthening and preservation of the Monarchy.   By her Coronation Oath Her Majesty committed herself to serving her peoples.   She has never broken that Oath.   Something which we can never expect our political self-seeking republicans to do.
 
You often hear that the Monarchy exists for the good of the Royal Family.   On the contrary, it exists and always has existed for the good of the People.   The Monarchy stands above and beyond the royal individuals who happen to represent it at any given time.
 
The Prince of Wales states that his aim is to be useful to the Monarchy and the Duke of Edinburgh has often said: “If the people ever begin to think the opposite, then it is time for us to go without a row.”
 
YOU TELL ME OF ONE PRESIDENT - even one elected by the people - WHO WOULD EVER SAY THIS!!!
 
The Queen was anointed with holy oil; and she takes that anointing very seriously.   She has said that this has imbued her with a conviction of something irrevocable and that she must do everything within her power to maintain the gift of royal privilege and obligation bestowed upon her.
 
It is interesting to note that the actual Act of Anointing began in the Holy Land and was introduced into Britain by St Augustine. 
 
A vial of sacred oil was brought across from the Holy Land to be used at the coronation of Edward the Second in 1307, and henceforth.  Its contents having been exhausted some 250 years later at the coronation of Elizabeth the First in 1558, the oil used at the anointing of British Sovereigns since that time has been very specially prepared and blessed.
 
Her Majesty is a very religious person - as is the Queen Mother and other members of the Royal Family.   Princess Margaret has commented: “I think this family has survived through the prayers of the people.”
 
Many people are concerned about the future of the Monarchy in Britain with its entry into the European Community.   The Queen fully intends to do her duty to her people whether in or out of  Europe.  In fact, during one recent state visit to Germany, the comment was made that: “A Queen is always  more of an attraction than just another president!”
Respect for the Queen, and hopefully for the Monarchy, has increased.   This is why Republicans like Bob Hawke say that Australia should act only after the Queen’s passing.   They realize that they have little chance during Her Majesty’s lifetime.
 
This is also because the Queen generates patriotism, whereas modern-day politicians tend to talk only about nationalism.
 
Patriotism is described as love for one’s country and zealous devotion to its interests - especially its freedom and independence.
 
Nationalism is explained as focusing stress on nationality and a loyalty to the nation-state especially for its political interests.
 
The Nazis were not patriotic Socialists.   They were NATIONAL Socialists.
 
If the Monarchy were - God forbid! - ever abolished, one wonders what would happen to all the jokes which have been told about the Royal Family for centuries past - and accepted by them in good part!
 
For instance, there is the one about the then Prince of Wales visiting the men on the front during the First World War.   On walking into a soldiers’ hut, he gave a hearty laugh upon spying on the wall a print of his father, King George V, and his mother, Queen Mary - under whose likeness had been written ‘The Other Four-Fifths’.
 
You will rarely find politicians laughing at themselves or their families - quite often the reverse.
 
As one looks at the republics around the world, it is to be seen that they often change to suit the peculiar aspirations of their politicians; whereas the Monarchy - in a sedate and dignified manner - moves with the times but never allows the times to dictate to it.  This is because the Monarchy is above class and above politics.  It unites the people, whereas the election of a president only creates - or at least emphasises - diversity.
 
 The Queen has done away with a tremendous amount of protocol and deference.   Queen Victoria certainly would not have been amused by a commoner putting his arm around her - Australian prime minister or not!
 
To quote the Countess of Longford:
 
“The Monarchy will survive because it is the people - regardless of the politicians - who want it. 
 
They may not know why, but they know they do.   They want it to work well.   They will endure bad times - such as the Abdication and the recent problems with the younger Royals - in order that good years may return.   The people want the Queen to remind them of their history and their traditions.
 
“Above all, they want a Head of State who is neutral.   Her Majesty has never belonged to a political party.   A fit guardian of the Constitution because she has no personal ambition, only the wish to serve.   It is the fittest system of this century and it will survive because its existence keeps out other objectionable systems.
 
“It is a splendid thing.   It is our own.”
 
Sydney,  October 1995
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
“BY OUR UNION WE ARE MADE EQUAL TO OUR DESTINY”
 
In November 1996 I was invited to speak at a meeting in Bathurst called to discuss the Convention that was to be held a week or so later in Bathurst to ostensibly commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Constitutional Convention held in Bathurst in 1896  prior to Federation.  However it became clear that the real purpose of the meeting was to promote a republic.  I came under pressure not to say anything which might be taken as an affront by the Bathurst Council which was partly organising the Convention and several times indicated that if what I had to say was to be vetted then I would not speak.  I had my say and following the Bathurst Convention was somewhat vindicated when I received an apology.  However I was never invited back.
 
 
Exactly 100 ago on the 15th November 1896, in this very city there gathered together people from throughout Australia, to discuss the federation of the colonial states into union.
 
From the middle of the 19th century,  colonial leaders,  such as W. C. Wentworth,  had been proposing Federation.   However, it was not until a few decades later that this issue was more seriously considered.
 
Many conventions were held, but these were comprised predominantly of politicians.  However, the convention that was held in Bathurst was important in that it was a convention representative of the people gathering together in a spirit of patriotism and in a free and impartial debate. 
On no previous occasion in the history of the Colonies had such a representative gathering come together in a country area.   It was said of this gathering, the 1896 People’s Convention, that: “Runnymede was indissolubly connected with the history of England and that in the future federated Australia, Bathurst would be the Runnymede of the Federal State”.
 
The Convention adopted a motto: ‘Foedere Fato Aequamuir’ – ‘By Our Union We Are Made Equal to Our Destiny’.   We all know what that destiny was, for within decades Australia had become the envy of the world.   The West envied us our wealth and the East our political stability.
 
“By Our Union We Are Made Equal to Our Destiny”.
 
Today, the heritage that has been handed down to the present City Council - a heritage to be proud of, a heritage to be honoured and preserved: the concept of federation, the inspiration of the Australian Constitutional Monarchy - has been betrayed.
 
It has been betrayed because next week there will gather - in this very city - a publicly-funded convention, a convention hi-jacked from the people of Bathurst by the State Government and individual Republicans within other organizations.   A convention which proposes to formally commemorate the original convention - not by honouring the democratic traditions and the constitutional stability bequeathed to Australia from the people who were brought together at that assembly, but, I suspect, to tear down these things that we should so honour:  to denigrate our Monarchy and to deride our Constitution.
 
Unlike the gathering that will meet next week, at no time did the 1896 Convention purposely exclude any particular opinion.   In fact, Sir George Reid, then  Premier of New South Wales, was vigorously opposed to federation, yet he was invited as an honoured guest along with many other delegates representative of all political spectrums and opinions.   Cardinal Moran was there and, at a time of Anglican supremacy, was made most welcome.
 
The 1996 Bathurst People’s Convention has  invited neither the Australian Monarchist League nor Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy to attend, even as observers - whereas the Premier and the Leader of the State Opposition, both prominent Republicans, have been invited to speak, with the subject of Peter Collins’s talk being ‘The States in THE Republic’ as though a republic is a forgone conclusion!
 
I understand that he has now been advised to modify his speech.   I do not know.   I do not know because, despite many requests to the several organizers for information on this meeting, we have not even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement.
 
If this is a genuine assembly, why has it not brought together people to represent all views and all opinions?   Why has it not brought people together in an effort to promote a free and open debate on such a vitally important matter?
 
I will tell you why.   It is because this assembly has now become a meeting of Republicans, planned by Republicans to promote a republic.
 
The exclusion of those organizations in support of our Constitutional Monarchy, even as observers, let alone as speakers, leave us with no other option than to consider that the 1996 Convention is now nothing more than a plan to regenerate a crusade that has become moribund.   That is, the push towards a republic.
 
I say moribund, because it comes at a time when the majority of people in this land have priorities more urgent to them than debate on our constitutional future.   It is uncanny indeed how so many forces have combined in an unprecedented onslaught on our Monarchy.
 
“By Our Union We Are Made Equal to Our Destiny”.
 
Let not that union; let not our equality, let not our destiny be taken from us.
 
 
SOME STEPS IN THE LEAD-UP TO FEDERATION:
 
1883    All the Colonies, with New Zealand and Fiji, attended a Federal Convention to discuss the idea of federation.
 
1885    A Federal Council was set up.   It had no funds and was very weak.   Henry Parkes, the Premier of NSW, refused to join it, although he was a strong supporter of federation.
 
1888    A British expert came to study the Colonies’ defences.   He said they were weak and should be united.
 
1889    Parkes made a speech at Tenterfield in which he put forward the idea of a Federal Parliament.
 
1891    A conference was held in Sydney.   It drew up suggestions for a new parliament but the Colonies would not accept them.
 
1896    A People’s Convention was held in Bathurst.
 
1897    A conference was held in Adelaide.   New ideas about the proposals for Federal Government were worked out.
1898    The ideas were put to voters.   Only Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania accepted them.
 
1898    Another convention was held and some changes were made to the proposed government
 
1899    Another referendum was held.   All the Colonies except Western Australia agreed to join the Federation.
 
1900    The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act passed by the House of Commons in July 1900        
 
1901    The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed on the 1st January.
 
 
 
Bathurst,  November 1996.
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
“THE MONARCHIST LEAGUE
AND OUR ROLE IN THE CURRENT DEBATE”
 
This is an article written in late 1996 to describe the involvement of the League in the republic debate amidst indications by the Howard Government that they intended to bring the matter to a climax.
 
 
The Monarchist League was formed as a parliamentary lobby group at a meeting held at Westminster, London, in 1943, in response to the widespread belief that the only way to lasting peace was through the restoration of constitutional monarchies in the Balkan states.   The founders (quite rightly) feared the consequences of absorption of Eastern Europe into Communist Russia.
 
The League was therefore created as a positive response to a very real threat against democracy.   Little was it thought that this organization would be playing a crucial part in campaigns to defend the Constitutional Monarchies of South Africa, and now of Australia.
 
It is interesting to note that it was only after establishing a republic that South Africa was able to introduce apartheid!
 
Over the years the League has developed into a potent force, upholding the educational and cultural aspects of our Constitutional Monarchies.
 
In Australia, especially over the past few years, the League has played a prominent role in opposing what was quite aptly termed: ‘Republicanism by Stealth’ where, without reference to the people, Federal And State Governments have been constant in their quest to undemocratically remove the symbols and traditions of our Constitutional Monarchy.
 
Some may say that these things are not important.   I ask you to consider how meaningless life would be without traditions and without regard to our heritage and constitutional conventions.
 
Jeff Kennett, the somewhat eccentric Premier of Victoria, has recently said: “Reserve powers without the convention and traditions emanating from the Crown are dangerous”.
 
If there is to be any change, then that change must be replaced by something positive.   To do this, the people must first decide on what form they wish their constitutional future to take.   This is the way of our democracy.   This is the way that those people, who gathered together in Bathurst and in cities throughout Australia a century ago, bequeathed to us.
 
One of the major architects of our Federation, Alfred Deakin, later to become the second Prime Minister of Australia, was present at the 1896 convention.   He later stated: “I venture to submit that, among all federal constitutions in the world, you will look in vain for one as broad in its popular base, as liberal in its working principles, as generous in its aim, as this measure.”
 
One can only hope that these words, and the words of all those who so strenuously strove to ensure the political stability of this nation, will be heard and will be heeded.  There is much talk that a republic is inevitable.   My parents told me many years ago that in 1940 people thought it was inevitable that Hitler would invade England.   I am told that in Australia it was felt inevitable that the Japanese would invade.
 
These fatalists were proven wrong then.   They will be proven wrong now.   Our Constitutional Monarchy,  which guarantees our democratic way of life,  can and will withstand these wavering winds of change, as it has withstood volatile changes of government on the one day, encountering utter normality on the next.
 
Take, for instance, the devastating defeat that Labor suffered on the 2nd March 1996.   In the light of recent political events overseas, it is more than likely that most countries in a similar situation would have experienced bloodshed on the streets.  Yet, due to our constitutional arrangements, the changeover of government after thirteen years was as peaceful and as democratic as had been the changeover in 1972 to Labor from Liberal after twenty-three years in office and the ensuing volatility caused by the dismissal in 1975 where,  again,  no blood was shed on the streets!
 
This is due to the tremendous reliance that people place on the security of our Constitutional Monarchy, for this is our democratic process.   This is the way of the Constitution of Australia,  drafted by Australians for Australians and voted upon by the Australian people.
 
In New South Wales there has been an unprecedented onslaught on our Monarchy with the Premier of the State, Robert Carr, continuing the Keating factor in state affairs.
 
Shortly following his election in June 1995,  Carr attempted to delete from state oaths of allegiance all mention of the Queen and to replace the word ‘Crown’ from government functionaries with the word “State”.   The Monarchist League overnight mobilized its resources and mounted a campaign to influence the non-aligned members of the Legislative Council.   The Hon. James Samios MBE MLC, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House, worked tirelessly to co-ordinate a united opposition. 
Carr, furious at not being able to push his Bill through the Council, has just left it in abeyance, waiting for an opportunity to revive it.
 
In January of this year (1996), without consultation even with his own Cabinet, let alone the Parliament and the people, Premier Carr, in his resentment at having to answer to a higher authority, vindictively attempted to downgrade the position of Governor and the status of Government House.
 
When the Opposition sought to debate this matter in the House, Carr, in his despotic manner to stifle debate on his actions, requested the Governor to prorogue Parliament.   The Governor had no other constitutional alternative but to agree.
 
We worked alongside other organizations to publicly challenge the Carr Government in its attempt to down-grade the role of the Governor, whose principal functions, after all, are to act as a check on the Legislature, preventing unconstitutional acts and, through community involvement, be the non-political link between the people and the system of government.
 
Government House has been one of the most-visited buildings by the public in the State.  It belongs to the people and, until now, has always been occupied by successive Governors as an office, a venue for official functions and an official residence.
 
The Monarchist League has sponsored the establishment of ‘The Friends of Government House’ as a community lobby organization and we continue to monitor the situation.
 
In the belief that the manoeuvres of the Carr Government to demote our Monarchy are but a part of an undemocratic and constitutionally dangerous strategy towards a centralised republic, The Liberal/National Party Coalition in the New South Wales State Parliament introduced a Bill to define the role of the Governor and to retain the status of Government House as the office and the residence of the Governor. 
 
In an affront to democracy, the Labor Government has blocked the Bill in the Lower House and has refused debate.
 
Earlier this month, in his rabid attempt to annihilate all vestige of our Monarchy, Premier Carr has - again without consultation – decided to remove the Crown from the State Parliamentary Crest.
 
It is patently clear that this is the sort of subjugated democracy the Republicans want for Australia.
 
Thus we continue to face republicanism by stealth.   A republicanism, which seems reluctant - even frightened - to seek the will of Parliament, let alone the will of the people.   These things are reminiscent of the era of the thirties when Jack Lang, the mentor of both Keating and Carr, undertook his Bolshevik crusade against federation and democracy.
 
The type of republicanism which Australia faces is not a natural campaign emanating from the will of a people aspiring to change, but a crusade induced by unwarranted bitterness against the English people - and from an ignorance of who actually governs this country.
 
If this is what Republican politicians are doing now, consider what they will do once the checks and balances of our Constitutional Monarchy have been removed - giving them virtually total power?
 
Until the people decide otherwise, Her Majesty is still the Queen of Australia - and the politically motivated denigration of our Sovereign by Republicans in political office does nothing but harm to our reputation here and especially overseas, particularly with those many neighbouring countries which are themselves constitutional monarchies.
 
In an attempt to suppress our traditions, the previous Federal Government ordered Commonwealth Government Bookshops to stop selling photographs of the Queen.   This resulted in members of the public finding it virtually impossible to obtain pictures of their Sovereign. 
 
To counter this, the Monarchist League reproduced, with the kind permission of the artist, Sir William Dargie CBE, the renowned portrait of Her Majesty wearing the Australian wattle dress. 
 
Proving what was obviously a tremendous demand for prints of the Queen,  sales across Australia thus far have grossed nearly fifteen thousand dollars thus enabling us to distribute,  without charge, thousands of copies to scouting, guiding, religious and other organizations throughout Australia!
 
This, however, we intended to be simply a short-term solution.   Immediately following upon the election of the Howard Government, the League was unremitting in its lobbying of the Hon. David Jull MP, Minister for Administrative Services, to remedy this situation.
 
On the 16th July 1996, Mr Jull wrote to the League stating: “At your behest we have now re-introduced the free distribution of portraits of Her Majesty the Queen through Government Bookshops”.
 
We also lobbied the Hon. Alexander Downer MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and he has advised that he has now “issued clear guidelines to our missions overseas that, where Heads of Mission wish to display a photograph, it should be of the Queen or the Governor-General” (inferring that they should not be of political leaders).
 
Over the past decade, there has been an unprecedented dissemination of totally biased and often erroneous literature into schools.   So much so that students no longer know what is factual and what is not.  They are told that the British invaded - not settled - Australia.   They are told that the Queen is a foreigner, but not the fact that the very moment Her Majesty succeeded to the Throne she became - de facto - an Australian Citizen.   She became - de facto - a Citizen of all those countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations who should be proud to have such a knowledgeable and dutiful lady as their queen.
 
Deliberately disregarded are the Royal Styles and Titles Act of 1954, which constituted the legal status of Her Majesty as ‘Queen of Australia’, and also the Whitlam and the Hawke Acts, both of which further established the Queen in this position.   The fact that we have as our resident Head of State an Australian, in the person of the Governor-General, is purposely overlooked.
 
At this stage I must say how disappointed I am that many proponents of our Constitution have fallen into the Keating trap by talking about just changing our Head of State.   Change from a Constitutional Monarchy to a presidential system of government requires not simply an amendment but a practical rewriting of our entire Constitution.   It is in no way a simple process and may require not just a majority of votes in Australia and a majority of votes in a majority of States, but a majority in Australia and a majority in all States.
 
To encourage young people to understand a little more about their Constitution and the implications of potential change, the Monarchist League has sponsored the establishment of the Foundation for Australian Research and Studies.  This is an independent organization acting without bias and headed by a retired Supreme Court judge of New South Wales.
 
The Foundation has recently conducted its second nation-wide essay competition on the Australian Constitution, where 4,459 requests to enter were received from high school students in every State and Territory in Australia.
 
The prize-giving for the competition was held on the 26th August at Parliament House in Sydney, with, as chief guest,  Senator the Hon. Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.   The prize-winners were from Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.
 
The Civics Committee, established by the Keating regime, reported that 82 percent of the population in this country know nothing about the Constitution or system of government.
 
We are disturbed that we may be proceeding to a referendum by the end of this century, expecting an ill-informed population - of which less than 18 percent know something about our civic arrangements - to competently answer a question or make a decision affecting Australia’s political stability for generations to come.
 
We are lobbying that, whichever way the Government may decide to proceed, any process leading to an opinion or a decision on the constitutional future of the Nation must of necessity be accompanied by an in-depth educational process for adults and students alike.   We believe that to do otherwise is not only wrong but is also dishonest.
 
The Monarchist League in Australia is an Australian organization.   Whilst we have retained contact with the international body, our total efforts are dedicated towards the preservation of the Constitutional Monarchy of this Nation, which -although we have as our Sovereign a lady who is also Queen of the United Kingdom as well as several other nations - is nevertheless something which is uniquely Australian.
 
In her Coronation Oath, Queen Elizabeth committed herself to serving her peoples.
 
Her Majesty has never broken that Oath.
 
I need not remind you of the many politicians throughout the world who have and who continue to lie to the people.
 
We all realize that the younger members of the Royal Family may not have behaved themselves as the people may expect.   However, can you show me one extended family nowadays, which does not have similar difficulties?
 
The problem lies not in the Royals, but in the break-up of the family as a unit in these modern times and the resulting deterioration in public morality exacerbated, of course, by the unremitting intrusion of the media into their private lives.
 
Over the centuries, the Monarchy has stood above and beyond the royal individuals who happen to represent it at any given time - as it will today.
 
The Duke of Edinburgh has often said, and it is clear that the Queen is in full agreement: “Our aim is to be useful and if the people ever begin to think the opposite, then it is time for us to go without a row.”
 
It would be a rare politically-elected president - even one elected by the people - who would ever say this!
 
Richard Woolcott, former career diplomat and now arch-Republican, confessed at a recent Republican dinner that he is embarrassed about our system of government by Constitutional Monarchy.   He says that he is embarrassed because in 1975, President Soeharto of Indonesia summoned him to his presidential palace to express surprise that Kerr could actually dismiss the Prime Minister.   Soeharto asked: “Why didn’t Whitlam just arrest the Governor-General?”
 
If these checks and balances implicit within our Constitutional Monarchy are something to be embarrassed about in the presence of our Asian neighbours, then please let us be embarrassed every day!
 
As one looks at the Republics around the world, it is to be seen that they often change to suit the peculiar aspirations of the politicians, whereas the Monarchy - albeit in a sedate and dignified manner - does move with the times but never allows the times to dictate to it to the detriment of the people.
 
This is essentially because the Monarchy is above class and above politics.   It unites the people, whereas the election of a president serves to create, or at least emphasise diversity.
 
 
Sydney,  November 1996
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 

 
 
“GOD GUARD THEE”
 
This is a speech given at a dinner in Sydney on the 3rd of December 1996 in the distinguished company of Countess Mountbatten and her husband Lord Brabourne.  It was a joint function organized by the Monarchist League and the Legion of Frontiersmen,  a cause dear to the Countess’s heart.
 
 
Countess Mountbatten,  Lord Brabourne,  General Murchison, Colonel Rex Morgan,  distinguished guests,  ladies & gentlemen.
 
On behalf of the Monarchist League in Australia,  may I extend to the Legion of Frontiersmen,  our sincere thanks for so very generously including us in this magnificent dinner in such illustrious company.
 
As I look around me and see so many people in such resplendent uniforms with so many impressive medals, I rather feel the odd man out.  However I can take satisfaction in the story about Lady Astor,  the first woman member to sit in the British Parliament.
 
At election time,  she was canvassing for votes in her electorate of Portsmouth and had to venture into one of the poorer areas.  She asked an old friend of hers who was an Admiral to accompany her,  which he most inappropriately did in uniform.  At one of the terraced houses she knocked on the door which was opened by a rather grubby child.  Lady Astor asked: “Is your mother at home?”   The child looked at Lady Astor and then stared at the admiral and replied: “No.  But mum says if a lady was to call with a sailor I was to tell them to use the upstairs room and to leave ten bob on the hall table when they left”.  I don’t think the Admiral ever accompanied Lady Astor in uniform again!
 
The motto of the Legion is,  I understand “God Guard Thee”.  The principle objectives are fundamentally: “God,  Queen and Country”.  The Legion and the Monarchist League are similar in these objectives.
 
Contrary to appearances,  the League is not a social organization.  We are not a matchmaking organization and we are definitely not an organization for people who are frightened to stand up and be counted in support of our Sovereign.  We are a working organization.  Working desperately to defend our Constitutional Monarchy and Our Queen - at whatever the cost.
 
Over the past few years,  Australia has been facing an orchestrated campaign to do away with our Monarchy.  Not a popular campaign emanating from the people,  but a campaign motivated by the aged anti British hatreds of a section of the community;  manipulated by politicians to appease their need for pretentious glorification and above all nurtured by a malicious media governed not by the truth but by their greed to maintain and increase circulation and profit.
 
We have to put up with all sorts of insults.  The kindest thing they call us is “grey-heads” but they omit to mention that the leaders of the Republican movement are not just aged,  but positively antique - and moribund to boot.
 
The League has not adopted a public role but has done much behind the scene.
 
It was the Monarchist League which immediately filled the void when Keating ordered that portraits of the Queen be no longer distributed through government agencies by reproducing Sir William Dargie’s portrait - fifteen thousand dollars worth of which have already been distributed throughout Australia.
It was the Monarchist League which successfully lobbied for distribution of portraits to be resumed through Government Bookshops and other agencies.  Portraits of the Queen are now going back up in government offices and in embassies overseas.
 
It is the League which organizes nation-wide evensong services to honour the Queen’s personal birthday on the 21st of April.  This year,  we arranged for churches throughout the land to ring their bells and to hold special services of praise on Her Majesty’s 70th birthday.  Next year we will do the same to celebrate the Golden Wedding of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.  We are also encouraging schools and church groups to organize special activities on this occasion.
 
When the New South Wales Premier attempted to delete reference to the Queen in the State Oaths and to remove the word “Crown” from government functionaries,  it was the Monarchist League which overnight mobilised an avalanche of protest eventually leading to the non-aligned members of the Legislative Council blocking the Oaths and Crown References Bill.
 
When the Premier recommenced his attack on our Monarchy,  by his attempt to downgrade the role of the Governor and the status of Government House,  the Monarchist League joined with others to organize one of the largest protest rallies this State has ever seen - again resulting in a back-down by the Premier.
 
In his third and most recent attempt,  Premier Carr has arranged for the Crown to be removed from the Parliamentary Crest.  Again it was the Monarchist League and the Monarchist League alone which organized a campaign of protest.  The Premier has now isolated himself from this issue by casting blame on the Speaker.
 
In an environment where only 18 percent of the People in Australia know something about the Australian Constitution,  the Monarchist League established the Foundation for Constitutional Research and Studies, which now conducts  through its annual essay competition,  the only private initiative on civics education amongst all schools in Australia.
 
We believe that it is not only wrong but also totally irresponsible for the Howard Government to embark upon the proposed conventions,  plebiscite and referendum on our Constitution with 82 percent of the population totally ignorant of our system of government,  unless these things are preceded by an in-depth educational process of adults and students alike.  I invite you all to put this point of view forward to the Prime Minister direct.    On our part,  the League has brought together - for the first time ever - a great number of loyalist and supportive organizations to work as a united force.  United in defense of our Constitution.   United in loyalty to our Queen.
 
As we near the end of 1996,  may I say to all “God Guard Thee”  God guard our Queen.  God guard our Constitution.  I extend to our members,  our hosts and their guests,  my very warm greetings for a merry Christmas and for 1997,  I wish you all a ‘Right Royal Year’.
 
 
 
Sydney,  December 1996

© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
AFTER KEATING – WHAT NOW?
 
A short article written in early 1997 following the very disturbing statements supportive of a republic by the National Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister,  Tim Fischer.
 
 
The demise of the Keating Government has regrettably not meant the end of attacks, both overtly and by surreptitious innuendo, on the Queen of Australia and on our Australian Constitutional Monarchy by Australian politicians.
 
Tim Fischer, Deputy - then Acting - Prime Minister and Leader of the Federal National Party, recently gave a speech in which he introduced a ‘specific Republican model’ as his alternative to the previous hard-line policy stand of his Party against constitutional change.
 
Although constitutionally unsound and seemingly innocuous in itself, his speech was followed by a more aggressive republican stance by a few senior members of the National Party which collectively has given rise to yet another vociferous and often scurrilous media offensive against our Monarchy.
 
Until Tim Fischer, the National Party was the only remaining political organization which unreservedly supported  our system of Constitutional Monarchy.  Now, sadly, there is no party represented in any parliament which appears to be totally loyal to our Queen and our Constitution.
 
We had hoped that the election of the Howard Government would see an end to the incessant attack on the symbols and traditions of our Constitutional Monarchy.   However, it is clear that ‘the Keating agenda’ for change is still being followed by many within the conservative ranks as well as,  of course,  the Fabian inspired media.
 
However,  regardless of what one may read in the newspapers and notwithstanding the vagaries of vacillating politicians, we believe that the majority of people in this country do not want change, particularly when so many politicians appear to be overly intent on forcing such change on us.
 
The Monarchist League has done much over the past few years in maintaining and restoring the symbols and traditions of our Constitutional Monarchy, including hindering Premier Carr’s attempt to remove the New South Wales State Oath of Allegiance to the Queen, and restoring the distribution of the Queen’s portrait in Federal Government Bookshops.
 
People such as Tim Fischer, however, have shown us that there is much work yet to be done if the voice of the people is still to be heard.
 
Rest assured that the Monarchist League will continue to be in the forefront of the campaign against those who seek to belittle our Queen, our Constitution and our flag.
 
 
 
Sydney,  March 1997
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
AUSTRALIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY -
ITS BENEFITS AND ITS RELEVANCE
FOR THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND.
 
In 1997 the debate proper on the Constitution began with the prospect of a Constitutional Convention in sight.  This article was written as a part of an educational programme designed to put our constitutional heritage into perspective.
 
 
In the years leading up to Federation, the Colonies which made up Australia enjoyed a great measure of independence in their government, but it was not by any means free of rule from London.
 
The first initiative, however, towards independence emanated from the Australian Colonies Government Act of 1850 (UK Parliament), which invited the Colonies to put forward proposals for a House of Representatives or some other form of responsible government.
 
Despite this initiative, it was not really until the 1880s that the concept of federation received serious support within the Australian Colonies.
 
Some may like to feel that this support emanated from a greater sense of national pride.   After all, in the latter years of the nineteenth century, the native-born inhabitants far outnumbered the immigrants.   However, in reality, the push towards federation was an economic one to establish a national market free of inter-colonial interests.
Whatever the reason for federation, one must not forget that Queen Victoria and the Parliament of the United Kingdom not only allowed but also encouraged the Colonies of Australia to federate and to enjoy self-government.
 
The Parliament of the United Kingdom was the only legal entity through which legislation could be enacted to create the Federation.   There was no other format through which this could be accomplished.
 
Through all these proceedings, Britain was a willing partner.   It was in no way a grasping imperial power from which Australians had to wring every letter of the democratic freedom that is now the right of every individual in this country.
 
Over the years, those few residual ties which remained to the British Government were removed freely and without dissent.
 
Today there are a great number of Australians who are indeed regretting the removal of the right to appeal to the Privy Council!
 
The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, passed by the House of Commons in July 1900 and enacted formally on the 1st January 1901,  was a document resulting from a number of deliberations, submissions and proposals - all of which involved Australians.   The proposal was put before the Australian people for their decision in the form of a series of referendums.
 
It can therefore be said that this Act was drafted by Australians for Australians and voted upon by the people of Australia.   It is, accordingly, an intrinsically Australian document, whatever others may infer.   It obtained our independence from our former colonial masters and preserves it from those politicians who would be our future masters.
 
The draftsmen of the Constitution, rightly called: ‘The Founding Fathers’, were brilliant in their foresightedness.   They created a form of government which took the best from the Westminster system and from Canada; from the United States and from Switzerland; the former two being monarchical and the latter the two most stable republican.   The result was a perfect blend of democratic ideals and built-in safeguards.   As the famous Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot inferred in the 1860’s: “The Sovereign has, under a Constitutional Monarchy such as ours, three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn.”    
 
These safeguards are the only protection the people of Australia have against the excesses of those with political power.   No other method of government would have been able to ensure the constitutional stability and continuity of the life of the nation.   To remove these safeguards and, particularly, to remove the ultimate authority vested in the Sovereign to appoint and dismiss the Governor-General, albeit now governed by strict convention, will leave the democracy of this country subject to violation.
 
Republicans have no alternative other than to put a politician - who by his very nature will be biased - in place of a Sovereign who has no political party to obey, only her desire to see to the well-being of her peoples.   Even though a president may be selected from outside the political spectrum, he or she will need to receive the support of both the House of Representatives and the Senate and would therefore owe existence to those who would lobby on his or her behalf within the Parliaments.   The Sovereign owes no allegiance to any particular person or organization - only to the People.   It was to prevent Parliament from replacing the Crown with someone of their own that the Founding Fathers ensured that the position of the Sovereign was inviolate except upon change of the Constitution by referendum.
 
The twentieth century has seen vast changes in the governance of the world.   Many monarchies were toppled and were exchanged for republican forms of government.   Absolute monarchies have no place in the democratic ideals of today, but it should be said that most have been replaced by absolute dictatorships of the Orwellian kind, which in many instances have proven to be far worse.
 
Since the French Revolution of 1789, some three-quarters of the nations in the world now describe themselves as republics.   However, only a very, very few of these could be actually said to be democracies.
 
In fact, of the more than 180 countries which are member nations of the United Nations, only 26 could properly be regarded as democracies of one type or another!   Of these, twenty are Constitutional Monarchies.   Many are either in the midst of a befuddled and laborious road to democracy, or are governed by totally despotic and undemocratic regimes.
 
Those countries, however, which have progressed towards a constitutional monarchical form of government - few though they are - symbolize the very essence of a modern democracy.
 
The only outward difference between the Constitutional Monarchy of Australia and that of such countries as Denmark, Holland, Sweden and Thailand, is that we have as our Sovereign a person who is also Queen of Great Britain and independently that of 15 other countries.
 
The question that the people of Australia must consider is whether having Queen Elizabeth as their Sovereign is so deleterious that they would want to place total trust in the hands of their politicians.
 
The comments that have been made by supposed Monarchists that the Chief Justice should assume the role of appointing or dismissing the Governor-General, thus relegating the Crown to a vacuity, will not only nullify the very essence of our Constitution but would seriously endanger the legal impartiality of the Chief Justice and his High Court.
 
Either we accept the far-reaching and often comforting provisions of our Constitution as a Constitutional Monarchy, or we change totally to a republic.   We cannot hang on to the security of the Crown whilst watering down or invalidating its relevance.   It is not fair to do this to the Australian people and it is certainly not fair to the Queen.
 
Many express concern about the behaviour of the younger Royals,  however, this is but a momentary aberration and is simply typical of the behaviour of their generation.   One must remember that the Queen’s direct family has been on the Throne for over one thousand years - since Cerdic founded the Kingdom of Wessex in AD 519.
 
The Australian Constitution has served this country well.   Many rightly claim that it is not perfect.   However, in many instances, such as the centralization of power to Canberra, blame should not be placed on the Constitution but laid at the door of our political representatives who have caused this to happen.  In New South Wales, we have seen how the Constitution of the State has prevented the Premier from arbitrarily amending the Oath of Allegiance in the State and from downgrading the position of Governor and the relevance of Government House.
 
Constitutions are meant to be solid documents; not company articles changed to suit every board of directors.   The Australian Constitution enshrines within itself the protection of the people’s democracy.   As such, it has relevance to Australians today just as much as it had 96 years ago. 
 
It is in this regard particularly upsetting that, according to the survey made by the Civics Expert Group appointed by the Keating Government in 1994, only 18 percent of the adult population of Australia had any knowledge of the content of their Constitution!
 
As far as the future is concerned, who can possibly tell what the twenty-first century may bring?   However, if you allow the Constitution to be changed just because you may be disappointed with the performance of the Queen’s children or because, due to a deliberate lack of civics education in Australia’s educational process, not many young people are aware of the relevance of the Crown in our Constitution, not only will the heritage passed on to us by our Founding Fathers be betrayed, but also, more importantly, the future security of our children and their children.
 
The ultimate question for the future is:  Can a republic guarantee the independence, sovereignty, national interest and, last but not least, the individual and civil rights of the citizenry as a Constitutional Monarchy has done and can continue so to do?
 
 
 
Sydney, January 1997
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
A SENSE OF IDENTITY
The Debate On Our Constitutional Future
 
As with the previous article,  this essay seeks to answer the increasingly complex arguments of who is the  Head of State and what is the Australian identity.
 
 
The main - and perhaps the singular - thrust of the Republican argument is that: “our identity is not complete until and unless we have an Australian as Head of State”.
 
The question to be examined is: ‘Will having, as Australia’s Head of State, an Australian President, metamorphose the lack of patriotism that Republicans say is prevalent in this country, into a profound sense of national pride?’  To do this we must firstly ascertain what is ‘an identity’ and what is in fact ‘the Australian identity’.
 
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘identity’ as ‘absolute sameness; individuality, personality; condition of being a specified person’.
 
A national identity is comprised predominantly of the cultural make-up of a nation combined with the better-known eccentricities of its inhabitants.
 
Despite the comments of most proponents of a republic, including former Prime Minister Keating, Australians do have a personality or identity which is uniquely Australian.   It is an identity which has been founded on psychological attitudes influenced by the harsh physical environment and the isolation caused by geographical distance.
 
Many Britons settled in Australia in the last century because, unlike the Asian and African colonies, this was a country where,  dependent on their own personal resources and energy,  they could make good irrespective of their background.  It was against this arduous environment that the Australian identity was painstakingly conceived.   It was essentially a rural identity, later to be epitomised by R. M.  Williams and Akubra and latterly somewhat more crudely by Paul Hogan.
 
The necessity to work for achievement had a very great levelling effect and whenever a person started to rise above the norm, whether through his own efforts or through inheritance, the anthropological effect was for others to pull him back to their level.   Thus began what is now commonly termed ‘the tall poppy syndrome’.
 
Since the 1970s, a greater emphasis has been directed towards migration from non-Anglo-Saxon countries, and, with it, an abandonment of the process of assimilation into one society in favour of multiculturalism leading to the creation of a multi-faceted community.   This, combined with the development of industry and service-orientated businesses as opposed to a previous reliance upon the rural and mining sectors, has led to the development of what may be termed: ‘a cosmopolitan city culture’. 
 
It is this evolution, I submit, that has been the fundamental cause of a confusion of identity because the character of the countryman or even of the ‘blue-collar worker’ no longer typifies the personality of the yuppie, the migrant, or even of the  average city dweller.  A further element in the confusion is the push by Prime Minister Keating, ably assisted by the media, to transfer emphasis from the enduring integrity of the Crown on to the politician (i.e. himself) which, with its transitory nature, inspires anything but trust.
 
Prior to 1990, Australians did not seem to suffer unduly from an identity problem.   It was the previous Prime Minister expostulating - often in overseas venues - about Australia’s lack of ‘identity’ (in an effort to promote his concept of a republic) that led to an intensification of the supposed confusion. 
 
Many immigrants who came to Australia because it was and is a democracy and because they liked the way our Constitution works, are confused because they are told that the Constitution is to be changed because of them
 
An Australian presidential Head of State will have to be chosen from one of the States or Territories.   One questions whether Western Australia would easily tolerate a succession of presidents from the more populous eastern States, or whether New South Wales would put up with a Victorian president influencing industry to move to Melbourne rather than to Sydney!
 
The possibility of a deal being done to elevate a rival ministerial colleague or a troublesome independent to the presidency is also not beyond the realms of reality.   Can you imagine a Mal Colston as President - after all, he manoeuvred himself into the position of Deputy President of the Senate!
 
It is therefore very likely that having a resident Australian as our President/Head of State will actually tend to exacerbate divisiveness rather than inculcate unity.
 
Essentially, under our present Constitution, the only function the Queen has is to act as a check on behalf of the people to prevent politicians from assuming total power.   This is accomplished by the Prime Minister having to request the Queen to appoint his choice of Governor-General, (or to dismiss him) thus bringing that act of appointment (or dismissal) into the open and before the public. 
 
There is therefore much to be said for having - as the guardian of our Constitution - a person with impeccable credentials, who resides outside the country and is not involved personally with our politicians, our judges, or our business magnates, as an Australian president would undoubtedly be.
 
Constitutionally,  however,  we actually have no Head of State.   Rather we have the Queen, as Sovereign, and the Governor-General as our working or executive head.  Thus, the Governor-General is in reality equal to any so called ‘President’ - but one whose formal appointment or powers of dismissal are vested in the non-political entity of the Crown.   The only solution Republicans have for the ‘toppling’ of an unsuitable president of an Australian republic is by putting the power to do so into the hands of politicians.
 
The current arrangements in place for this process are impartial, public and virtually failsafe, with all decisions ultimately returning to the people - and not the politicians - for approval or disapproval by way of referendums. 
 
The Monarchy has always been looked upon as a unifying symbol, welding together the miscellaneous political, and later, ethnic, groupings which make up the nation called Australia.  Whether it will continue to do so is up to the people.   Changing the non-executive chairman of an ailing company would not automatically solve an inherent weakness within the company, just as removing the checks and balances presently in place and changing to an Australian presidency will not do anything to solve Australia’s so-called ‘identity crisis’.   To do that we must look within ourselves.   What we were, what we are - and what we will become.
 
 
Sydney, June 1997
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
UNITED WE STAND
 
The election for the Constitutional Convention resulted in a majority of seats being won by Republicans,  the saving grace of which was that they appeared to be divided.  This was a call for a united front amongst non-Republicans at the Convention.
 
 
The Australian Monarchist League has always unreservedly stood up to ‘Keep the Crown’.   We have always proudly declared that the uniquely Australian Constitution is grounded on a democracy with a Monarch at its head and with all Power vested in the people.
 
Our mandate is to retain the essence of our current Constitutional Monarchy - not to support a Republic.   There can be no halfway measures.   There can be no compromise on the role of the Crown and anyone who suggests otherwise cannot be a true Constitutional Monarchist.
 
Our freedoms are not at risk under our present Constitution, but they will be seriously in danger under any republican constitution that tries to model itself on the structure of our Constitutional Monarchy.
 
Presidents and Prime Ministers make a sorry combination where one has power to contradict the other.   Yet our Constitutional Monarchy has proven that the system of Queen, Governor-General and Prime Minister results in stable constitutional government with all freedoms protected.   People from all over the world are desperate to come to our country because under our Australian Constitution we enjoy a freedom unequalled anywhere else.
For so-called Monarchists to deny the Monarchy and to propose removing or diluting the constitutional role of the Crown is tantamount to support for a Republic.      The fact is that our Constitution has been purposefully based on the tenet of an absent Monarch whose powers are vested in the Crown but only exercised by the Governor-General - now always an Australian.
 
We have openly called upon those organizations which support retention of our Constitution to unite with us to defeat the attacks on our Monarch and our system of Constitutional Monarchy. 
 
There will be 152 delegates at the Convention.   76 of whom have been personally appointed by the Prime Minister and we believe that the majority of those support a republic.   The remaining 76 were elected by the people - or rather, by less than half of those eligible, who bothered to vote - in a very complicated voluntary postal ballot.
 
Out of 49 places won by Republicans, the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) has only 27.   This means that there are 22 other Republican delegates, several of whom are not in favour of the ARM proposals.
 
On the side of retention of the Constitution are: Australians for Constitutional Monarchy with 19 seats, the Australian Monarchist League with five seats, Safeguard The People with two seats and the Christian Democrats with one seat.   It is important that these four groups join together in a ‘United We Stand’ fashion.
 
 
Sydney, January 1998
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
AFTER THE CONVENTION - WHAT THEN?
 
With the Convention soon to meet,  it was time to deliberate on what action the Government intended to take.  This article explores the results of the Convention and future plans
 
 
More than 50 percent of the Electorate did not vote in the election for the Convention.  It is unreasonable to claim that these electors would have all cast their votes for a republic.   Many new Australians refrained from entering the issue seeing it as something for ‘Aussie’ Australians to decide upon.  A large number of British residents,  who have the right to vote,  were frightened off by despicable attacks on their loyalty to this country.
 
Based on the votes cast, a referendum would gain a majority of votes in Australia and would certainly carry the States of New South Wales and Victoria and probably the State of Western Australia, leaving only one more State needed to carry the referendum!   In Tasmania the State Government has come out in support of a republic.   South Australian Premier Olsen is keeping his options open, as is - to a lesser extent - Premier Borbidge of Queensland.
 
The reason why these Liberal and National politicians are moving towards a republic is solely because Monarchist members of their Parties are sitting back and allowing them to do so!  The National Party Organization continues to support retention of our Constitutional Monarchy in its platform, but many parliamentary members and officials of these Parties quite openly espouse a republic!
The Prime Minister has promised that his Government will support the ‘consensus’ decision of the Convention.   There are two meanings to the word ‘consensus’.   One is “a general agreement, unanimity” (Cassell's English Dictionary) and the other is “agreement, majority view [consensual government]” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary).   A purview of many dictionaries confirms the former but only Oxford (of those reviewed) incorporated the meaning ‘majority view’.   Most inferred that to obtain a ‘consensus’ one must have ‘near unanimity’.
 
There is no way that the Convention will attain ‘unanimity’.
 
In fact,  I challenge anyone to rightfully claim that a majority view of the Convention would equate to a ‘consensus’ of the wishes of the public particularly when one considers that the Prime Minister has himself appointed half the delegates comprising 40 politicians and 36 individuals (the majority of whom have at some time or another expressed a view sympathetic to change to a republic) and where less than half of the electorate voted for the remainder?
 
There is talk of a plebiscite with the following two questions being considered:  “If Australia becomes a republic, do you want to have an elected Head of State by popular vote?” or “If Australia becomes a republic, do you want to have a Head of State appointed by a two-thirds majority of the Parliament?”.
 
A plebiscite is a direct vote by the people on a specific issue and is decided upon by a simple majority and has no lawful constitutional meaning in Australia.  In reality it is simply a glorified unofficial poll.  Any plebiscite limiting questions to what sort of republic the Republicans want them to have without providing an opportunity for the people to express their wishes to retain our current system of Constitutional Monarchy would produce a totally confusing result.
 
The stratagem of the Australian Monarchist League is:
 
*    We will never accept  that a republic is inevitable
 
*    We must continue with our programme - educational and otherwise - of promoting the benefits that exist under our current Constitution and the problems to our democracy and freedom that can arise under a republic. 
 
Democracy is not just a name to keep people happy.  It is a very real and tangible thing and it is enshrined in our Constitution.
 
Remember, under our system of Constitutional Monarchy, all constitutional power is vested in the Crown, of which the Queen is the wearer and the Governor-General is the Crown’s representative and executive officer in Australia.
 
The Crown represents the people and it is only the people who are able to change our system - by referendum.   Under a republic there will be no Crown, no Queen and no Governor-General.   Instead, there will be a president.
 
The inevitability factor is that this president will be either a politician or reliant on political patronage.   Whether the powers of the Crown will thereafter be vested in the president or the Parliament, or in a combination of both, what is certain is that they will be taken from the people and put into the hands of politicians.
 
The fight to retain our Constitutional Monarchy is by no means over.   Rather, it is just beginning.   Let us hope that Monarchists will have the strength and the perseverance to continue in the face of whatever obstacles are to come.
 
Sydney,  March 1998
 
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
THE WINDS OF CHANGE
SWEEPING AWAY OUR DEMOCRACIES
 
The Convention was over and a question had been accepted to put to the people at referendum.  It was time to get the message on our Constitution out firstly to the converted and then to the public.  Time was running out.
 
 
There is a malaise abroad in this world of today.  A malaise attacking all those things that bind good government and democracy in those English-speaking nations remnant of the old British Empire.
 
Like a dark cloud looming on the horizon,  the winds of change seek to uproot the principles of Westminster democracy won in the sceptred Isle over centuries of conflict between king and parliament through violent and bitter struggles fought to ensure that it was neither the Monarch nor the barons - nor their modern counterpart,  the politicians - who are supreme,  but the people.
 
These ‘winds of change’ are not new for was it not two hundred years ago and more that we saw the onset of anarchy in the American Colonies in 1775 fomented by France which itself experienced a decade of chaos and bloodbath just 14 years later?
 
Was it not a hundred years ago that insurrection and sedition reared its ugly head,  overthrowing most European monarchies and culminating in the two great wars of this century?
 
Since the second Great War there have been untold skirmishes and battles resulting in some 45 million dead,  waged on every continent excepting Australia and avoiding those nations governed by the Westminster tradition under the Crown.  In fact not only have those nations under the constitutional Crown survived economic and political crises but most have also provided a safe haven for the oppressed and those made destitute by corrupt governments.
 
What is,  you may ask,  this constitutional Crown?  What is its recipe for success in a world that seems to have gone mad?
 
It is simply the evolvement of the British system of democracy relegating the role of the semi-absolute Monarch to a guardianship-like position with a ceremonial status and allowing government by politicians elected by the people but vesting the real power of the nation in the Crown thus protecting the people against the excesses of those in authority.
 
A Crown which began as the Crown of the United Kingdom but which,  although still worn by the same person in Her Majesty our Queen,   has since divided itself into the 16 separate and sovereign Crowns of Great Britain plus 15 of the former colonies of the British Empire who have freely adopted government under the constitutional Crown.
 
A system which is now under attack by politicians and other self interest groups who resent the curbs on their power and always having to answer to an authority higher than themselves.
 
Is this not why,  in November of this year,  our Australian politicians are forcing the people to a referendum to vote to remove the Crown,  impartial custodian of our Constitution,  under the guise of having ‘an Australian Head of State’ but in reality to facilitate the transfer of total constitutional power to a puppet president.  A so called ‘Australian Head of State’  who,  under the proposed model,  not only can be directed by Cabinet Ministers and totally subject to the orders of the Executive Council,  but who can be dismissed at will and without notice by the Prime Minister.
 
Under our present system of Constitutional Monarchy it takes a vote by the people NOT THE POLITICIANS to remove the Queen.
 
Under the proposed Republican model,  all it will take is for the Prime Minister to simply say: “GO” and the President is gone!
 
For many, many years the forces of change have been at work.  Changes introduced step by step beginning with the easing out of the playing of “God Save The Queen” in cinemas and public places,  then the ceasing of the rendition of pledges to God, Queen, Flag and Country in schools until now,  some three decades later,  we are existing in an environment entirely devoid of any facsimile or public mention of the Queen.
 
The absence of any sort of civics education teaching our young on our system of government,  combined with the fact that Her Majesty has not been allowed to visit Australia for some seven years,  has meant that there are multitudes of Australian citizens who have not seen the Queen on Australian soil and who know little,  if anything,  about our constitutional arrangements.
 
Furthermore the constant misinformation that Her Majesty - akin to a spider sitting in the middle of a web over ten thousand miles away - is pulling strings which influence their daily lives is fast gaining ground.  They know not that Her Majesty can only visit her subjects in Australia by invitation - an invitation which has been withheld by successive Governments.
 
They know not that all Australians are totally free from any of the former authority exercised by the British or indeed by any other government,  for in all those nations governed by the constitutional Crown every inhabitant enjoys as an unalienable right a freedom and a democracy denied to citizens of most other countries in the world.
 
It is the enormous bias of the media which is serving to encourage these lies and to hide factual information and in the absence of any public platform those who speak the truth find themselves obstructed in getting their message across to the people.
 
It is as though the darkest clouds of change ever faced before are enveloping the whole nation.  Never before have issues been so divisive as to threaten to rend asunder the unity of Australia,  one of the youngest nations on earth yet one of the oldest democracies today.  A democracy founded on a Constitution,  the Preamble (or introduction) of which not only brings together our six separate and sovereign States into one Union,  but also unites all Australians under the Crown.  “Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”
 
The Founding Fathers,  who were all Australians,  in writing the document creating the Federation of the Australian Colonies took from the constitutions of Canada, the United States and Switzerland and based it on the Westminster system of parliamentary rule but with severe checks placed on the House of Representatives with the establishment of a senate and the requirement of a referendum to enable constitutional change.
 
The Constitution dealt with the mechanics of the Federation but the Preamble ensured that the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland became its soul.  Under the Royal Styles and Titles Act of 1954 this Crown also became the individual and separate Crown of Australia.
 
Prior to 1901,  New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia were themselves separate sovereign States with their own constitutions under the Crown.  Although they united into one Federation,  they maintained their own constitutional arrangements.
 
Australians have never had to do battle for their independence.  Unlike the former American colonies,  freedom has been handed to us virtually on a platter.
 
It was as early as 1849 that a Privy Council Committee recommended that more extensive powers of self government be given to the then Australian Colonies and some fifty year later and only one hundred years on from the raising of the British flag on Australian soil,  delegates were meeting together to formulate a Constitution for Federation which became law in Australia on the 1st of January 1901.
 
The passage of time since 1901 has seen delegations from the British Dominions meeting in Imperial Conferences in 1926 onwards cumulating in the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which ensured total independence for Australia and other former colonies to decide themselves on their future.
 
The Australian Constitution is uniquely Australian.  However in one aspect it is the same as most in the trust reliant upon the integrity of those politicians it places into power. It is thus that we question the motives of those who time and time again swear oaths of allegiance to the Queen and then proceed to denigrate her.
 
We also question the motives of  those who have received high honour from the Crown,  ranging from Privy Councillors and Companions of Honour to recipients of the Orders of Chivalry,  when they seek to tear down the very structure that has given them so much in their pursuit for a republic.  Even political parties,  originally founded on loyalty to the Crown,  are now allowing their parliamentarians to actively participate in support of the proposals to change to a republic in the Referendum to be held in November of this year.
 
A Referendum in which Monarchists will be greatly outnumbered,  for combined against our Monarchy are politicians, media and big business.  All self-interested groups.  All interested in removing the checks and the balances, which are the only things which ultimately protect the people against domination.
 
Amendments to the Australian Constitution are possible provided a majority of voters in Australia plus a majority in a majority of States concur.  Surely in no way can the alteration of the Constitution to a republic,  requiring change to at least 72 of the Constitution’s 128 sections and the addition of at least 10 new sections,  be considered to be an ‘amendment’?
 
Constitutional Monarchies and Republics are two entirely different systems and are totally incompatible.  The proposals to simply ‘tippex’ out the Crown,  the Queen and the Governor-General and replace those words with ‘President’ simply because it is thought to be easier to ‘sell’ to the people,  is in reality fitting a square piece of wood in a round hole creating the potential to seriously endanger the freedom of the people.
 
For many a year politicians have sought to centralise our government and remove the sovereignty of the States.  The only reason they have not prevailed so far is solely due to the protection the Constitution provides not only federally but also in each State.
However if,  as is proposed,  the Crown is removed and replaced by a mortal being,  it will not be long before politicians proceed to concentrate power into one entity which they could totally control.  A proposal which could well eventually lead to the dismantling of our Federal system.
 
The famous Australian Labor politician,  Arthur A Calwell wrote in 1949:
 
“Generally, the greedy and reckless activities of unscrupulous, opportunist sections of the community can only endanger a country for a period. Public protest can right the wrong sooner or later, and the nation moves ahead once more, sadder and wiser for its experience.
 
Occasionally, however, power-mad and money-hungry groups can cause a disaster of such magnitude that its reverberations echo throughout history for generation after generation and alter the whole course of the country’s development.
 
Once the very character of this nation has been destroyed, no legislation could restore it.  The ideals of equality of opportunity and fair treatment for the humblest worker on which our conception of democracy is built would be gone forever.
 
Our forefathers who pioneered this country and dreamed of its future greatness would have toiled in vain, and our children’s children, would remember us as the generation who gave away their birthright.”
 
This malaise he talked about some 50 years ago is abroad in this world of today and is working its pestilence in Australia for so many who can help are turning a blind eye to our needs.
 
Many have been influenced by the supposed glamour of having an ‘Australian Head of State’ not realizing - or wanting to realize - that this is all about politicians wanting to remove the people’s constitutional security so that they can seek total unrestricted power.
 
Others have just given up and accepted the easy option of an imaginary inevitability.
 
It is only to those individuals who value the principles of Constitutional Monarchy that we can turn to help us defeat this threat to our democracy and our freedom.
 
The Referendum is just ten months away and with some 7,772 polling booths throughout Australia it is necessary to begin mobilizing at least 100,000 volunteers and over many years the Monarchist League has been working to bring organizations and individual groups together into one VOTE NO alliance to fight these moves towards perilous constitutional change.
 
 
 
Sydney, January 1999
 
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
 
IN DEFENSE OF THE AUSTRALIAN CROWN
An Address Given To Monarchist Organizations In Canada
 
In February 1999 I travelled to the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom speaking mainly to Australian expatriate groups about the need to vote in the forthcoming Constitutional Referendum and,  of course,  to try to persuade them to vote for the Crown.  This speech was given in Toronto in February to the Canadian Monarchist League in an effort to have them assist in contacting Australians in their fair city.
 
 
I come to you both as the head of the Australian Monarchist League - a sister organization in the Crown we both share  - and also representing the ‘VOTE NO’ alliance,  which comprises many organizations and several political parties all united to defeat the republic.
 
We are engaged in a desperate fight to save,  not only the Crown,  not only the Monarchy but more especially the democracy of the Australian people.
 
You may well say that these are heady words,  but nevertheless they are true for there is a move in our country to tear down the very fabric of our democracy by removing our Crown and replacing it with a political infrastructure totally dependent on the whim of the Prime Minister.
 
Unlike those in Canada,  Australians are not so emotionally attached to our Monarchy.  In the ordinary course of events we do not say: “God Save the Queen”  nor do we toast her very often.
 
Those who value our monarchical heritage look more on the Queen as the guardian of our Constitution,  than as a ceremonial Head of State.
 
Doubtless it is this attitude together with increasingly infrequent visits by members of the Royal Family to Australia that has led to an apologetic sense of apathy and to the opening of the doorway for Republicans to surge ahead with their emotional argument: “We want an Australian Head of State”.
 
We are now in a situation where even organizations which are privileged to bear the name ‘Royal’ or which have as their patron the Queen or a member of the Royal Family,  languish in their self-derived impotence whilst successive Governments have removed the symbols of our Monarchy and keep silent when Governments have amended oaths of allegiance replacing ‘the Queen’ with ‘Australia’.
 
Sometimes,  I am afraid,  it seems as though the Australian Monarchist League is the only organization that has been out there fighting to retain some sanity in what seems to be a world gone mad.
 
I am afraid that Australians do not really appreciate our safe and secure system of government by Constitutional Monarchy.  Our freedom came to us far too easily for us to have much respect for it.
 
However Australians do not deserve the republican system that is proposed for us for it will remove all those checks and balances which protect the people from the excesses of government and place total constitutional power in the hands of the Prime Minister.
 
We do not intend to allow Australians to sit idly by whilst our politicians enrich their power at the expense of the liberty of the people.
Already our Governments have entered into several thousand treaties manipulating the Constitution to over-ride the autonomy of our otherwise sovereign States and allow United Nations committees to sit in judgment over Australian law. This subversion of our Constitution constitutes a far greater threat to Australia’s sovereignty than the fact that we share our Sovereign with sixteen other Realms.
 
Some years ago we established the Foundation for Constitutional Research and Studies,  not to thrust the Monarchy down people’s throats,  but solely to encourage high school students to learn more about their Constitution.
 
In an environment where only 18 percent of the population have admitted to knowing something about our Constitutional arrangements,  we have lobbied the Government to embark upon an education programme.  The Government has established such a programme but has appointed as its head one of the leaders of the Republican movement.
 
Today our population in excess of 18 million is made up of people born in 240 separate countries, speaking 70 different languages.
 
Rather than ensuring integration into our Australian community,  our Government,  in an endeavour to become multi-cultural,  has accepted the arguments of leaders of many of these communities who say that the Monarchy and our British heritage is foreign to them and therefore Australia must reject them and become a republic.
 
However the main push within Australia to remove our Constitutional Monarchy does not emanate from the people but from a wealthy elite,  from big business and from politicians.
 
In the recent federal election we have faced an unheard of situation where Liberal and Labor politicians and the media joined together to successfully ensure that the subject of a republic would not become an election issue.
 
Some Cabinet ministers,  immediately after swearing fealty to the Queen of Australia,  have then proceeded to denigrate her - calling her ‘that foreign woman’.
 
We face a situation where the media will publish anything supportive of a republic combining scant facts into fabricated and totally misleading assertions.
 
You may well ask how did this all come about?
 
The current fervent debate on this issue has gone on for some eight years ever since Paul Keating had the matter of Australia becoming a republic raised at the annual conference of the Australian Labor Party held in Hobart in 1991 which voted to encompass a republic as Party policy.
 
The Keating Government then established a Commission headed by the leader of the Republican movement Malcolm Turnbull and comprised of republicans and persons sympathetic to their cause.
 
Dare I,  in rather a biased fashion quote from the words of Oscar Wilde in A Woman of No Importance: “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”.  Not surprisingly,  the Commission recommended that Australia become a republic.
 
At the 1996 federal election,  John Howard in an effort to appease republican voters promised in an interview that he would hold a Constitutional Convention followed either by an plebiscite and then a referendum or by a referendum alone.
Republicans at the Convention became totally divided over the issue on whether a President should be elected or appointed and although receiving the most votes the model proposed by the Australian Republican movement failed to obtain a conclusive majority.
 
However the Prime Minister accepted this as a consensus and promised that a referendum would be held in 1999.
 
In an attempt to emulate Thomas Woodrow Wilson  who,  in a message to the American Congress in 1915,  stated: “We have stood apart, studiously neutral”.  John Howard has stated that he will remain above the debate but has allowed his Parliamentary Party a free choice to support or oppose the proposals for a republic.
 
The older generation in Australia have consequently been horrified to see how many Liberal parliamentarians have come out in support of a republic.
 
They cannot understand why so many politicians,  businessmen and leaders of the community are so intent on replacing a system that has worked so well for a hundred years with the unknown quantities of a republican constitution.
 
I have always felt that the problem lies with generational changes in attitudes which are occurring far faster than ever before.  The current move of change for change sake began in the sixties when ‘short back and sides’ were replaced by floppy mops,  when girls - in Australia at least - began wearing tight jeans and where elderly ladies were wont to say they could not tell the differences of gender from the back and sometimes even from the front.
 
The sixties generation is now the establishment of today,  itself gasping at nipple piercing,  multi coloured hair and the like.
The western world is actually experiencing the phenomenon of an establishment that is actually anti-establishment.  People in power pining for their youthful days of street demonstrations and the intrinsic thrill achieved in shocking their own older generation.
 
Maturity and an acceptance of traditional values usually go hand in hand,  but not with the sixties generation.  The Fabian-like urge to tear down the establishment and to rebuild a utopian society is still very evident.
 
The whole episode would be quite comical if it were not so dangerous,  for in Australia we are at a stage where radical constitutional change is being pushed through - regardless of the consequences - purely for the sake of change.
 
Those who are seeking to retain our existing constitutional arrangements are publicly accused of being anglophiles and lackeys of Great Britain.
 
Members of the Monarchist League are portrayed as Colonel Blimps.  When the media televise any of our meetings they purposely search out the oldest and greyest and most wrinkled of those present and focus their cameras on these good people.
 
Nothing can be further from the truth.  The League and its supporters are simply ordinary Australians seeking to retain a sense of sanity in a debate that more and more seems to be grounded on age-old hatreds of all things British.
 
This is in spite of the fact that,  although Britain may still have viewed Australia as a quasi colony following Australian independence with the Federation in 1901, it was the Australian and not the British Government which decided to join the Allies in the First World War.
Whilst some influence was exercised through the appointment by the King of the Governor-General,  this all changed as it did in the other Dominions following the passage in 1931 of the Statute of Westminster.
 
In 1986 the Australia Acts were passed by the Federal Government and by each of the six States as well as by the British Parliament.  The Australia Acts had the effect of extending the provisions of the Statute of Westminster embedding the rights of the States and entrenching the role of the Queen as ‘Queen of Australia’.  The legality of passing these Acts which may have a capacity to affect the Constitution and are certainly able to amend the Constitution Act,  of which our Constitution is a schedule,  without referendum is highly questionable.
 
The fact is that Australia does enjoy a total independence and sovereignty over its affairs and has done for the major part of this century.  Our political, legal, cultural and physical identity is uniquely and quintessentially Australian.
 
We are fortunate that Britain had indeed learned from its mistakes with the American colonies and no civil wars were needed to be fought for Australian independence.    By the time Australia had passed the stage of being merely a penal colony the British Government had adopted the principles of ‘Home Rule’ and had long accepted the need for democratic self-government by its colonialists.
 
It was in 1849 that a Privy Council Committee recommended that more extensive powers of self government be given to the Australian Colonies and some 50 years later and only one hundred years on from the raising of the British flag on Australian soil,  that people throughout the Australian continent were meeting together to formulate a constitution for the Federation of what had developed into the six British Colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia.
 
The document of Federation became law in Australia on the 1st of January 1901 following successive years of debate and a series of referendums.
 
Whilst the final model was based on the Westminster system it incorporated the ideal of a senate from the United States of America,  the principles of federation from Canada and the concept of referendums from Switzerland.  However the very essence of the Constitution was contained in The Crown of the United Kingdom which from 1953 also became the individual and separate Crown of Australia.
 
Many Australians look to the United States Constitution as a model,  and although the two systems of democracy differ,  they are both based on the same Westminster principle of checks and balances,  for politicians,  wherever they are will always attempt to twist their country’s constitution towards their own ends.
 
After all,  was it not Abraham Lincoln who said:  “As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you”
 
One wonders how different Bill Clinton’s life would be now if he had adopted the same pose when meeting with Monica Lewinsky and other female assistants.
 
Unlike that of America,  the Australian Constitution is not accompanied by a Bill of Rights and in itself makes no mention of the rights and the liberties of the people it protects nor does it stipulate the creation of political office.
 
It need do none of these things because under the Crown we have inherited the traditions,  the conventions,  the laws and indeed all of the intrinsic rights and liberties which were won over centuries of conflict and of cautious change and development and which are now contained within the practice of the Westminster system.
The essential differences between our current constitution and the proposed Republican model (which obtained a consensus - but not a majority vote -  at the Constitutional Convention for which less than 50 percent of the people actually participated in the ballot for delegates) is that under our current system  the role that the Crown plays in the appointment and removal processes ensures that the Governor-General’s allegiance is to the people and not to the government.
 
However under the proposed model,  the Crown will be removed and its powers assumed by a President who will hold office at the pleasure of the Prime Minister.  The President will be appointed for a five-year term by a two-thirds majority of the Members of Parliament at a joint sitting on the nomination of the Prime Minister which must be seconded by the Leader of the Opposition.
 
The question of dismissal is the one which is breaking the Republican ranks apart for under the proposed Republican model a Prime Minister may himself ‘at will’ dismiss a President subject to obtaining approval by a majority, not of the joint Houses but of the House of Representatives alone,  within thirty days,
 
A foregone conclusion except in the case of a minority government.
 
Realizing that there are some very serious arguments against the model its Republican proponents are now rather absurdly seeking a mandate from the People on the basis that any shortcomings and flaws could be sorted out after it has become law!  In other words: “Trust us”.
 
Under our referendum process,  members of Parliament who vote against a Bill to hold a referendum then meet to write a ‘NO’ case whilst those who voted for will write the ‘YES’ case.
 
However the Australian Government intends to exercise the whip requiring all Coalition parliamentarians to vote for the Bill thus meaning that under the terms of the Referendum Machinery Provisions Act no ‘NO’ case can be prepared.
 
Funding earlier promised to assist existing organizations to run campaigns is now to be allocated to government run committees.
 
The Prime Minister is also intending to include a question in the Referendum to amend our Preamble to incorporate special interests and recognition of minority groups.
 
We have pointed out that by removing the criteria by which Members of Parliament normally declare themselves by voting for or against the Bill,  how can we judge that those who prepare the ‘NO’ case are truly against a Republic.
 
We have pointed out that by voting for the Bill,  Members are in fact promoting a republic.
 
We have pointed out that the media will take an absolute vote on a referendum to be an absolute vote by Parliament on a republic.
 
We have pointed out the confusion that will occur in the electorate through the incorporation in the Referendum of a question on amending the existing Preamble or on incorporating a new preamble.  Such a question will also advantage the Republicans for they are in a position to simply promote a ‘VOTE YES’ case to both questions whereas we believe that such change to our existing Preamble is constitutionally unsound and will have to take the risk of offending some minority groups by advocating a ‘NO’ vote to this question.
 
 
Our pleas are falling on deaf ears.
 
History will indeed poorly judge this period.
 
With the immense forces that are arrayed against us,  you may well ask what can we do?
 
With a situation which is so very depressing,  you may wonder why do we bother?
 
We bother because we value our system of government.  We bother because we love our country.  We bother because if we become a republic - and this is particularly so under the proposed model - WE WILL LOSE OUR DEMOCRACY.  WE WILL FORFEIT OUR LIBERTY.
 
I can assure you that the Australian Monarchist League will never give up.  We will exhaust ourselves until our last breath.  We have faced considerable odds before - admittedly none so intimidating as now -  but with perseverance and dedication,  we will win.  We will defeat this threat against our freedom and continue to live under the Australian Crown.  The same Crown that is keeping Canada free.  The Crown of our Westminster democracy.
 
People power has always been the pathway to success for the Australian Monarchist League.
 
Over the years we have mobilised people throughout Australia to lobby parliamentarians in protest of the  eradication of our monarchical symbols and traditions.
 
For some years we have recognized the vital importance of manning all 7,415 polling booths throughout Australia for in Australia we have compulsory voting where everyone who is on the electoral roll must vote or else face a fine.  Unlike as in Canada we have people at polling booths handing out cards advising electors ‘How to Vote’.
 
In preparation for this critical task the League has established alliances in most States amongst loyalist and service organizations.
 
VOTE NO is now an incorporated Association.  We are currently establishing offices and computerised facilities for we will need to mobilise some thousands of people to man all polling booths.
 
A horrendous task,  especially as the League is a totally voluntary organization.  No grand offices or top executive salaries for us.  No glossy publications.  All our printing and publishing is done in-house.  Every cent that can be saved is saved.  But it is still not enough.
 
Whilst we have been amazingly successful in our work  it has all been achieved at tremendous cost.
 
We are committed to spending a hundred thousand dollars over the next month alone to sustain our task of reaching out to communities and organizations.
 
In networking the length and breadth of Australia.  In ensuring that as each Australian goes to vote on that historic day in November each and every one will go into the polling booth with a how to vote ‘NO’ card in his or her hand.  That is our task.  That is our duty.
 
 
For our cause is the continuing Liberty
of our great Australian nation.
Liberty for us.
Liberty for our children.
Liberty for our children’s children.
 
So that they may continue to live
under one of the finest constitutions yet devised.
Liberty and Democracy.
That is our watch cry.
 
 
 
USA, Canada and the United Kingdom,  February & March 1999
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
“I HONOUR MY GOD
I SERVE MY QUEEN
I SALUTE MY FLAG”.
 
Although I was travelling,  I continued to write for Australian publications and this article dealt with concerns over the trivial treatment of Oaths of Allegiance particularly those taken by Members of Parliament and Privy Counsellors.
 
 
It is many a year since children stood in their school assemblies throughout Australia to recite these meaningful words.
 
Some decades ago someone, somewhere made a decision that it was no longer appropriate for these ‘loyalist’ sympathies to be narrated.  A little later a similar decision was made not to play the Royal Anthem in cinemas and theatres.
 
What began as a little trickle of discontent against the monarchical character of our constitutional arrangements has now turned into a rancorous rage seeking to tear down the very fabric of our Constitution and our Monarchy.
 
One may say it is just the way in which times are changing.  Indeed everything around is changing so fast that as we promenade into the new century it seems that it is not only the next millennium we are entering but also a new era.  An era where already regard for the Queen and the flag and even respect for the nation itself is already a thing of the past.  A time where even God has been relegated to those few schools which still include religious instruction on their curriculum for we cannot offend those Australians,  new and old,   who worship another god.
‘Ladies and gentlemen’ are no more,  having been transmogrified into brawny females and sissified males.  Manners and politeness,  let alone the code of chivalry,  are now mere images from the past and the preserve only of the elderly.
 
Even the momentousness of Oath of Allegiance has faded into insignificance.   ‘Words of Honour’ are now relegated to an irrelevance.
 
Oaths of Allegiance are still a constitutional requirement for politicians - Federal and State,  those serving in the defense forces and indeed most persons in positions of power and influence to swear allegiance,  for the taking of an oath is in reality a public declaration formally binding the swearer to a fealty which goes far beyond the normal loyalty owed by a citizen to his or her country for the politician is accepting a sacred trust to honourably govern in the best interests of the people,  the soldier to vigorously defend the nation,  the judge to faithfully administer the law,  and so on.
 
Already in this new era most have already come to terms with a compliant acceptance of lack of manners, uni-sexuality,  multi-coloured hair and even body piercing (albeit with a sense of incredulity).  However it will be a bad thing indeed if people are allowed to break faith with their Oath of Allegiance.
 
Indeed it is the Oath of Allegiance which unites the peoples of a nation together both in times of war and during peace - especially the fragile peace we have experienced throughout the 20th century.  once the Oath has lost its significance,  then lost also is our national discipline and patriotism.
 
When a person giving evidence swears an oath to tell the truth,  the breaking of that oath is considered to be so heinous that there are criminal consequences if he or she lies,  for perjury is committed.
 
Likewise the breaking of an Oath of Allegiance was once considered to be so perfidious that it was tantamount to treason.
 
However today we see many of those who govern our nation in Parliament openly stating that they swear allegiance only because according to the Constitution,  they have to!  Many members of the defense forces no longer recognize the seriousness of oaths saying that they are: “mere words”.
 
Even Christian priests openly ignore their Oath of Allegiance excusing their recidivism because their newer colleagues no longer have to take an oath and because many of their bishops put aside their sworn allegiance to the Queen in their thirst to be ‘politically correct’.
 
All these people question why they should swear allegiance to the Queen and not simply to ‘Australia’.
 
They fail to appreciate that it is not simply to the Queen as an individual that their (questionable) fidelity is promised but to the Crown which embodies far more than just the physical characteristics of our continent island.  It is the fulcrum on which our Constitution is based,  the font of our laws and the single entity which unites all Australians into one nation.  It is thus the endowment of the hopes and aspirations and indeed the whole well being of the people it safeguards.
 
At her Coronation,  the Queen was also required to swear an Oath which was far more binding and demanding that any sworn by her subjects.  An Oath by which Her Majesty promised to govern all those nations of which she is Sovereign according to their respective laws and customs and to cause law and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all her judgements.  above all Her Majesty swore to maintain the Law of God.
Forty-six years have now passed since the Coronation and yet on each and every day since Her Majesty pledged this covenant,  She has never broken her Oath to her peoples.
 
The difference between being governed by a Constitutional Monarchy where the powers of the nation reside in the Crown and a Republic where the powers of the Constitution will be vested in a mortal President can be clearly seen when one looks at the acknowledged perjury and falsehoods of American Presidents or closer home to the admission of constant lies and deceit by even some of our own political leaders.
 
 
 
England, March 1999
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS
OVER CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
An Address to the Crossbench Peers, House of Lords,  London
 
One of the highlights of this tour was an opportunity provided to me to address a meeting of the Crossbench (or non-aligned) Peers in the House of Lords on the 4th March, 1999.  I especially tackled the concerns we had over Section 128 of our Constitution being used to change to a republic.  Eminent Jurists such as the former Chief Justice,  Sir Harry Gibbs,  had also expressed reservations indicating that a change of this magnitude would require the consent of all States and not just a majority.  I was greatly heartened when Lord Charteris,  the former Private Secretary to the Queen,  sagely nodded as I made these points.
 
 
My Lords,
 
I thank you for the honour you have done me by inviting me here this afternoon.
 
I must admit that I did wonder what would have crossed the minds of many of you when you heard that someone from the Monarchist League would be addressing you today for quite often the word ‘monarchist’ engenders thoughts of aged colonels drinking gin slings and eating cucumber sandwiches and talking about the ‘good old days of Empire’.
 
If these were your thoughts,  I’m sorry to disappoint you.  I neither drink gin nor do I mourn the loss of Empire - although I do admit to a partiality for cucumber sandwiches.
I spent much of my childhood in East Asia where my family owned tea plantations.  Many of my friends were the children of the freedom and independence fighters.  I can remember the reverence I felt  when staying in the house where Ghandi lived when in Bombay and I suppose it was an exposure to what may be termed the other side of Empire that has made me more readily conceive how the rights of the people are eroded when politicians tamper with their constitutions.
 
It is because of what I have seen happen in those and other former Crown Dominions that I come to you this afternoon as a very troubled person indeed.
 
Troubled not just because we - in Australia - stand to lose our Monarchy.  Not just because we stand to lose our only remaining link to our British heritage and to the Westminster system - and all that that implies.
 
No I am even more troubled because the Republican model proposed for Australia in effect removes the checks and balances currently in place to protect the people against the excesses of government and places total constitutional power in the hands of the Prime Minister.
 
There is no need,  I am sure,  for me to explain to your Lordships how our Constitution works.  
 
Suffice it to say that our Constitution is in reality a contract of federation uniting our six States which themselves each enjoy total separate sovereignty directly under their own independent Crowns under the Queen.
 
Through our Constitutional Crown,  Australians enjoy the laws and indeed all of the intrinsic rights and liberties enshrined within the practice of the Westminster system.
As Your Lordships would be aware,  the Statute of Westminster of 1931,  adopted by Australia in 1942,  more or less transferred the constitutional powers of the King to the Governor-Generals of the Dominions who was thereafter to be appointed solely on the nomination of the Prime Minister or of his Government.  The Statute also had the effect of transferring the Reserve Powers of the King to the Governors-General which thereafter could be exercised as he or she thought fit, without the advice, or even contrary to the advice, of the Prime Minister to ensure that the respective Government acted in accordance with the law and the conventions of the Constitution.
 
The most famous instance in which Reserve Powers have been used in Australia was the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by Sir John Kerr in 1975.  Undoubtedly other areas of crisis have been averted solely because of the availability of reserve powers.
 
The proposals to change our Constitutional Monarchy to a Republican presidential system of government are essentially a ‘tippexing’ out of the Crown and the Governor-General,  replacing those words with ‘President’.  
 
Whilst this sort of simplistic format is thought to be easier to ‘sell’ to the people,  it can,  in reality,  never succeed for constitutional monarchies and republics are two entirely different systems of government and are totally incompatible.
 
One of the areas of very great concern we have is that should the Referendum succeed and we become a republic implanted onto our existing Constitution,  we will be handing all the Reserve Powers hitherto exercised by the independent umpire of the Crown to a ‘political’ president who would be a cipher of the Government.
 
Under the proposed Republican model the Crown will be removed and its powers assumed by a president who will be appointed for a five-year term by a two-thirds majority of the Members of Parliament at a joint sitting on the nomination of the Prime Minister which must be seconded by the Leader of the Opposition.     However under the model a president can be dismissed by the Prime Minister ‘at will’ subject only to obtaining approval by a majority of the House of Representatives within thirty days - a foregone conclusion as the Prime Minister would already command a majority except in the case of a minority government.  The Senate plays no part in this dismissal process.
 
We are of the opinion that there are two major legal impediments to change of our Constitution.  The first is that our Constitution is in reality a schedule to the Constitution Act of 1901 under which the six former British Colonies had agreed to unite: “in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown”.  Whilst Section 128 allows amendments to be made to the Constitution it has no jurisdiction over the Constitution Act,  which is an Act passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.  However the Australia Acts have removed jurisdiction of the British Parliament over our laws meaning that that body cannot repeal or amend it.
 
We believe that the only way in which the Constitution Act can be repealed or amended is by legislation passed with the agreement of all parties including the States, in the same manner in which the Australia Acts were passed. 
 
The position therefore may well be that to become a republic it would be necessary to obtain the agreement of a majority of the people in all States or at least of all the Parliaments of all States.  Certainly on a moral basis the ‘indissoluble union’ should not be broken without the consent of all the parties to the original union.
 
Secondly,  the Australia Acts can only be repealed by Commonwealth legislation with the concurrence of all the State Parliaments.  Section 128 (the referendum process) cannot be used to force legislation on a State unless approved by a majority of the electors voting in that State.
 
The fear that I have - indeed the fear that all loyal subjects of Her Majesty - should have,  is that should the Referendum to make Australia a republic succeed and it is later found that the Constitution cannot be re-written in this manner,  the Queen would be placed in the untenable situation where she would through legal means rule a people who have voted to remove her.  Needless to say,  there would be an overwhelming backlash of indignation both against the Queen and against Britain.
 
The Preamble to our Constitution states:
 
“Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”
 
Remove the Crown and you remove the indissolubility of the Union - and unless ALL States agree to re-join under a republic - we could see the break-up of our Federation.
 
The Queen is undoubtedly in a difficult situation for not only is Her Majesty Queen of Australia.  She is also Queen of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia.
Assuming that the referendum process can effect these changes to our Commonwealth Constitution,  Her Majesty would still remain Sovereign over those States who may wish to remain under the Crown.
 
There is no provision whereby Her Majesty can abdicate sovereignty over any State and no means whereby the Federal Government can legislate against the wishes of a State.
 
Regardless of this,  one State Attorney-General (a Republican) has commented that States which refuse must be forced to change to a Republic - comments which remind one of the war of words which preceded the American Civil War.
 
Even though we believe that the Referendum will be lost.  The Queen must never be allowed to be placed in a situation of constitutional crisis however remote the chance may be.
 
We ourselves have without success objected to this process,  but I suppose in this modern age governments are wont to act and then leave others to clear up the mess afterwards.
 
The problem is that we are talking not about cosmetic changes,  but about changing the way in which an entire people will be governed;  changing the safeguards of our liberty and our democracy.  A democracy that has been protected by our constitutional Crown for nigh on a hundred years.
 
 
 
London, March 1999
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
AUSTRALIA:  A YOUNG NATION
BUT AN OLD DEMOCRACY.
Address To A Meeting at Parliament House, Adelaide
 
During the February-April tour I spoke at many meetings,   including a debate with the Convenor of the Australian Republican Movement in Britain at the Savoy Hotel which was organized by Australian Business in Europe.  However most of the points I raised were later incorporated into the following Address which was delivered at a public meeting held at Parliament House in Adelaide in June 1999.  To prevent undue repetition I have therefore not detailed each of the speeches made.
 
 
Many of you will be aware of the wording of our Preamble:
 
“Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”.
 
One of the most magnificent preambles’s to a constitution ever written.  One which I firmly believe was written under Divine Inspiration.
 
Bills have been submitted this month to each State Parliament to amend the Australia Acts to remove provisions relating to the position of the Queen and the Crown.  However what we have just learned is even more serious and that is that a Bill to amend the Westminster Act is also before the Parliaments to enable the amendment of the Constitution Act of 1900 removing this Preamble and repealing the covering clauses.
 
What we are experiencing is a sort of a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces coming together to create the Republic of Australia and with just eighteen weeks to go to the Referendum,  we are so very, very close to losing our constitutional sovereignty.
 
Many of the things I propose talking about today are not generally said for over recent years it has been felt to be politically correct not to talk about the Queen and,  so as not to upset Republicans,  to move away from mention of the Monarchy and the Crown.
 
With all due apologies to these apologetic people,  I am not a Republican.  I am a Monarchist.
 
I am a Monarchist because I stand up for what I believe in - and that is our system of Constitutional Monarchy.
 
My message is that we are engaged in a desperate fight to save,  not only the Crown,  not only the Monarchy but more especially the democracy of the Australian people.
 
You may well say that I am over-reacting,  but even Republicans accept that simply removing the Crown and replacing it with a president will take out all the major checks and balances in our Constitution and create a prerogative totally dependent on the wishes of the Prime Minister.
 
However one may be caught up in the euphoria of nationalism,  no Australian deserves the republican system that is proposed for us.  Indeed no Australian deserves to  be unprotected from the excesses of government and exposed to the vagaries of total constitutional power in the hands of the Prime Minister.
 
I have found that at recent meetings I have spoken at in New South Wales that somewhere in the audience are one or two persons scribbling furiously and I have silently commended them on their keenness.
 
However on one occasion one of our members was sitting next to one such person and she asked what he was doing and he replied that he had to jot down what was said to report to the Republican movement.
 
Now if there is anyone here wanting to scribble furiously or wishing to record my comments be assured that I have no objection and I’m sure no one here has any objection for we Monarchists do not care who hears about the benefits of our Constitutional Monarchy as long as our message is heard and is reported truthfully and accurately.
 
I say this because our system of the constitutional Crown is a system that is so fundamental in its brilliance that no one else in the world has been able to duplicate the tranquillity, the peace, the democracy, the stability and the freedom that Australians have enjoyed for nigh on 100 years and this is all because of a Constitution that was devised by Australians specifically for Australia.
 
Over the past fifty years civil wars,  ‘ethnic cleansing’  and the elimination of  opposition in dictatorial regimes have seen in excess of 45 million people killed.  The only continent which has escaped such brutality is Australia and it is Australia together with those Commonwealth nations remaining ‘Under The Crown’ which  continue to offer refuge for the oppressed of the world.
If it were otherwise why would thousands of people risk life and limb to sail thousands of miles in rusty tubs to reach our shores?
 
To those of you here today and elsewhere I ask that you study the issues and not just listen to the emotional arguments,  however strongly they may appeal to a sense of nationalism for this decision will affect generations to come.
 
I ask you to consider what our Constitution and the Crown actually mean.
 
I ask you to consider what has made Australia,  which is one of the world’s youngest nations,  into one of the world’s oldest democracies.
 
I ask these questions because less than one percent of Australians have actually read their Constitution.
 
Not surprisingly most look on the Constitution and matters relating to it as one of the least interesting subjects and it is no wonder that in 1988 the Hawk Constitutional Commission found that almost 50 percent of all Australians were unaware that Australia even had a written Constitution and by 1994 the Keating Government’s Civics Expert Group found that 82 percent of Australians knew absolutely nothing about the content of the Constitution.
 
Few are aware that whilst our Constitution has been based on the Westminster system it incorporates the ideal of a senate from the United States,  the principles of federation from Canada and the concept of referendums from Switzerland.
 
However the very essence of the Constitution is contained in the Crown of the United Kingdom which from 1953 also became the individual and separate Crown of Australia.
 
It is a Crown that has been able to separate itself to individually and uniquely embody the principle of democracy protecting the people against the excesses of government.
 
It is through our constitutional Crown that Australians enjoy the laws and indeed all of the intrinsic rights and liberties enshrined within the practice of the Westminster system. 
 
However our system of government in Australia is not identical to the British system.  Indeed it is far, far better for in Britain Parliament is supreme but in Australia the people are supreme.  They are supreme because Parliament is totally answerable to the Crown and the Crown is totally answerable to the people and our Constitution cannot be changed by Parliament,  only by the people at referendum.
 
This is what makes our Constitution uniquely Australian and from the time of the Statute of Westminster of 1931,  which followed a series of Imperial Conferences,  the British Government relinquished whatever remaining formal influence they possessed over Australia thus making us not only uniquely Australian but uniquely independent.
 
The Republicans say that they are talking just about a ‘tippexing’ out of the Queen and the Governor-General,  replacing those words with ‘President’.  In fact Malcolm Turnbull talks about: “a minor - substantial - cosmetic change”.
 
They feel that this sort of simplistic format is easier to ‘sell’ to the people.  In reality it is rather like trying to fit a square piece of wood in a round hole for Constitutional Monarchies and Republics are two entirely different systems and are totally - totally incompatible.
 
Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen.  The republicans want to get rid of the Crown for they know that without the Crown we have no constitution.  Australia’s constitutional Crown is the fulcrum of our democracy and we must accept - warts and all - that the Queen,  the Monarchy and the Crown are all intertwined within our system.  A system that has protected our freedom and our independence for the greater part of this century.
 
The matter of Reserve Powers is one which is greatly misunderstood even by many of our politicians and this is no indictment for I liken the Constitution to a clock.  You tell the time from it.  You rely upon it,  but you haven’t a clue how to put the different parts together to make it work.
 
As I have said,  our Constitution is essentially a contract of federation establishing a union under the Crown which means that instead of writing down every convention and reserve power,  we inherit all these under the Westminster system of government and English Common Law.
 
Reserve Powers are the constitutional authority of a Head of State (or in our case a Governor-General) to restrict, refuse and/or override the authority of an elected government and are brought into being as a part of the checks and balances exercised against the excesses of government.
 
Section 59 of the proposed model to be voted upon in eighteen weeks’ time stipulates that: “The President shall act on the advice of the Federal Executive Council, the Prime Minister or another Minister of State; but the President may exercise a power that was a reserve power of the Governor-General in accordance with the constitutional conventions relating to the exercise of that power”.
 
As you will readily see,  the problem we face with a republic and particularly with this model is that the written and unwritten powers of the Governor-General - now always subject to checks and balances inherent within the Crown - will be transferred to a ‘political’ president who will not have to adhere to such checks.
 
Some reserve powers are written and therefore justiciable but most are unwritten and open to conventional interpretation but with the removal of the Crown,  the guidelines on the use of Reserve Powers will also have been removed.  Therefore they can be whatever the President and/or the High Court may determine them to be.
 
Put quite simply,  one cannot ‘tippex’ out a few words in our existing Constitution which is founded on the principle of Constitutional Monarchy and create a Republic.  It creates a Constitution where the powers of the Crown remain but without any of its checks and balances.
 
Furthermore Section 59, as quoted above instead of making the Prime Minister subject to the authority of the Crown (always representing the people) in fact makes the President subject to the authority of the Prime Minister.
 
Should the Referendum succeed and we become a republic implanted onto our existing Constitution,  we will be handing all the Reserve Powers hitherto exercised by the independent umpire of the Crown to an unrestrained and potentially  ‘political’ President.
 
For under the proposed Republican model the Crown will be removed and its powers assumed by a President who will be appointed for a five-year term by a two thirds majority of the Members of Parliament at a joint sitting on the nomination of the Prime Minister which must be seconded by the Leader of the Opposition.   
However under the model a President can be dismissed by the Prime Minister ‘at will’ subject only to obtaining approval by a majority of the House of Representatives within thirty days - a foregone conclusion as the Prime Minister would already command a majority except in the case of a minority government.
 
Under our system the most effectively powerful person in the country is the Prime Minister for it is he who makes the day-to-day decisions of government.  Our system of government under the constitutional Crown allows the Head of Government to govern without interference provided he does not impinge upon the constitutional rights of the people.
 
Australians do not have much reverence or respect for our Prime Ministers.  Do you think that having a Kim Beasley - or a Paul Keating - like personality as President is suddenly going to create an international Australian identity or even make us all ‘hold our heads high’?
 
With the model now being discussed openly,  Australians at last have the chance of realizing that what is actually meant is the removal of our constitutional Crown which essentially contains the power of the Constitution as an independent umpire to protect the people from the excesses of government and the transfer of that power to a president who will be a cipher of the Prime Minister. The very politicians our present system seeks to protect us against.
 
Already our Governments have entered into several thousand treaties manipulating the Constitution to override the autonomy of our otherwise sovereign States and allow United Nations committees to sit in judgment over Australian law. This subversion of our Constitution constitutes a far greater threat to Australia’s sovereignty than the fact that we share our Sovereign with sixteen other Realms.
 
One thing that will never change - and that is the fact that politicians will always seek to manipulate the Constitution to give them greater power,  for,  as they often say,  ‘the good of the people’.
 
Much has been made of the High Court ruling against the dual nationality of former Senator-elect Heather Hill in which Britain has been declared as a ‘foreign power’.
 
Let us not forget that when we talk about the Queen,  we talk not about Her Majesty as Queen of the United Kingdom but as QUEEN OF AUSTRALIA.
 
Today our constitutional involvement with Britain is as independent as our involvement with Canada of which Her Majesty is also Queen.
 
If we ‘get rid’ of the Crown, do we not also get rid of those laws and conventions we have inherited?
 
To those who are urging us to get rid of the Queen I say,  for the sake of Australia,  why not develop a model if you can which in every way matches the checks and the balances we currently enjoy under our current Constitution and then move for change.  But please don’t seek change for the sake of change.
 
The old nursery rhyme comes to mind:
For want of a nail , the shoe was lost:
For want of the shoe , the horse was lost;
For want of the horse , the rider was lost;
For want of the rider , the battle was lost;
For want of the battle , the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a nail .
 
Let not Australia lose the horse and eventually the kingdom - in other words our constitutional stability - for the want of a nail - for the sake of change for change’s sake.
 
 
 
Adelaide, June 1999
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
THE ‘BATTLE OF THE BOYNE’
Address To The Loyal Orange Institution
 
The Referendum campaign saw so many organizations that were classified as ‘Loyalist’ which should mean that they were Loyal to The Crown.  They often had as a patron Her Majesty the Queen or a member of the Royal Family and it was a sense to me of very great regret that most of these organizations refused to involve themselves in the campaign,  saying that it was ‘too political’ and that they ‘might have Republicans as members’.
 
However the Loyal Orange Institution declared themselves to be solidly behind us and contributed many thousands to the campaign and were it not for them,  it would have been unlikely that we would have been able to print the leaflets which found their way into tens of thousands of homes throughout Australia.
 
The Loyal Orange Institution in Australia is a religious and not a political organization.  It should not be classified as anti-Roman Catholic but is rather pro-Protestant, pro-the Crown and pro-the defeat of the Catholic armies of James II and Louis XIV at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
 
The members of the Loyal Orange Institution have truly proven themselves to be true friends of the Crown.  The following is an Address given at their Annual Dinner in July 1999.
 
 
In July 1690 the armies of William III defeated James II close to the river of Boyne.  A victory which entrenched the Bill of Rights and parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom and its colonies existent and in the future.
A victory which we are celebrating this evening,  for without that victory,  it is probable that we would not have as a Preamble to our Constitution one which I firmly believe was written under divine inspiration and one which guarantees the freedom that is the right of every Australian citizen.
 
“Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”.
 
Ladies and gentlemen:
 
At 26 minutes past noon - a time when parliamentarians are rushing off for their taxpayer subsidised lunch - on Wednesday the 2nd June 1999 legislation passed through the Legislative Council of this State to amend the Machiavellian Australia Acts to enable New South Wales to introduce a republican form of government and to alter laws relating to the powers and functions of the Queen and the Governor in our State.
 
Similar legislation is passing through each of the six States that form our Union.
 
Many here may recall that, at the Constitutional Convention,  the Prime Minister promised that our Preamble would not be changed.  In fact,  in its website the Government states: “The existing preamble, which is contained in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK), rather than in the Australian Constitution itself, would remain intact”.
 
However there is now concern that the Preamble proposed by the Prime Minister may have the potential of nullifying the intent of our existing Preamble.
The Federal Government in a stealth-like manner has introduced a second Bill entitled the ‘Constitution (Requests) Bill’ the purpose of which is to amend the Statute of Westminster to repeal parts of our Preamble and to remove certain covering clauses to our Constitution Act - which is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
 
At this very moment we are in the midst of a crusade directed at supportive Members of each of the State Parliaments in an endeavour to force these issues out into the open and to block the passage of these bills in that State.  For if one State declines to pass this legislation,  then the attempt to thwart the will of the people will fail.
 
Whilst this legislation is subject to the passage of the Referendum - as long as it is lying on the table - it is ready to be used at any time.
 
Having misled us openly about our Preamble,  can we trust our politicians with this power?  A power which can be utilised at any time with simple amendments to forever change our Constitution and to forever destroy the sovereignty of the Australian people.
 
No, no and again I say no.
 
Whatever happens,  I give you an undertaking here today and that is that we will never stop warning people of the dangers of a republic and particularly of this model.
 
My message is that we are engaged in a desperate fight to save,  not only the Crown,  not only the Monarchy but more especially the democracy of the Australian people.
If we are to go down we will go down fighting because I can assure you that should the politicians ever wrest total power from the people,  this country will not be worth living in for our Westminster style of government will be totally corrupted.
 
Let not the valiant efforts of those at Runnymede and the Battle of the Boyne to bring us Magna Carta and to entrench the Bill of Rights be in vain.
 
 
 
Sydney, July 1999
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE NO
 
With just three months to go to the Referendum,   short articles like this were being rushed around to our volunteers and interested parties in pamphlet form in answer to the many questions being raised by the media and some members of the public.
 
 
In less than three months’ time Australia may be committed to a downward path spiralling to the erosion of the constitutional freedom and democracy as experienced for nigh on a century,  for on the 6th November 1999 - in a grab for absolute power - politicians are forcing the Australian people to choose between the existing well tried system of Constitutional Monarchy or to change to a hotchpotch model of a republic which even leading Republicans admit is seriously flawed.
 
When drafting Australia’s unique Constitution,  the Founding Fathers ensured that there would be many checks against the politicians to protect the democratic freedom of the people by requiring that the government,  the  law,  control of our defense forces and similar powers were vested in what is called the constitutional Crown
 
Although our laws and the system by which we are governed essentially originated from Britain,  our Constitution and associated statutes and laws ensure that we are totally free of any direction from any country including the United Kingdom.
 
During this century Australia has declared war in its own right on four occasions and has entered into many thousands of treaties.  In fact the only constitutional link we have with other countries,  including the United Kingdom,  is through sharing as our Sovereign the Queen with the fifteen other countries called the ‘Commonwealth Realms’.
 
As Sovereign of Australia the Queen has bound herself to serve the legal will of the people of this country through an oath taken at her Coronation nearly half a century ago and over these years Her Majesty has never knowingly broken her Oath.  All politicians in Australia have taken an Oath of Allegiance to the Queen and yet it is clear that to so many their oath is meaningless.
 
It is through the Crown that the Australian people are linked to Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and indeed all those laws of England which evolved over centuries of conflict and negotiation.
 
Under the (uncodified) Constitution of the United Kingdom,  their Parliament is supreme.  However our (written) Constitution ensures that through the Crown,  it is the people who are supreme.  This is why the politicians are forced to a referendum where only YOU can decide to give them their Republic.
 
Under Australian law the Queen is Queen of Australia and Her Majesty can only visit Australia by invitation of the State and/or Federal Governments.  Furthermore her sole constitutional function is,  always on the advice of the Prime Minister,  to appoint and/or dismiss the Governor-General whose role is similar to that of a Head of State .
 
This procedure is very important as it ensures that the Governor-General cannot be subordinate to the Prime Minister.
Our Constitution is therefore based on the (Australian) Crown symbolized by the Queen and directed by the Governor-General.  However under the Republic model,  the Crown, the Queen and the Governor-General will all be replaced with a President who will be a political personality similar to our Prime Ministers such as Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard.
 
Although the Republican model proposes that a President be selected by an exhaustive and complex procedure and elected by a two thirds majority of a joint sitting of both Federal Houses of Parliament,  the Prime Minister, if he so wishes,  can dismiss the President subject only to obtaining approval of his party in the House of Representatives.
 
The Republican model does not mention the Senate in this dismissal procedure which raises the question:  is the next stage to remove the Senate?
 
Also scrupulously avoided by politicians and media alike is the cost of change to a republic.  Although no official estimates have been provided rough figures put the exercise at around 500 million dollars.  This figure does not include the building of a presidential palace for which, some say, plans are already under way.   The current cost of the Office of the Crown (the Queen and the Governor-General and also including the budget for the Order of Australia) is less than ten million dollars a year compared to over 300 million dollars annually for the US Executive Office!   Australian aid to Indonesia in 1993 alone was more than ten times the amount of the cost of our Crown!
 
Australia is one of the youngest nations on earth.  However,  due to all the checks and balances devised over seven Constitutional Conventions and years of deliberation by our Founding Fathers in the closing years of the last century,  we are today one of the oldest and most envied constitutional democracies.
What this Republican model means is that we will lose all these checks and balances and that our Prime Minister,  who already has too much power and is far too distant from the people,  will become even more powerful and even more remote.  Furthermore,  if the proposed model succeeds at the Referendum,  the politicians propose to hold a further Constitutional Convention to enable them to effect potentially radical changes.
 
The word ‘republic’ is derived from the Latin word ‘res publica’,   ‘res’ translated as meaning concern and ‘publicus’ meaning public.  A republic must therefore be in the ‘interests of the people’.  However what is proposed is to remove our existing system - proven time and time again to be for the good of the people - and to replace it with an arrangement that will be good only for politicians and self interest groups.
 
We are the first to concede that our constitutional arrangements are not perfect.  However,  we have a system of government that more than matches the checks and balances inherent within our current Constitutional Monarchy.  Is it not foolish to destroy the keystone of our democracy just because the politicians want more power?
 
 
 
Sydney, August 1999
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
ONE HERITAGE.  ONE CROWN
Address At The Royal Canadian Military Institute
 
Later in August of 1999,  I was invited to speak to a gathering at the Royal Canadian Military Institute as well as other organizations in Canada,  such as the Toronto Rotary Club.  The following is my speech to the RCMI:
 
 
It is indeed a very great pleasure to have this opportunity of meeting with you all in this very distinguished room.
 
Distinguished not only because of its situation within the portals of this hallowed club but also distinguished because it is named after a great man of principle and vision.  Lieutenant General John Simcoe,  first Governor of Upper Canada and founder of this great city.
 
Australia has also had its great men of principle and vision as doubtless have all those outposts of the British Empire for together we share in a glorious heritage.  A heritage of language.  A heritage of culture and a heritage of parliamentary democracy under the Crown.
 
It is interesting to note that Governor Simcoe spoke about the heritage bestowed upon this country when he opened the first Parliament of Upper Canada in 1792.  The constitutional heritage we share is, in fact,  based on the Ten Commandments which were adopted by Alfred the Great over a thousand years ago as his Constitution.
 
Over centuries of conflict and reform embracing Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights these simple but meaningful words evolved into what is now known as ‘the Westminster System’.  A system which both our countries chose to adopt at the time of our independence but with the added advantage of converting the Monarchy into a constitutional Crown.
 
With the break up of the Empire we have seen the political leaders of former colonies blatantly corrupt the Westminster system to force dictatorships upon their peoples so much so that today very few member nations of the Commonwealth are true democracies.
 
I am afraid that our democracy and even that of Britain itself, has been compromised by the perfection of the two party system and the use of the Whip to suppress the independent beliefs of Members of Parliament and to force them to vote along party lines.
 
Was it not Edmund Burke,  that great icon so often quoted but rarely heeded by politicians who said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”    We have the best system of government in the world,  but even the best will fail us if we allow it to.
 
With the globalization of economics and politics,  the power of the politician has grown as they all combine to subjugate the freedom of the people in their quest for increased authority.
 
However despite the vigorous attempts of the politicians to reduce the Monarchy to a cipher-like status,  it nevertheless continues to provide a final check and a final balance against the excesses of our Governments and ensure at least the semblance of parliamentary democracy.
It is because politicians resent having to always answer to a higher authority that,  in Australia,  they have been stealthily preparing our People for constitutional change beginning over three decades ago with small erosions such as the discontinuing of God Save the Queen in public places and the gradual cessation of civics education in schools.  So successful has this campaign of stealth been that our hitherto much loved and well respected Queen is now openly ridiculed and even vilified by our politicians supported by the ever-venomous media.
 
It is thus that in less than three months time,  against a background of predetermined ignorance and subjected to an onslaught of prejudicial and blatant misinformation,  that Australians will be required to decide on their constitutional future.
 
Our fight however is not just against the Republicans. Like the poor,  they have always been with us.  No,  our fight is against the wealthy, the elite and the politicians of all parties combined together in an unholy alliance actively supported by our foreign dominated media  with the sole intent of coercing us into a republic.
 
Combined together because through the removal of checks and balances these self-seeking powers will be able to influence the Office of President to benefit their own ends.
 
And if you think that this could never happen in a westernized nation,  I need only suggest you look at the politicking of your neighbour to the South where the support of ‘Big Business’ is even required to obtain a pre-selection.
 
Just consider the import of those moving words of the United States Declaration of Independence ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’  Moving words indeed,  ‘all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights
 
Wonderful words:  ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’.  Words which are also very appropriately applicable to our two nations which,  unlike the United States of America,   have achieved what I consider to be a purer democracy under the constitutional Crown.
 
In Australia we are so isolated that many are beguiled into thinking we would be better off as a republic whereas,  in Canada,  you have the threat that loss of the Crown may well mean absorption into the United States of America.
 
However let is be said that should our politicians ever succeed in their irrational but nevertheless emotive arguments and persuade the people to vote for a republic,   be assured that it will not be long before your own politicians use this precedent to follow the same pathway
 
I have always believed that many years ago,  Canada, Australia and New Zealand should have formed a separate alliance.   Is it not time for this to happen now?
 
Australia and Canada.   One heritage.  One Crown.
 
 
 
Toronto,  August 1999
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
 
OUR DEMOCRATIC TRADITIONS
 
On my return from Canada I stopped off in the United Kingdom and spoke to gatherings in England and Scotland.  The following article was taken from the various comments I made in Britain and in New South Wales,  South Australia and Tasmania on my return.
 
 
Recently,  at Toronto Airport,  waiting for a plane sitting across the aisle from a café I was somewhat startled by a delivery boy dropping a tray of sealed containers of sandwiches and fruit salad.
 
The boy then picked up the fruit from the floor - not to throw it away - but to insert each piece with his soiled fingers back into the so called sealed ‘untouched by human hand’ containers.
 
There were two lessons I learned from this experience.  The first is that never again will I trust any message about hygiene on these containers and the second is that despite written assurances to the contrary,  so many things are not really what they seem.
 
The Republican model Australians are being asked to vote upon is rather like a sealed package.  It is being made to look pristine and exciting but once the package is opened people realize that it is not as it seems on the outside.  Not only is it tainted but also it is a can of worms.
 
On the outside is a message focused on duping people that the dawn of a republic at the dawn of the new millennium will automatically eradicate all problems and will ease us all into a utopian society.
 
On the inside we find that this message cannot be further from the truth.  Facts prove that rather than forge the way ahead,  a republic,  with estimated   immediate costs of several hundred million dollars and potential ongoing costs in the region of several billion,  will sink us further into debt and could well lead to political instability the like of which has never before been seen in our history.
 
A history,  I might mention,  which although somewhat short is nevertheless a history which has produced a rich,  a varied and an intrinsically Australian culture.  It was a culture established not by commercial interests as in India and other countries but by the struggles of our early settlers who over years of tenacity and strife grappled and tamed our harsh environment so that within a hundred years following the possession of the land ‘Terra Australis’ by Captain James Cook for the British Empire in 1770,  there was established a civilization,  the like of which had never been known in this part of the world.
 
What Britain did give to us was English law and the Westminster  system of government encompassing a myriad of rights and freedoms.  It is by far the best legacy that our former masters could ever have bequeathed to us or indeed to any of the nations it once ruled.
 
It is thus that today,  together with New Zealand and Canada and  indeed those other outposts of settlement we share in a glorious heritage.  A heritage of language.  A heritage of culture and above all,  a heritage of parliamentary democracy under the Crown.
 
A constitutional heritage based on the Ten Commandments adopted by Alfred the Great over a thousand years ago as his Constitution.
 
A heritage continued by William the Conqueror.
 
A heritage which led to Magna Carta of 1215,  long before the very idea of constitutional monarchy was even conceived.
 
Magna Carta secured ‘the ancient liberties of the English people’ and required that the Sovereign could govern and introduce new taxes ONLY with the consent of his people.
 
The last of many monarchs who lost their thrones for abusing these rights was James II who,  through his total disregard of Parliament,  was defeated in what is termed the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-9 and was replaced by his son-in-law,  a grandson of Charles 1,  who was crowned as William III.
 
Before his coronation,  William III was required to assent to a ‘Declaration of Rights’ which went further than simply engraining the ‘ancient rights and liberties of the people’ for it provided a check on the authority of the King by ensuring that Members of Parliament be freely elected and enjoy free speech unimpeded by royal power or threats.
 
The Crown was prevented from keeping a standing army outside war without the consent of Parliament and was forced to rely on Parliament for income.
 
Thus we can see how authority passed from the King firstly to the nobles and then to Parliament eventually evolving into the Westminster democracy now considered to be the most perfect system of  government today.
 
In the latter years of the last century Australians met to determine independence.  It was decided to create a federation of the six separate Colonies confirming their existence as States under the Crown of the United Kingdom for it is only through the Crown that the Westminster system of democracy can be complete.
 
A system which indeed fourteen other former colonies still choose to adopt,  most like Australia with the added advantage of adapting the Monarchy into a constitutional Crown,  for what was once the Crown of Great Britain Ireland and possessions and dependencies has separated into constituent parts so that the Crown pertaining to Australia is now uniquely the Australian Crown.  A Crown which amounts to far more than a sum of the Queen, the Governor-General, State Governors, Federal and State Parliaments for it is a Crown based on the will of the people.
 
A Crown that politicians quickly realized in 1975 was far from being merely symbolic but which held very real and substantial powers that could be exercised by the Governor-General and although since that time our politicians have done everything within their power to diminish the Monarchy into a cipher-like status,  it nevertheless continues to provide a final check and a final balance against the excesses of our politicians.
 
We have the best system of government in the world.  But even the best will fail us if we allow it to.
 
The democracy of our nations is in the hands of the people,  but it will always be in danger if the people continue to blithely elect politicians who owe allegiance not to their electorate but to their Party. 
 
Whilst in ancient days it was necessary to restrain the excesses of the King in modern days it became necessary to restrain the excesses of Parliament and this is why our Founding Fathers sought to fashion a permanent federation to prevent any abuse of power by a Commonwealth Government through an elaborate ratification process for amendment.
 
It is because of this process that politicians have to go to the people before the checks and balances remaining within our Constitution can be removed.
 
It is because of this process that we face a Referendum on the 6th November.
 
Whilst there have been many attempts by Republicans to promote their cause,   including a failed coup,  a rebellion and the attempted assassination of Queen Victoria’s son,  the Duke of Edinburgh,  none have come so very close to success as now.
 
It all began ten years ago,  in September 1989,  when a group of  antiquated demagogues gathered in the Woollahra mansion of former socialist Premier Neville Wran for a Sunday brunch at which,  according to the writer Thomas Keneally in his book Our Republic (published in 1993 by William Heinemann Australia),  a number of bottles of Hunter Valley chardonnay had also been drained’.  It was at this lunch that Keneally says that: ‘Neville Wran leaned over the table and said:  “The other thing I want to see happen before I bloody well die is an Australian Republic”’.
 
The consequence of this luncheon was the formal launch of the Australian Republican Movement on July 7th 1991 at the Regent Hotel in Sydney guarded by men from the Special Branch.  So fearful were they of a public backlash.
 
At this meeting the writer Keneally read out a three-and-a half-page statement in which he said: “If we cannot find loyalty, sanity and human decency amongst ourselves, then we are finished”.
It was proposed that the ultimate format of the republic would be decided through public debate,  however the model for a republic that Australians are now being presented with,  is so flawed and so befuddled as its original founders appeared to be at that alcoholic luncheon of ten years ago.
 
Those proud words of Keneally at the launch of the Australian Republican Movement: “loyalty, sanity and human decency” have all gone by the board as politicians descend to a new level of disloyalty and Republicans insanely push their model for a ‘politician’s Republic’ that - according to opinion polls - is definitely opposed to the wishes of the public.
 
As regard ‘human decency’,  I leave it to you to decide what sort of decency you can expect following a reference to the Monarchy as a ‘colostomy bag’ by Keneally on St Patrick’s Day in 1993 particularly in view of the Queen Mother’s condition following her serious abdominal operation in 1966.
 
In abusing the free speech which is our constitutional right,  people have been encouraged to vilify our Sovereign and to deprecate our Monarchy.   So much so that one does think it rather a shame that those old customs of the Ireland of which Keneally is so fond are not applicable today for under ancient Gaelic law if the writings of a writer were found to cause harm then he could actually be made to ‘eat his own words’ in one or another form of retribution.
 
However,  is not the Republic debate but a symptom of a far greater malaise?  Have not the Governments of all the Dominions been enacting legislation designed to curb the rights of the people?
 
We have seen the British Government with,  I might mention,  the connivance of the Government of Australia forsaking its responsibilities to the Crowned Dominions by joining Europe.
Instead of forging a closer relationship with those nations it once subjugated and populated - the very nations to whom they appealed for help in two world wars.  The British Government turned its back on us,  itself capitulating to the forces of the ‘United Empire’ of Europe.
 
In 1984 our Governments agreed that the British, the Australians and the Canadians would now term the citizens of each other as ‘aliens’.
 
This crude terminology has done much to dispel any thought of Britain as the homeland once visitors are made to queue whilst those against whom they fought alongside Britain - at Britain’s request - walk blithely through the special EEC Gate.
 
With the recent decision of the High Court of Australia terming Britain a ‘foreign power’,  our two nations are now as remote from each other as we could possibly be.
 
This is not due to acts of the people but of our politicians.
 
Having said all this you may well say ‘why do we bother to fight a republic’?
 
The Australian Monarchist League is fighting a republic because our Constitution was not forced upon us by Britain,  but was devised by Australians to suit Australia.  It has protected our democracy for nigh on a hundred years.  It has made us,  one of the youngest nations on earth into one of the oldest democracies and just because our Governments are forcing a wedge between our peoples we are not prepared to trade our heritage for the worthless scrap of paper that would be our republican constitution.
 
Our written Constitution is different from the uncodified and largely unwritten one of the United Kingdom for ours is similar to a trust where the power of the nation is reposed in the Crown to protect us from the excesses of politicians.
 
The inclusion of Section 128 requiring a referendum to be held to enable constitutional change means that in Australia it is the people who are supreme but in Britain,  because there is no requirement to seek the approval of the People for constitutional change,  it is Parliament that has supremacy.
 
However the republic that may be thrust upon us takes the power from the Crown and places it in the hands of a president who is subject to the will of the Prime Minister,  thereby placing total authority in the hands of the very entity our present Constitution protects us against.
 
Our Constitution is a very simple document.  It does not need to be lengthy or complicated for its essence is that we are a federation ‘under the Crown’.
 
It is through the Crown that we, in Australia,  inherit those ‘ancient rights and   liberties of the people’.
 
However,  once the Crown is removed then the integrity of our Constitution is left open to interpretation by politicians and the judiciary.
 
It is like a ‘house of cards’:  remove the Crown and it all comes tumbling down.
 
When those wise men who were our Founding Fathers devised our Constitution,  they deliberated for years over what the politicians of today look on as merely a ‘string of words’ but which in reality is  perhaps the most important passage ever to be written in the history of modern Australia for what they did was to write the Preamble as well as to draft our Constitution.
“Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”.
 
It is this Preamble.  It is this (to quote Shakespeare),  ‘rhapsody of words’ written under what I firmly believe was divine inspiration that has created the basis our free and democratic Constitution that has made Australia the envy of the world.
 
If our politicians are to destroy the integrity of our Constitution,  they must first destroy this Preamble for it is the agreement by which our States have established themselves into a federation under the Crown.  Is this why our politicians are intent on including a new preamble into the Constitution itself,  having the potential to forever alter the intent of our existing Preamble?
 
Like (to adapt Keats immortal words) ‘embalmers of the still midnight’ our politicians have united in an unholy alliance manipulating and manoeuvring to mendaciously undermine the constitutional supremacy and sovereignty of the Australian people.  To tear down the very fabric of our democracy.  To remove our Crown and to replace it with a political infrastructure totally dependent on the whim of the Prime Minister.
 
We are told by a former Australian Ambassador to the United States of America  that we must have a president because,  as he said:  “taxi drivers in Columbia and Asians at cocktail parties cannot understand our system”.    From my point of view,  our system works far better than anything they have ever been able to come up with.  Furthermore,  who gives a damn what taxi drivers in cocaine-producing countries consider and whilst Asians overseas may not understand how our system works,  it certainly doesn’t stop them crowding into rusty tubs and travelling thousands of miles to reach the safety of our shores.
 
Many high profile Asians are committed Monarchists.  Committed because they, above all,  value and appreciate the freedom they now enjoy in Australia as opposed to the brutal authoritarian regimes from which so many have fled.
 
Although,  time and time again we have found the cards heavily weighted against us,  it is not our lot to be discouraged for I believe intensely in the innate sensibility of the Australian people,  that they will themselves see through the machinations of our politicians and the iniquitous  bias of our media.
 
On our side,  we will never stop warning people of the dangers of a republic and particularly of this model for we are engaged in a desperate fight to save,  not only the Crown,  not only the Monarchy but more especially the democracy of the Australian people.
 
During a recent visit to Scotland I was fortunate enough to be taken to the enthronement site of the ancient princes.   The site on which the forefathers of the Queen, over a thousand years ago,  swore to protect their peoples just as nearly half a century ago Her Majesty swore an oath at her Coronation,  sitting most probably above the same stone throne that those ancients Princes did,   binding herself to serve the legal will of the people of our country.
 
Over these years Her Majesty has never knowingly broken her Oath.  There is no politician.  There is no aspiring president who could  possibly claim likewise.
 
 
 
United Kingdom and Australia,  August/September 1999
 
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
 
A REPUBLIC?  IT’S NOT A SIMPLE CHANGE
 
With the Referendum just a month away it was time to put our cards on the table as I tried to do with this article.
 
 
Each year,  on ANZAC day,  Australians throughout the world commemorate the efforts of those returned servicemen who had volunteered for active service in the First World War together with those who fought so valiantly in the Second and subsequent wars.
 
The decision of those who volunteered to fight for the liberty of mankind was most probably the greatest they had ever made,  for it was their life they put at risk.
 
However the decision that we Australians will make in just a few days’ time will be just as great,  for the Referendum on the 6th November 1999 will decide forever on whether the democracy of this nation is to remain protected under the Crown or to be totally politicised under a republic!
 
The wording on the ballot paper states:
 
‘To alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General being replaced by a President appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament’.
 
The question being asked is misleading: for it is not simply the Queen and the Governor-General who are being replaced,  but more importantly the Crown.
 
What is the Crown?  Every nation has power generally exercised by Parliament,  through control of the forces (Army, Navy, Air Force and Police) and through the administration of the law.
 
Under a Constitutional Monarchy this power is vested in the Crown which is subject to the people.  If it were not so how else could Australians themselves decide at referendum whether or not to remove it?
 
The Crown is worn by the Sovereign who has divested all power to the Governor-General whose appointment is recommended by the Prime Minister and made by the Queen.
 
The reason for this process of recommendation to the Sovereign is to ensure the independence of the Governor-General from the influence of politicians.
 
It is a small but very important check for if the Prime Minister appointed the Governor-General direct,  then would not the Governor-General be beholden to the Prime Minister alone?
 
With his mandate,  or authorisation,  coming from the Crown,  the Governor-General’s allegiance is to the people and not to politicians.
 
The Republican model which Australians will vote upon,  in just a few days’ time,  removes the Crown and does not replace it.  Instead the power of the nation will be politicised,  devolving upon Parliament and the Prime Minister.
 
This will happen essentially because of changes and additions to several sections of the Constitution.
 
The new Section 58 deals with Assent to a Bill passed by the Parliament.
 
At present all Bills must receive the Royal Assent by the Governor-General whose duty it is to ensure that all Acts of Parliament are constitutional and do not obviously endanger the liberties of the people.
 
Under the Republican Section 58,  the Assent will be ‘subject to this Constitution’.
 
It is important to refer to the following Section 59 which deals with Executive Powers which I have simply termed ‘Power’ earlier in this article.
 
Section 59 of the proposed constitution establishes an Executive Council in a similar fashion to our existing Constitution.  However,  it goes further to incorporate the very important words:
 
‘The President shall act on the advice of the Federal Executive Council, the Prime Minister or another Minister of State; but the President may exercise a power that was a reserve power of the Governor-General in accordance with the constitutional conventions relating to the exercise of that power.’
 
Under our current Constitution the Governor-General can refuse Assent should he feel that the Act of Parliament presented to him is unconstitutional.
 
What this Section actually does is to remove the President’s independence to refuse Assent and to make him or her subservient to the Prime Minister or indeed to any Minister.
It is interesting to note that when Labor came to power in 1972,  Gough Whitlam established an Executive Council of two ministers until his Parliamentary Party had caucused and elected Ministers.
 
The new Section 62 is perhaps the most iniquitous inclusion into the proposed Constitution for under this Section:
 
‘The Prime Minister may, by instrument signed by the Prime Minister, remove the President with effect immediately.’
 
The only requirement for the Prime Minister is to:
 
‘seek the approval of the House of Representatives for the removal of the President within thirty days after the removal.’
 
Whilst the appointment process of a President requires approval of a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate,   the Senate has been strangely excluded from the dismissal process.
 
The Prime Minister is Prime Minister because he commands a majority in the House of Representatives.  The exclusion of Senate involvement  thereby removes almost all possibility of the sacking being disapproved.
 
Under our current system, if the Prime Minister wishes to remove the Governor-General he, (or she) must formally request the Queen to dismiss.
 
This again is a small but nevertheless vital check to a rogue Prime Minister for,  whilst the Queen must always accede to the request of the Prime Minister,  the fact is that the Prime Minister cannot himself sack the Governor-General as the appointment and dismissal process is outside his direct control.
It is important here to look at the new Section 60 which deals with the nomination and election of a President.  It is this process which replaces a major check under the Crown.
 
The Section states:
 
‘After considering the report of a committee established and operating as the Parliament provides to invite and consider nominations for appointment as President, the Prime Minister may, in a joint sitting of the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, move that a named Australian citizen be chosen as the President.
 
If the Prime Minister’s motion is seconded by the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives, and affirmed by a two-thirds majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the named Australian citizen is chosen as the President’.
 
It all sounds democratic,  until one considers the import of the words: ‘a committee established and operating as the Parliament provides’.
 
This means that the selection process for the Nominating Committee will be provided for in an Act of Parliament.  An Act which Parliament can amend at any time.  For reasons best known to the politicians,  the process has not been incorporated into the proposed Constitution.
 
Section 70A is one which I believe is fraught with danger.  It deals with the continuation of what is known as the ‘Royal Prerogative’ which is the ‘right’ of the Crown to prevent unconstitutional acts by Parliament.
 
 
Section 70A states:
 
‘Until the Parliament otherwise provides, but subject to this Constitution, any prerogative enjoyed by the Crown in right of the Commonwealth immediately before the office of Governor-General ceased to exist shall be enjoyed in like manner by the Commonwealth and, in particular, any such prerogative enjoyed by the Governor-General shall be enjoyed by the President’.
 
The Prerogative exercised by the Governor-General is not unfettered.  By that I mean that there are rules and guidelines called Conventions and Reserve Powers which control the way in which the Governor-General acts.  The Conventions and Reserve Powers are a process of the Crown.
 
Once the Crown has been removed, how can these restrictions operate to limit the power of a President?
 
Under the Republican Constitution,  the President will be shackled to the authority of the Prime Minister and Parliament.
 
The repeated words ‘until the Parliament otherwise provides’ means that Parliament can change this Section without any further reference to the people.
 
The amendments to Section 34 deal with the qualification of Members of Parliament.  It deletes certain references and replaces them with ‘the person must be an Australian citizen’.
 
Whilst no one could possibly argue with this,  the Section also commences with the words ‘until the Parliament otherwise provides’ thereby authorizing  Parliament to amend this section without further reference to the people.
 
There is a Bill before Parliament to further amend section 44 to remove the restrictions on those persons standing for Parliament from owing allegiance to a foreign power.
 
This Section could well open the floodgates for new Australians whose prime allegiance may not be to Australia but to other countries or ‘powers’ being elected to Parliament.
 
The amended Section 117, which guarantees the rights that a person may enjoy in one State throughout all of the States, replaces the words ‘subject of the Queen’ to ‘Australian citizen’.
 
Before 1984 British subjects were allowed to enter and reside in Australia without restriction.  Once enrolled they were forced to vote.  They were also subject to conscription during the Vietnam War.  Some 300,000 did not take out Australian citizenship.
 
Australia also enjoys a special relationship with New Zealand citizens who are currently covered as ‘subjects of the Queen’.  Clause 4 of Schedule 2 of the Republican Constitution deals with this situation stating that the existing provisions ‘continues to apply for the benefit of subjects of the Queen who were resident in a State immediately before the alteration took effect’ .
 
However we believe that this drafting is faulty and will disenfranchise any of these people who may be outside of Australia at the time of the enactment of the new Republican Constitution legislation.
 
Clause (iv) of Section 44 is amended to disqualify any person who: ‘holds any office of profit under the Executive Government of the Commonwealth’ from standing for or sitting in Parliament.
However whilst the existing Section 44 of our Constitution contains a clause excluding: ‘the office of any of the Queen’s Ministers of State for the Commonwealth, or of any of the Queen’s Ministers for a State, or to the receipt of pay, half pay, or a pension, by any person as an officer or member of the Queen’s navy or army, or to the receipt of pay as an officer or member of the naval or military forces of the Commonwealth by any person whose services are not wholly employed by the Commonwealth’,  for some strange reason the words ‘or to the receipt of pay, half pay, or a pension, by any person as an officer or member of the Queen’s navy or army,’  have been struck out.
 
Does this mean that retired defense force personnel are excluded from standing or sitting in Parliament?
 
Section 63 deals with an ‘Acting President and Deputies’
 
Again we see the words ‘until the Parliament otherwise provides’ at the commencement and indeed twice elsewhere in this Section.
 
It is a matter of concern that this section will enable the President to: ‘appoint any person, or any persons jointly or severally, to be the President’s deputy or deputies, and in that capacity to exercise during the pleasure of the President (including while the President is absent from Australia) such powers and functions of the President as the President thinks fit to assign to such deputy or deputies’.
 
If there can be such an elaborate method for the selection of a President why cannot a Deputy be selected from the nomination pool?
 
Does this not allow for the appointment of politicians to the position of Deputy without nomination or election and is it not feasible to assume that a Prime Minister would wait for a President to be out of the country before sending legislation impinging on the constitutional rights of the People to the appointed Deputy President for Assent?
 
Since Federation there have been 42 proposals to change the Constitution put to the people at twenty referendums,  only eight of which have been carried,  i.e.:
 
· Senate Elections (12 December 1906),
· State Debts (13 April 1910),
· State Debts (17 November 1928),
· Social Services (28 September 1946),
· Aboriginals (27 May 1967),
· Senate Casual Vacancies (21 May 1977),
· Referendums (21 May 1977),
· Retirement of Judges (21 May 1977).
 
It is because the Australian people have been very reticent to amend a Constitution that has worked so well in protecting their freedom and  democracy that Republicans are putting forward their changes as being ‘merely cosmetic’!
 
As explained in this article,  these proposals comprise by far the most radical alteration ever proposed with 69 changes at one time,  all of which will drastically alter the way Australians are governed.
 
The Republican debate has now gone on for most of this decade,  yet still Republicans refuse to deal with the real issues,  talking only about ‘an Australian Head of State’.
 
This is not about ‘an Australian Head of State’ but about removing the Crown and transferring power from the people to the politicians.
This is why Australians must vote NO on the 6th November.
 
 
 
Sydney,  October 1999
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 

 
THE TROUNCING OF THE REPUBLIC
 
The Referendum was over.  We had won.  However the media and Republicans were claiming it a shallow victory and that people had just voted against the model of republic on offer.  A grave insult to the Australian people for I had always held that the mainstream Australian,   including the traditional Labor voters (as opposed to the Yuppies, the over-literate and the Marxist type socialists) would vote for the Queen.  I was also confident that many young people would reject the Republican system and vote to stay as we are.
 
 
The Australian Monarchist League will be forever grateful to those who volunteered to assist in our campaign headquarters,  in the delivery of leaflets and on polling booths throughout the nation.  Appreciation is also given to those who gave financial support which was of critical assistance as we struggled to fill gaps through the printing of several million ‘how to vote’ cards and leaflets which were distributed throughout all six States and the two Territories.
 
We have always believed in the innate sensibility of the Australian electorate.  Our special thanks must go to ALL those voters who refused to be bulldozed by the tremendous media and political pressure and instead voted to retain our safe, secure and comfortable system of government by Constitutional Monarchy,  returning a very positive ‘NO’ vote throughout the Nation and in ALL six States.
 
The fight is not over and we continue to need the support of all those who wish to retain the best method of government in the world,  our very own Australian Constitutional Monarchy.
The disgraceful media reporting,  both domestic and international,  on the Referendum on Australia’s constitutional arrangements has clearly revealed their petulance and their embittered bias.
 
We have reports of British newspapers criticizing Australians for opting to retain our constitutional stability with such crass comments as ‘coward’ and ‘let go of your nanny and stand on your own two feet’.
 
How dare these foreign newspapers try to unduly influence and immorally manipulate the votes of the Australian people.
 
Let these scribblers,  influenced by their irrational hatred of Monarchy,  have the courage to come to Australia and call us cowards to our face instead of hiding behind their hackneyed poisoned pens.
 
Their claims that Saturday’s vote was a victory for ‘direct election’ Republicans in their own right is abject nonsense.  The vote was a decisive rejection of any sort of republic in this country.
 
For a referendum to succeed it must obtain a majority of votes Australia wide plus a majority in a majority of States.   In this referendum 55 percent of voters Australia wide plus those in six out of the six States,  rejected a  republic!  It was a massive defeat.
 
The Australian Monarchist League had always stated that traditional Labor voters would come out for the Monarchy and an analysis of the voting taken electorate by electorate clearly proves that we were correct,  for whilst many of the Liberal seats came out in support of the Republic,  old Labor voted positively for the Queen.
 
Traditional Labor is unlikely to hold much enthusiasm for a ‘direct election’ President thereby belying the claims being made that this was not a victory for the Monarchy.
 
106 out of 148 Federal electorates had a majority which voted  ‘NO’.  There was no Federal electorate which voted ‘YES’ anywhere outside the State capitals and the two big New South Wales provincial and industrial cities of Newcastle and Wollongong!
 
In fact thirty-one of the forty-two electorates voting ‘YES’ were within the Sydney/Melbourne metropolitan areas.
 
It was the National and Liberal electorates in the country combined with many Labor areas that rejected not just this Republic,  but ANY sort of Republic.
 
The fact that the Republic was rejected in ALL States clearly shows that even had the ‘Direct Electionists’ campaigned with the ARM Republicans,  they would not have obtained the four States needed to succeed.
 
Furthermore North Sydney, the former electorate of ‘direct-election’ leader and member of the Government No Case Committee Ted Mack who campaigned actively for a ‘No’ ballot,  voted positively for the Republic model on offer by a majority of 1.6 times the ‘No’ vote.  Ted Mack,  I believe,  did not campaign in Western Australia, South Australia or Tasmania and could not therefore have been responsible for the massive Monarchist majority in those States.
 
This all goes towards proving that the rejection of the Republican model on offer was a rejection of any sort of Republic and a vote for the status quo.  A Constitution that has served Australia well for nigh on a hundred years.
 
Ultimately the media are pointing out that 45 percent of voters did vote for a Republic.  However,  should the Republic have won a 55 percent vote,  would they have then pointed out that 45 percent of voters wanted to retain the Monarchy?  I doubt it.
 
In fact had this been an election based on electorates,  the Queen would be considered elected by the most massive majority ever!
 
Since Federation in 1901,  there have been 20 referendums putting forward  42 questions to change the Constitution.  Only eight have been approved by the people. Two additional questions have been put at referendum regarding military conscription for overseas service during World War I.   Both were rejected.
 
Had the Referendum obtained an overall majority but failed to obtain four States,  Republicans may have had some sort of mandate to continue.  However,  with such an outright rejection,  this matter should be put to rest once and for all.
 
There are far more important matters for Australia to consider.  Matters such as unemployment, health and education.  It is therefore essential that the Republican issues which have been dividing our country for nearly a decade be put behind us and that we proceed into the new millennium as a Nation united as one people.
 
Now that the Referendum is over,  Monarchists have a duty to restore those symbols and traditions relevant to the 21st century which have been removed by successive Governments for over 20 years.
 
Above all, a factual civics education programme must be re-instated amongst all schools with an inspectorate established to ensure that such civics teaching is unbiased and accurate.
 
The years ahead will be onerous,  but with such a momentous victory there can no longer be any doubt that the people are behind our current constitutional arrangements.
 
The worldwide attack on the constitutional Crown, the Westminster system and the British peoples has been deferred indefinitely in Australia but will doubtless continue in other ways in Britain and Canada.  The rejection of a Republic in   Australia must be the impetus used to forever demolish the aspirations of those who would seek to remove the checks and balances existent within the Westminster system and the constitutional Crown.
 
 
 
Sydney,  November 1999
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
THE QUEEN’S VISIT
 
The ‘new millennium’ had dawned and no catastrophe had occurred.  We remained a Constitutional Monarchy.  The sky did not fall in nor did anything unusual occur apart from the continuous partying and even that is now more frequent than ever before.
 
Preparations were now in place for the first visit of the Queen since 1991.  During the Republican debate successive Federal Governments had decided not to invite the Queen for fear of a public backlash and by convention,  Her Majesty cannot visit Australia unless first invited by the Government.
 
We were to play an enormous part in ensuring the success of the Royal visit for the media had decided not to publish complete itinerates,  instead giving brief comments.  We obtained details of the full programme and sent them to organizations and individuals throughout the four States to be visited by Her Majesty and were thus able to ensure that our Sovereign was properly welcomed.
 
The tremendous success of the 2000 Royal visit had a very important side effect for it devastated republicans and confirmed the enduring popularity of the Queen.  The large numbers of young people who rushed out onto the streets to greet the Queen also stymied Republican hopes that it was only the elderly who wished to retain our system of Constitutional Monarchy.
 
The following were comments made to guests at a dinner held in Sydney just prior to Her Majesty’s arrival in Australia.
 
 
It is always a pleasure to attend dinners at this very dignified lady’s club that one hesitates to spoil it by including speeches.
 
It rather reminds me of the famous dinner at Guildhall in London where the speaker kept on - and on - and on - and on,  until finally the chairman stood up, lifted his gavel but in his frustration brought it down on the head of the person sitting next to him.  Rather shamed faced,  the chairman sat down.  Twenty minutes later the poor gentleman next to him awoke,  look around in a daze and saw the speaker still waffling on and said to the chairman,  ‘Please, please hit me again’.  Now I hope that this will not be taken as an invitation by the Master of Ceremonies!
 
It is just some six-and-a-half years since I was invited to head the Monarchist League.  At that time,  although there were organizations to promote the Constitution,  all shied away from talking about the Crown and protecting the Queen in - under the Keating era - what was becoming a rapidly increasing hostile environment.
 
Rather irrationally,  I thought that it would only take six months to a year to establish the foundation for the job that needed to be done.
 
At that time the League had about 35 members Australia wide and our efforts to defend the Crown and the Queen were not very well received by those whose agenda was different to ours.  However succeed we did and played,  I believe,  a not insignificant part in the success of the 6th November.
 
As the attacks on our constitutional integrity intensified,  it became clear to me that what we were facing was a part of a much longer term plan to destabilize the democracy of the Commonwealth Realms.  In their own ways, Canada, New Zealand and Britain itself are facing similar attacks.
One of the results of these attacks has been a gradual diminishing of the ties between the peoples of the British Nations.  After all we are historically a British Nation whatever the politically correct may say and even if our politicians and our courts have declared that we are all aliens to one another.
 
This is wrong and the friendship between our peoples must be restored.
 
In 1660 Charles II grandson of the Queen’s direct ancestor James I returned to England after an absence of nine years following the overthrow of Cromwell’s Republican regime.
 
Hundreds of thousand of cheering people lined the streets.  Church bells rang and canons boomed.
 
The people saw the restoration of the King as the restoration of democracy after the oppressive regime of Cromwell.
 
Before the century was out England would have a new King and Queen under which the parliamentary constitutional democracy now known as the Westminster system came into being.
 
Similarly in 43 days time our sovereign,  the Queen of Australia,  Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second,  will arrive in her country after an absence of nearly eight years.  An absence caused by our Federal and State Governments bowing to Republican pressure to keep our Queen away from us.
 
The decisive vote on the sixth of November to retain our Constitution and our Monarchy sent our politicians running for cover and within the month the date was set for the return of the Queen.
 
It falls to us to ensure that that which has been removed - in a Cromwellian-like fashion - must now be restored.
 
Her Majesty was the first sovereign ever to visit Australia,  although her grandfather George V had been here on two occasions - the first as a young man of 17 years and the second as Heir to the Throne in 1901.  On his second visit he was  accompanied by his wife, later to become Queen Mary, to open the first Parliament of the new Commonwealth of Australia.
 
In 1920 the Prince of Wales,  son of George V visited Australia and this was followed in 1927 with a visit by the second son of George V together with his wife Elizabeth,  then the Duke and Duchess of York,  to open the new Federal Parliament House in Canberra.
 
As you would all be aware nine years later that very same couple became George VI and Queen Elizabeth whose centenary of birth we celebrate in exactly six months’ time on the 4th August in the year 2000.
 
In 1954 Her Majesty our Queen made an extensive tour of the Commonwealth.  A vastly different group of nations to that in existence today.
 
Arriving on the ship ‘Gothic’ on Wednesday the third of February Her Majesty was met by hordes of boats of all shapes and sizes offering a welcome few other cities in the world could match.
 
One and a half one million people gathered on the jutting shores of Sydney Harbour providing a tumultuous and uninhibited display of affection
 
Her Majesty was here for just over one month and visited all States spending much time in the country areas.
On this visit Her Majesty will be accompanied by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and will spend two weeks in Australia and will visit the States of New South Wales Victoria Tasmania and Western Australia.
 
She will also call in at Alice Springs.  We understand that for Her New South Wales and probably Victoria leg,  she will be based in Canberra and will fly out from there for engagements.
 
Of course New South Wales can no longer offer the hospitality of a Government House because,  due to the republican intentions of Premier Carr,  we are the only State that no longer has a proper Government House.
 
Just as on Her Majesty’s first visit,  we have approached churches to ring peals of bells as she enters each of the cities on the itinerary
 
The League has made special representation to Her Majesty requesting that she again tour country areas instead of attending events only in the cities as it was the country and the urban areas that overwhelmingly voted for the retention of our Constitutional Monarchy.
 
Hundreds of organizations and civic bodies have sought to be included in the Programme for this Royal visit, from the township of Coolabah (comprising 38 inhabitants) to the prestigious Variety Club. 
 
Representatives from the Palace together with Federal and State Protocol Departments are even now moving throughout the country to finalise the plans and facilities for the visit.
 
Just as officials found in 1660, after an absence of eight years there are very few people remaining who have had experience in organising a royal visit and they have,  accordingly,  had to virtually start from scratch.
 
Organizing a royal visit - or indeed a major state visit - takes an inordinate amount of planning and preparation.
 
Her Majesty, however, is used to the many upsets and difficulties that always occur during such visits.
 
There was the occasion some years ago in India when the President’s staff proceeded to iron Her Majesty’s ball gown with a hot charcoal-filled implement,  leaving soot marks.  Fortunately the Lady-in-Waiting was able to hide those soot marks.  One can be sure that an electric iron has now found its way onto the list of travel items.
 
On a visit last year of the Duke of Edinburgh to Africa,  his staff was sent scouring Buckingham Palace for spare towels as word had been received that there were no towels whatsoever in the hunting lodge where his Royal Highness was to stay.
 
Whilst Australia has electric irons and towels aplenty,  there are so many further details that must be taken into account.
 
On Her Majesty’s first visit to Australia in 1954,  whilst driving in Adelaide,  Her Majesty was struck in the eye by a piece of grit which caused tears to stream down her face whilst she was giving a speech.  One can be certain that eye drops have since been added to the list.
 
The Royal Aides have dozens of pages of items to be checked before the go-ahead can be given to accept an invitation.
 
These include such matters as security - to the height of steps Her Majesty must walk down  - to the availability of clean and hygienic comfort stops.  All must be inspected and passed for approval.
 
As the day approaches we will be given access to the itinerary and we will distribute this to our members and to organizations,  to schools and the like throughout the States and territories to be visited by Her Majesty to enable people to line the streets and cheer the return of their Sovereign.
 
Let us not forget that eight years is a very long time especially after the intensive brainwashing of the people by barrage after barrage of republican propaganda.
 
Accordingly it is up to us and only us to encourage and to motivate the people to put aside any feeling of diffidence and say: “Damn to the Republican media”, “Damn to the Republican politicians” and “Damn to all Republicans” and with a loud voice greet her Majesty as the protector of our democracy and our freedom.
 
A Queen who has never done us any wrong and whose wish has always been only to serve.
 
 
 
Sydney,  February 2000
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
‘SAVE OUR SOVEREIGNTY’
Address To The St George’ Rally At Trafalgar Square
 
In April/May 2000 I visited the United Kingdom where I was invited to address a rally at Trafalgar Square organized by the Save our Sovereignty Movement and later to a meeting of the Swinton Circle at the House of Lords.  With the Republican debate lessening,  I felt that it was time to start exploring those issues which were responsible for causing the absence of unity amongst the English speaking peoples.  My researches revealed that Sir Robert Menzies had expressed similar concerns over forty years before. The following is my speech to the thousand or more people at Trafalgar Square.
 
 
Many of you may be wondering what a person from Australia is doing on this platform today when the subject is ‘the Sovereignty of Britain’.
 
I am here because an attack on the democracy of Britain is an attack on the democracy of Australia.  It is an attack on the democracy of Canada, of New Zealand and indeed of all those nations who have remained true to the Westminster System and who have as their Sovereign,  Her Majesty the Queen.
 
As you would all be aware,  we in Australia have just gone through a most virulent attack on our constitution in an attempt to make us into a republic.  What most of you would not have realized is that the attack emanated from forces outside of Australia and had its first roots in an Act of the British Parliament - the British Nationality Act of 1948 - just over 50 years ago,  itself suspiciously rushed through in some secrecy and without normal consultation.
 
This was,  of course, at a time when there was great pressure resulting from private meetings held at private venues to rationalise - or rather to globalise - the world economy.
 
It was a time just following the establishment of the World Bank.  It was a period when the dream of the recently defeated Nazis for a united Europe was again being mooted.
 
Today,  over half a century later,  Britain is at a stage when its freedoms and its liberties are in tatters and the house is about to collapse around us.  
 
Over the years,  we have seen how Britain has moved inexplicably into Europe whilst its old allies,  the former colonies which without hesitation came to the aid of Britain in its time of need in two world wars and more, have been encouraged to go their own way and to find their own markets.
 
Australia and Canada are now of course going along the pathway of integration into Asia and America but the ultimate loser has been Britain and the British peoples within the former colonies. 
 
The old maxim of the British Empire, ‘Divide and Rule’ has now been turned against Britain itself so much so that today every nightmare ever envisaged is fast becoming reality.
 
Eleven hundred years have passed since the time of Alfred the Great to whom we owe so much for our Common Law and our Constitution and yet today we see what has become the heritage of the free world passed down and built upon since the ninth century degraded and cast aside in the humbling of this great nation before Europe.
 
Soon a thousand years of Common Law,  the very essence of British liberty rooted in Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and indeed everything that has made Britain great and free,  will be trampled into the dust under the jackboot of the United Empire of Europe.  For what then did the people of this nation and the Dominions fight?
 
For what did so many give their lives when today our politicians are continuing to sign away the very things for which they shed their blood?
 
As I stand under this statue of one of England’s greatest men I am reminded of the time when Nelson brought his telescope to his blind eye so as not to see his instructions.
 
Ladies and gentlemen,  just down the road in the precincts of the very birthplace of the parliamentary democracy of the free world,  in the ‘Mother of All Parliaments’,  thre are people who are not just blind in one eye,  but purposefully in both.  Blind to the threat to the sovereignty of the British people.  Blind to the erosion of our  liberty and our freedom.
 
Over the years,  our countries have been stealthily separated.  It is not by any choice of the people but by the design of our Governments making decisions which in themselves have appeared to be innocuous,  but when looked at in perspective,  have formed part of a plan to remove the only impediment to European and global authority.   I am talking of course about the Crown of the United Kingdom.
 
Fortunately in Australia,  despite crushing odds with politicians, big business and the media all combined in an unholy alliance,  the people voted overwhelmingly to retain the Crown. This is because the Australian Constitution places the power of change in the hands of the people.
Regrettably in Britain, that power is in the hands of your politicians many of whom have time and time again proven themselves totally and absolutely unfit to bear such a responsibility.
 
However,  there are some,  particularly amongst the young,   who are resisting political integration into Europe.  Such  people must be encouraged and must have your support regardless of party politics.
 
The time has now come when every man and every woman in this fair land must stand up and be counted.  To fight with every democratic means at your disposal to rid Britain once and for all of the proposals for political integration into Europe.
 
Let not the tremendous sacrifice that Britain and the Dominions made - especially in the two world wars - be in vain.
 
Make Britain free once again.
 
Save Britain’s sovereignty and in so doing,  save the sovereignty of all those nations under the Crown.
 
 
 
London,  April 2000
© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
THE BRITISH PEOPLES
 
Continuing along my theme I wrote the following article which was published in several papers and journals in the United Kingdom.
 
 
The victory that was achieved for the Monarchy in Australia is a victory that must be built upon to consolidate the retention of democracy in those lands enjoying a British heritage still under the Constitutional Crown.
 
The Westminster system cannot persevere as a republic.  Whilst Parliament is a check on the Crown,  The Crown is also a vital check on Parliament.
 
The lesson that must be learned is that there is no former British colony which sought to retain the Westminster system without the Crown where the democratic freedom of the people has survived intact.
 
For different reasons there are similar attacks on the constitutional integrity of Britain itself and this leads me to question why the people of the main Crown Realms of Britain, Canada and Australia are foreigners to each other when we are essentially one people living under the benefits of our shared British heritage and should be united as one family.
 
The campaign to retain our Constitution in Australia clearly revealed that no longer were Australians proud as they were once to be British and to be one people enjoying one heritage under the one Crown.  Similarly there were many derisive comments on Australia and Australians emanating from Britain itself all of which showed a complete misunderstanding of how we can all share the same heritage without any erosion of our own independence.
 
Today there remain just the three nations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand who were essentially settled by the British and who remain under the Crown. 
 
Since Saxon times all migrants to Britain,  including the Normans,  have all acknowledged the ‘ancient liberties of the English peoples’.   Migration has always been with us but never more so in these modern days.  There is nothing wrong with people from various cultures migrating to new lands provided they accept the heritage and constitutional integrity of their new country.  But what is happening is that many now seek to unduly impose their own culture and politics encouraged by special interest groups in an attempt to foster disunity among those of British descent.
 
Today the peoples of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and Britain,  who should be one,  are themselves divided.  Was it not Abraham Lincoln who,  quoting from the Bible,   said: “A house divided against itself cannot stand”.  It is now time that the rapport that once existed between the peoples of these countries is re-established so that together we can again become a ‘family of nations’ enjoying strength in unity.
 
Strength to ensure respect for our common heritage.  A heritage of culture,  language and above all a heritage of constitutional stability under the Crown.
 
 
 
London,  April 2000

© PHILIP BENWELL MBE
THE WESTMINSTER CROWN
AND THE REFERENDUM IN AUSTRALIA
An Address to the Swinton Circle
in Parliament House, Westminster
 
The following is the speech I delivered to the Swinton Circle in the House of  Lords in May 2000.  It was the third time I had spoken to meetings at Westminster.  My comments are still being reproduced in journals in the United Kingdom.
 
 
THE REFERENDUM IN AUSTRALIA
 
On the 6th November 1999 the people of Australia voted to retain its Constitution of government in the Westminster tradition under the Crown and rejected a republic despite years of ‘indoctrination’ as the media sought to convince Australians to accept change.
 
For the Republicans to win,  they needed to obtain a nation-wide majority of votes plus a majority in a majority of States which means that they would also need to carry four of the six States.
 
The final result was not simply a loss for the Republicans,  in political terms it was a devastating defeat securing the Monarchy in Australia for at least a generation for not only did the Republicans fail to win a simple majority nation-wide,  they lost ALL of the six States with four rejecting change by very decisive margins.
 There were many reasons for this,  not the least of which was the fact that despite difficulties in comprehending the legal complexities of constitutional issues and particularly the concept of an absent Monarchy,  Australia is a free and democratic nation and the people had realized the extent to which this is underpinned by our system of government by Constitutional Monarchy and that change could well lead to political instability
 
Even emotive cries by republicans that change would be in ‘the national interest’ and that the dawn of a republic at the dawn of the new millennium would automatically eradicate all problems and would ease us all into a utopian society fell on deaf ears,  so secure were the people in the existing system and so confident were they in the checks and balances provided by the Crown.
 
A HERITAGE UNDER THE CROWN
 
As a boy living in Asia,  I would hear so many people rue the day the British left and it was only in later life that I came to appreciate that of all the empires since the Romans,  it was the British who left so much behind them.  
 
The other empires of history - Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and German  - left behind a legacy of hatred and bitterness whereas Britain left behind education, civil administration, law and stability and security,  not to mention road-works and engineering feats unparallel in the history of the world.
 
Admittedly most countries corrupted the Westminster system by removing the Crown and then watched as their democracy disintegrated.
 
However if Britain did nothing else it gave to the nations of Australia, Canada and New Zealand and the other Realms,  English law and the Westminster system of government encompassing a myriad of rights and freedoms which was by far the best legacy that could ever have been bequeathed to us or indeed to any of the nations it once ruled.
 
It is thus that today,  together with New Zealand and Canada and indeed those other outposts of settlement,  we are proud to share in this glorious heritage;  a heritage of language,  a heritage of culture and above all,  a heritage of parliamentary democracy under the Crown.
 
Many people in the Realms appreciate this heritage and realize its significance and importance but I question how many in this, our ‘Motherland’,  are today even aware that our shared constitutional heritage is based on the Ten Commandments adopted by Alfred the Great over a thousand years ago as his Constitution. 
 
 How many would be aware that it was also Alfred who began to put down on parchment much of our early Common Law guaranteeing ‘the ancient liberties of the English people’ and so entrenched did these laws become that William the Conqueror was forced to accept Saxon Law as the Law of Norman England.
 
‘Magna Carta’ of 1215,  together with the later versions,  secured ‘the ancient liberties of the English people’ and successive kings had to affirm the charter with several of those who abused the rights of the people being removed in one way or another.
 
The last of the Kings to be removed was James II who,  through his total disregard of Parliament,  was defeated in what is termed ‘The Glorious Revolution’ of 1688-9 and was replaced by his son-in-law (who was also his sister’s son) and his daughter who both reigned as William III and Mary II.
 
Before his coronation,  William III was required to assent to a ‘Declaration of Rights’ which went further than simply engraining ‘the ancient rights and liberties of the people’ for it provided a check on the authority of the King by ensuring that Members of Parliament be freely elected and enjoy free speech unimpeded by Royal power or threats.
 
The Constitution and the Monarchy we have inherited are and always have been ‘under God’.  Even the Coronation Service,  which dates back to the pontificate of Egbert, (Archbishop of York from AD 756 - 66) the anointing rather than the actual enthroning was the most important part of the Service with the Bishops anointing the King in the tradition of Samuel anointing Saul and David:  (“Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the Lord”.)
 
It is thus that at the Coronation of our own Queen,  Elizabeth II,  48 years ago,  Her Majesty entered into a pact to rule ‘under God’ in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and of those countries, such as Australia,  of which she is Sovereign. (Archbishop: “Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan, Ceylon and of your Possessions and the other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?” The Queen: “I solemnly promise so to do”)   Her Majesty has never, ever broken this promise.
 
The Instructions of Her Majesty’s forebear George III to Governor Phillip reveal the essence of his Christianity  when he enjoined Phillip to simply: “endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”.
 
Regrettably this lies forgotten in dusty history books but not the acts of individuals who murdered aborigines for reasons of greed or fear.
 
It was this heritage of Christianity and democracy that our founding Fathers decided in their wisdom to continue and expand upon when they created a federation of the six separate Colonies recognising their existence as States based on the British Crown for they realized that it was only through the Crown that the Westminster system of democracy can be complete.
 
The document that they wrote is one of the only constitutions in the world reliant upon God.  Not just any god,  but the Almighty God:  “Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”.
 
Following a series of conferences in the 1920s and the resulting Statute of Westminster in 1931 (adopted by Australia in 1942) what was once the Crown of Great Britain,  Ireland,  and possessions and dependencies has separated into constituent parts so that the Crown pertaining to Australia is now uniquely the Australian Crown.
 
It was a Crown that politicians quickly realized in 1975 was far from being merely symbolic but which held very real and substantial powers exercised by the Governor-General and although since that time our politicians have done everything within their power to diminish the Monarchy into a cipher-like status,  it nevertheless continues to provide a final check and a final balance against the excesses of our politicians.
 
Since Federation in 1901,  there have been 20 referendums putting forward  42 questions to change the Constitution.
 
Only eight have been approved by the people. Two additional questions have been put at referendum regarding military conscription for overseas service during World War I.   Both were rejected.
 
Our Constitution is a very simple document.  It does not need to be lengthy or complicated for its essence is that we are a federation UNDER the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is through the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - not through the Crown of Australia or through the Commonwealth - that we, in Australia,  inherit those ‘ancient rights and liberties of the people’.  However,  once the Crown is removed then the integrity of our Constitution is left open to interpretation by politicians and the judiciary.
 
It is like a house of cards.  Remove the Crown and it all comes tumbling down.
 
THE MONARCHIST -versus- THE REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN
 
Following the adoption by the Labor Party in 1990 of a proposal to make Australia a republic and particularly in an increasingly abusive environment against the Monarchy, the Australian Monarchist League changed direction from being an organization interested in historical matters to the defense of the Queen and the integrity of the Crown.
 
Over the past years we never ever swayed from this stand and never ever compromised our position on the Queen and the Crown.
 

 
Once they had recovered from their defeat,  the Republicans and the media excused their rout on such inane factors as: “the people got it wrong” and: “the question was unfair” and immediately switched over to support the direct election model they enthusiastically opposed during the campaign,  excusing their about face saying that this was what the ‘people’ actually wanted.
 
However the recent royal visit,  together with the massive vote for the Monarchy at the Referendum,  strongly disproved this notion and also clearly showed how wrong politicians, the media, public relations and the pollsters were in their reasoning.  This is because they mix almost exclusively with the yuppie,  arty, intellectual and social sets who had mostly jumped onto the Republican bandwagon for various reasons,  mostly unsound, and were as far removed from the people as Zimbabwe is from democracy.
 
What the fight in Australia was essentially all about was the notion that the Crown is the very essence of our being as a free nation.  Without the Crown there can be no democracy.
 
Without the Crown a thousand years of development from the time of Alfred the Great is washed away and this brings me to the matter of concern that now faces us in Australia and those other British nations and that is the dilution of Westminster democracy and the weakening of the benign influence of the Crown through the primacy of Europe.
 
EUROPE
 
Australians,  and indeed all Subjects of the Queen,  have,  I believe,  a right to speak on Europe for the issue of sovereignty and English Common law affects all those of us who were once a part of Empire.
 
When Macmillan first publicly mooted membership of the Community in the early sixties,  the Dominions expressed great reservations not only with regard to their own status as economic partners of Britain,  but also with regard to the special relationship they enjoyed with the ‘Mother country’ as Dominions.   They breathed a sigh of relief when de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s application.
 
However their relief was short-lived when Britain kept on applying.  They could not understand why London,  which only a few decades ago was at the heart of the greatest empire of modern history,  was humbling itself in its haste to sit submissively at the table of Europe.
 
Subsequent assurances regarding safeguards for the Dominions were later proven to be inaccurate to say the least and countries such as Australia and New Zealand were cast aside and forced to locate and build up their own markets.
 
I think that it would be a fair thing to say that most people in Britain were of the opinion that membership of the European Economic Community was what the name says;  membership of an economic community and on this basis were quite happy to have closer trading relations and removal of border controls.  However it is clear that there is today widespread concern throughout the Kingdom now that people realize that trade was just the first stage in the creation of a political empire in which Britain would just enjoy the status of a member State.
 
So much time has now passed since Britain was accepted into membership of the Union and I ask you what benefit has it all actually brought?  I believe that I am correct in saying that Britain has never ever made a profit out of Europe.  In fact it is able to sustain the cost of its membership only because of its own global economy.
 
I do not intend to delve into the many problems that have been faced since Britain turned its back on its responsibilities to the former Dominions other than to say that Britain and more especially people from this House of Parliament,  have only themselves to blame.
 
However what is of great concern to us and indeed to all those Realms who have the Queen as their Sovereign is the undermining of English Common Law in favour of the laws of Europe and the constant dilution of the Westminster tradition of government under the Crown.
 
English Common Law,  Magna Carta with Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights,  Westminster and indeed all those other laws,  traditions and principles which have been handed down through Empire and to which the majority of the democratic nations of the free world owe their existence must remain superior to all other laws if Westminster democracy is to survive in this our ‘Mother Nation’.
 
In Australia the fight that we have gone through was not a fight to maintain the tradition of Royalty,  as the press would have it,  but was rather a battle to retain the very essence of our democracy.
 
Westminster has never survived once the Crown has been removed.
 
There is no former British Colony that has a true democracy under a presidential system and I believe that Westminster in Britain will likewise not be able to survive under the Presidency of Europe.
 
Not far from this place at the Guards’ Cenotaph in St James Park I have read the words: “Feel with them in the fight for the world’s freedom”  I ask what feeling did those politicians have when they blindly sacrificed Britain and the Commonwealth for the Treaty of Rome?
Australians have fought for Britain since the war in the Sudan and I ask, for what then did so many give their lives when today our politicians are continuing to sign away the very things for which they shed their blood?
 
LESSONS TO BE LEARNED
 
It is important that those who are against political integration into Europe are not swayed by such phrases as ‘inevitable’, ‘against the national interest’, ‘old  fashioned’, ‘against the trend’ and even ‘anti British’. These are words very cleverly designed by media and other interests and influenced by their irrational hatred of Monarchy,  to throw doubt into the minds of whoever reads or listens to this verbiage.
 
Rupert Murdoch’s own flagship newspaper ‘The Australian’ admitted that for ten years it has been trying to ‘influence’ the Australian people to accept a republic and it is clear that one of the major problems in the world today lies with the media hiding behind their hackneyed poisoned pens,  no longer reporting news but distorting facts to create sensation.    However blame must always rest with the people for it is to the people that these scribblers are pandering as they crave for sensation after sensation.
 
Governments and politicians have in a sense abdicated their responsibility to lead and instead follow the trend established by the media,  thereby giving immense credibility to their fabrications.
 
Thus,  in Australia,   we saw reporters floating the idea that to ‘be mature’ Australia must rid itself of its ties with Britain.  They talked not about the Crown of Australia but about the ‘English Queen’.  They said that a republic ‘was inevitable’.
 
Over a period of time people - even diehard Monarchists - began to believe these canards.  This is why we saw a majority of politicians, most business leaders and nearly all of the ‘elite’ promoting a republic.  Many genuinely believed that this was what the ‘people’ wanted,  never for a moment appreciating that they were all duped by a huge public relations campaign.  Fortunately in Australia the media targeted the elite rather than the average Australian,  for they rather arrogantly supposed that ordinary people would follow like sheep and fall into line.
 
There is probably very little difference between the working man and woman in Australia and those in the United Kingdom.  One must always remember that traditionally they are essentially conservative and resist radical change and look to the Queen as a symbol of decency and respectability in an increasingly amoral  world.
 
SAVING THE NATION
 
One of the great fallacies of the debate on Britain’s future in Europe is that there is no alternative.  As Britain is one of the leading economies in the world this seems to be rather obtuse reasoning.
 
Admittedly there is cause for the British Realms to maintain their rage at being turfed out to face the world whilst watching from the sidelines as Britain debased itself before Europe time and time again.  However many years have now passed and the affection of the people in the Realms to the ‘Mother Country’ is still sufficiently strong enough to re-build a new cultural and economic relationship.
 
If to be in Europe means the loss of even one iota of Britain’s sovereignty and the erosion or dilution of our Common Law,  then for its own sake and for the sake of the Realms,  Britain must withdraw from Europe at whatever the cost. 
Money can always be replaced.   Britain’s sovereignty and a thousand years of Common law and constitutional development cannot.
 
UNITED UNDER THE CROWN
 
It was clear for some time that the republic debate in Australia was a part of a far greater scheme to destroy the Westminster System under the Crown.
 
As Britain’s whole identity is daily being submerged into Europe,  is it not now time to remember that there used to be such a thing as the British Family of Nations comprising those far flung corners of Empire which Britain populated with her sons and daughters.  Those Realms which have so much in common with the ‘Mother Country’.  Nations now fully independent but who share the same heritage,  the same language,  the same law and the same Crown.
 
The perception accepted as a part of economic globalisation some fifty years ago that unless you are a part of a trading bloc you cannot exist, has now been proven to be a fallacy.
 
We from the former Colonies will never understand why Britain,  which at the end of Empire still retained its own global sphere of friendly and benevolent influence,  turned away from its family of British Nations as it sought with rather humiliating persistence to enter Europe.
 
Today Australia,  New Zealand and Canada have their own trading agreements but unlike Britain all have jealously guarded their own sovereignty.   We look in askance as the Code of a temporary dictator which is not yet 200 years old is being imposed upon our ‘Motherland’.
 
English Common Law,  Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus,  the Bill of Rights and all those articles and principles which together have created British Justice and the Westminster system of government mean so much to us in the Commonwealth Realms, for they are the very essence of our being.  Indeed it is because we in Australia value these things that we voted against constitutional change just six months ago.
 
There was a time when one was proud to be British.  It did not matter whether you had any English blood in you or not.  To be British meant quality and security and was something to be aspired to.  However in the 52 years since the British Nationality Act of 1948, which led to the legal separation of the British Family,  attitudes have changed so much that today the Government of the United Kingdom looks on Australians as ‘aliens’ and the Australian High Court has declared that Britain is a ‘foreign power’.
 
These are things that should not be.  It is our Governments who are to blame,  not the people.  The time has come when the British Government must now accept that if to be in Europe means the loss of everything that is Britain,  it must turn away from Brussels’ rule and again take its place at the table of the British Nations so that we are no longer aliens one to another,  but one adult family united in so many ways.  In unity there is always strength but in division there can only be oblivion.
 
In 1984 the British, the Australian and the Canadian Governments agreed that they would now term the Citizens of each other as ‘aliens’ and this crude terminology has done much to dispel any thought of Britain as the homeland once visitors are made to queue whilst those against whom they fought alongside Britain - at Britain’s request - walk blithely through the special EEC Gate.
With the recent decision of the High Court of Australia terming Britain a ‘foreign power’,  our two nations are now as remote from each other as we could possibly be.
 
The 1984 Act had its beginnings in the British Nationality Act of 1948 about which Robert Menzies,  that great icon of post empire politics, spoke in this very City of London in 1948.  He warned that the: “very unnecessary Act of separation performed by British Parliaments and States brings new hope to those who would destroy us and new confusions in the minds of our friends”.
 
He also made a very appropriate comment which is most pertinent to the situation we find ourselves in today. He said: “We cannot hack away at the foundations and then express surprise when some day the house falls”.
 
Today there remain just the three nations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand who were essentially settled by the British and who remain under the Crown.  However we who should be one,  are ourselves divided.    It is now time that the rapport that once existed between the peoples of these countries is re-established so we may be joined together once again as one family united under the Crown.
 
 
 
London   May 2000
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

OUR CHRISTIAN MONARCHY
AND OUR CHRISTIAN CONSTITUTION
 
An article written for the newsletter of the Australian Festival of Light whilst I was in the UK in May 2000.
 
 
A few weeks ago I was taken by my hosts to visit Llanthony Priory built in the early years of the 12th century in Wales.
 
Now an imposing ruin of cathedral like dimensions set in what would have been a wilderness,  it stands as a memorial to those early Christians who brought the Word of the Lord to far-flung places.
 
Llanthony was the site of a small cell erected during the sixth century A.D. by St. David,  Patron Saint of Wales.   Because of frequent raids by hostile neighbours,  the cell fell into ruin until it was discovered by the Norman land owner William de Lacy during the reign of William Rufus in the latter years of the 11th century.
 
Hitherto a dissolute Norman,  de Lacy experienced a conversion and in penance of his corrupt ways decided to dedicate the remainder of his life to religious contemplation and to the rebuilding of the cell established by St. David.
 
From his work there grew one of the largest priories in the world.
 
When most people think of Christianity in England they tend to think only of Henry VIII or of the Crusades.  Very few realize that the Church in Britain predates the dominance of Rome.
It is rather like our Constitution.  Few realize that whilst the document of our Constitution was enacted in 1900 the intent goes right back to the days of Alfred the Great in the ninth century,  for it was Alfred who established the first Constitution of England by adopting the Ten Commandments.
 
It was also Alfred who began to put down on parchment much of our early Common Law guaranteeing ‘the ancient liberties of the English people’ and so entrenched did these laws become that William the Conqueror was forced to accept Saxon Law as the Law of Norman England thus setting the groundwork for the future ‘Magna Carta’ and ‘Bill of Rights’ and the development of Constitutional Monarchy.
 
The security and stability that our own Constitution enjoys under the Crown has meant that Australia,  whilst being one of the youngest nations in the world,  is today one of its oldest democracies and it was because of this protection that the ordinary men and women of Australia came out to vote solidly against a republic.
 
It was because Australians recognize and appreciate that the democracy and freedom are ours by right only because we are a Constitutional Monarchy that they came out in their thousands to greet and welcome their Queen after an enforced absence of eight years,  thus disproving forever that the issue was just one about particular models of republics.
 
 
 
England,  May  2000
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT
 
In late 2000 the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom launched an attack on the Act of Settlement and sought to bring an action before the European Human Rights Court because the Act bars Roman Catholics from the Throne of the United Kingdom.  An approach by people in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Realms to defend the Act resulted in the following essay.
 
 
The Act of Settlement was drafted at a time of intense religious differences.  A time perhaps not dissimilar from today in the Middle East and Northern Ireland.   Therefore when matters of an historical nature are referred to it is hoped that no one will take offence.
 
Prior to the Constitutional Referendum of November 1999,  a survey found that less than 15 percent of the population were even aware that Australia had a Constitution let alone knew anything about it.
 
How meagre,  I wonder,  would be the percentage of the population in Australia and even in Britain itself who would have any knowledge of the Act of Settlement and yet it is perhaps the most vilified piece of legislation on the statute books of the United Kingdom.
 
Most people,  however are nestled in the safe security of our now developed Westminster System and care little about the historical and Constitutional importance of the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement.
 
 
Was it not Thomas Gray who wrote some 250 years ago:
 
“Since sorrow never comes too late
And happiness too swiftly flies
Thought would destroy their paradise
No more, where ignorance is bliss
‘Tis folly to be wise”.
 
The idea of a united Europe is not new.  After all,  was this not the design of Charlemagne and centuries earlier,  of Rome itself?
 
Modern European Union had its roots in the early years of the nineteenth century when the numerous principalities within Prussia grouped into one protectionist economic unit.  Bismarck later consolidated the 39 sovereign states allied with the German Confederation into what became known as the German Empire.
 
The defeat of Germany in 1918 inspired rather than put aside plans for European Union and achieved initial success on an experimental basis with Hitler’s conquests.
 
The Nazi inspired hopes of a United States of Europe collapsed with Germany’s defeat in the Second World War.  However some were able to persuade Washington that a future war would not be able to be averted unless there was a united Europe.  The CIA and others poured money into the pro European movement,  which it is understood still  included Nazi collaborators.
 
Even though the United States Government placed unprecedented political pressure on Britain to conform and enter union with Europe,  it found intractable opposition in Churchill who,  although seeing wisdom in a European economic association,  was against any form of direct involvement by Britain.
His words,  written as early as 1930 and now often misinterpreted were: “The prosperity of others makes for our own prosperity; their peace is our tranquillity; their progress smoothes our path....  We rejoice at every diminution of the internal tariffs and martial armaments of Europe.....; But we have our own dream and our own task.  We are with Europe but not of it.  We are linked but not compromised.  We are interested and associated but not absorbed...”
 
However,  disregarding Churchill’s wisdom,  successive British Governments have since capitulated to pressure and allowed Britain to be almost totally absorbed into Europe.
 
Our own Robert Menzies was vehemently against Britain entering into an alliance with Europe for he quite correctly thought that this would lead to an abandonment of its trading and cultural links with Australia and the other Commonwealth countries.
 
Yet the pressure was too forceful and the later groundwork laid by McMillan and Heath and the United States too strong and today Britain is submerged,  possibly irretrievably,  into Europe.
 
Whilst the British Government did consult with the Australian Governments,  it was clear that it was more of an ultimatum than to seek a consensus.  In the 1975 Referendum in Britain,  the British Government even went so far as to publish leaflets containing a quote supportive of Britain’s entry into Europe from none other than our own enigmatic Gough Whitlam!
 
It is true that,  as a nation now totally politically independent from Britain,  Australia could really do no more than to say that entry into Europe was a matter for the United Kingdom,  just as this same sort of official language was used by Britain when commenting on our own Constitutional Referendum last year.
Britain was a founder signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, however it was only two months ago that the British Parliament incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law thereby giving it legal precedence as a sort of new Bill of Rights in the United Kingdom.
 
The overriding power of the European Human Rights Act was felt even before it became a part of UK law when the Court,  meeting in Strasbourg in December 1999,  upset the verdict of a British court in the trial of the boy murderers of two year old Jamie Bulger with their ruling that two 11-year-olds tried as adults did not receive fair trial.
 
Some weeks ago the Guardian newspaper which seems to be intent on destabilizing the British Constitution,  had an editorial which in its usual form attacked the British Monarchy but went further in condemning the Act of Settlement of 1701.   Within a few days the Guardian had retained Australian expatriate Queen’s Council Geoffrey Robertson and committed itself to funding an action before the European Human Rights Court on the basis that the Act of Settlement:  “clashed with the Human Rights Act and should be reinterpreted or removed from the statute book”.   Reports indicate that Notice of such action is to be served on the High Commissioners in London of the Commonwealth Realms.
 
“What,”  it may be asked,   “has the Act of Settlement got to do with people outside the United Kingdom?”  Indeed Australia is not mentioned because 75 years would have to pass before Captain Cook claimed New South Wales for the Empire.  Clause two of The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900 indisputably states: “The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom”.  This means that whatever changes that may be made to the British Crown will affect our own Crown and indeed that of the other Realms.
For well over a year I have been raising concerns over the constitutional implications that Britain’s ongoing political entry into Europe has for the Realms and that instead of blindly signing whatever Brussels demanded of it,  Britain had a duty to confer not only with the Governments of the Realms but also under the terms of our Constitution and that of Canada,  the matter should possibly have been put to the people for their agreement as should,  dare I say,  the Australia Acts of 1986.
 
The Act of Settlement ‘settled’ the succession to the Throne of England, Scotland and Ireland on the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I, ‘and on the heirs of her body, being Protestants’.  Since Sophia had died before Queen Anne the succession eventually passed to Sophia’s son, George, Elector of Hanover, who in 1714 became King George I.
 
The Act also laid down the conditions under which alone the Crown could he held.
 
No Roman Catholic, nor anyone married to a Roman Catholic, could succeed to the Throne.
 
Furthermore the Sovereign had to swear to maintain the ‘Church of England; and, following the Treaty of Union of 1707, this was extended to the Church of Scotland.  The Sovereign had not only to be in communion with the Church of England but had to promise, in the Coronation Oath, to maintain the Protestant religion.
 
The Act further provided that parliamentary consent was to be required for the Sovereign to engage in war.  Judges were thereafter to hold office on good conduct and not at royal pleasure.
 
The Act of Settlement thus reinforced the fundamental principle established in 1688-9, that Parliament had the right to determine the conditions under which the Crown could be held and was a further stage in the development of constitutional monarchy where the Sovereign would thereafter reign but not rule.
 
The 150 years before the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement was a period of civil strife and internal warfare unparalleled in the history of England since the Norman Conquest.
 
It was a time just following the abdication of the Catholic James II,  who like his brother Charles II,  was outrageously in the pay of his brother-in-law,  Louis XIV of France. Louis had dreams of becoming master of Europe.
 
Although taking his title of ‘Most Christian Majesty’ very seriously,  he was fanatical in his eagerness to return England to the Church of Rome and to convert all Protestants causing a contemporary to write: “If God preserve the King there will not be one Huguenot left twenty years hence’.  However his fervent dedication to Rome did not prevent his sending an army to threaten the Pope when one of his ambassadors to the Vatican felt slighted!
 
Just 48 years before the Bill of Rights was enacted,  Britain had undergone a revolution resulting in the execution of the King and the establishment of a republic followed by the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.
 
Time was to prove that both the Act of Settlement of 1701 and the Bill of Rights of 1689 were able to resolve the intense concerns existing at that time for the future of the Constitutional Monarchy and the supremacy of Parliament over the King.
 
Rule in Britain had always been different from European nations particularly from the Saxon belief of the supremacy of Parliament as opposed to the later Norman/French belief in the ‘Divine Right of Kingship’ to rule absolutely.  This was prophetically explained in the comments of Richard II,  who in 1392,  declared: “...the Crown of England hath been so free at all times, that it hath been in no earthly subjection, but immediately subject to God touching the regality of the said Crown, and no other”.
 
It was this same conflict that led to the strengthening of English liberty with the signing of Magna Carta by King John at Runnymede in 1215 and affirmed by succeeding monarchs for some time.
 
In his History of The English-Speaking Peoples,  Winston Churchill emphasizes the relevance of Magna Carta:
 
“..and when in subsequent ages the state, swollen with its own authority, has attempted to ride roughshod over the rights and liberties of the subject it is to this doctrine that appeal has again and again been made, and never, as yet, without success.”
 
Education in pre-reformation days was essentially conducted by the Church and thus we saw the role of government administration in the hands of clerics.  Often the role of senior churchmen was combined with that of Chancellor or some other high secular office giving rise to a direct involvement by the Church in Rome in the struggle between King and Parliament.
 
The clash between England and Rome reached a crisis during the reign of Henry VIII,  rather mischievously known today only for his thirst for wives and his pillaging of churches and abbeys.
 
This was at a time of tremendous change in the political and cultural environment of Europe.  Spain was rapidly expanding its empire in the new world and Portugal its trade with the East Indies.
 
Religious leaders were also questioning the purpose of man and the teachings of the church.  The actions of men such as Luther were bringing about a Protestant reformation in Germany and elsewhere.
 
Initially Henry was violently against such change and in fact wrote a very effective essay in Catholic polemics which prompted Pope Leo X to award Henry the title ‘Fidei Defensor’ or ‘Defender of the Faith’.
 
Henry’s wife Catherine bore him a daughter but soon it was evident that she would bear no more children.
 
Henry needed a son to carry on the dynasty started by his father and he appealed to Rome to annul the marriage on the basis that Catherine had earlier been married to his deceased brother.  This was something the Pope would have allowed under normal conditions,  but by that time Pope Leo had died and the new Pope Clement VII was under the influence of Charles V the Emperor of Germany and King of Spain and uncle of Catherine who caused the appeal to be rejected.
 
This rejection encouraged Henry to heed to the advice of such reformists as Thomas Cromwell and,  although always declaring himself to be a ‘Catholic in breach with Rome’,  he unwittingly led England into a Protestant reformation.
 
Contrary to popular belief,  the decision to break away from Rome was not Henry’s alone.
 
It was Parliament which passed laws in 1534 to establish the Church of England and to make the King the Supreme Head of the Church of England and it was Parliament which, in 1544,  enacted legislation to make Henry’s title: ‘Defender of the Faith’ a hereditary one to be held by all future English monarchs as ‘Defenders of the Protestant Faith’.
 
The ensuing unnecessarily brutal despoiling of the Roman Catholic Church and the dispossession of its faithful was a needless act of greed and led to dissension and disunity for the next 150 years and beyond.
 
Henry was succeeded by his weakling son Edward VI who ascended the throne just before his tenth birthday.  Edward was used by his Protestant guardians to violently entrench Reformation in England and it was during his reign that Thomas Cranmer’s English prayer book was issued in 1549 and revised in 1552.   However Edward died at the age of 16 in 1553 and the Throne passed to Mary, the sole surviving daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine.  Queen Mary was a tragic figure soured by the treatment meted out to her mother and herself.  Her sole mental buttress was the Roman Catholic faith and she immediately sought to right the wrongs, as she saw it, against her faith and to return England to Rome.  Her uncle,  the German Emperor Charles V,  who had earlier blocked the Pope from granting her father the divorce he sought,  was still alive and arranged her marriage to his son Philip II of Spain,  viewed at the time as the greatest enemy of England.
 
Mary ignored the warnings of all around her and finding that her marriage was barren,  blamed the fact on the heresy of the Protestant Reformation and sought absolution by burning at the stake those who would not be turned from the Protestant faith.  She died in 1558, a broken and embittered woman,  and her reign would go down in history as one of the bloodiest in England’s history followed by one of the greatest.
Unlike Mary,  Elizabeth I had learned tact and discretion from her distressed childhood and her reign began with great mercy as she sought to walk a tightrope between extremities of both previous reigns and to establish unity amongst her subjects.
 
In her wisdom,  she allowed Roman Catholics to attend mass privately.  However,  her tolerance was greatly stretched when, in 1570, the Pope issued a bull (Papal Edict) from Rome,  deposing her and absolving her subjects from treason against her thereby creating an intolerable situation for those of Roman Catholic faith in England,  particularly during the attempted Spanish invasion .
 
However,  in spite of these and other upheavals,  the long reign of Elizabeth,  spanning 45 years,  was a calming influence and it was this period that saw the entrenchment of England’s sovereignty in the Throne and in Parliament as opposed to political and religious interference from Rome.
 
Elizabeth died childless,  earning her for posterity the title of ‘the Virgin Queen’.   In the hope that the Protestant Succession would be secured,  she named as her heir her kinsman James VI of Scotland,  the great, great grandson of Henry VII by his daughter Margaret who had married James IV of Scotland.
 
James had been brought up as a Calvinist but initially sought to continue the tolerance of the previous reign.  However following the Gun Powder Plot of November 5th 1605,  he agreed to the issuing of penalties.  It was this reign that saw a new translation into English of the Bible which became the present King James or ‘Authorized Version’.
 
When Charles 1 succeeded to the Throne in 1625,  the influence and the wisdom of the Elizabethan era had faded and religious problems re-surfaced,  extending even to schisms amongst the Protestant denominations.
The marriage of Charles to the Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria of France gave rise to a great fear of undue influence over the Throne.
 
However it was the rigid belief of both Charles and his father in the Divine Right of Kingship,  which essentially declares that the authority of the King derives from God and as such places him above the law of man thus: ‘The King can do no wrong’,  that distanced the Throne from Parliament,  whose authority had been greatly enhanced during the reign of Elizabeth.  Disputes turned into irreconcilable differences between the King and the now Puritan Parliament which led to Civil War and Britain’s first and only Republic which saw the execution of Charles on the 28 January 1649.
 
The Republic collapsed after just 11 years following the death of Oliver Cromwell and the disintegration of the rule of his son Richard and the Crown was offered to the exiled Charles II who had earlier been proclaimed King on the execution of his father.
 
As with Elizabeth’s childhood confinement,  exile had taught Charles a great proficiency in tact and diplomacy and he was able to skilfully keep the lid on a pot which was still boiling with power struggles between King and Parliament and the religious diversities of the past 100 years.  Charles was very close to Louis XIV of France and as well as being in his pay had also treasonously entered into an understanding for French troops to be sent to his aid in the event of another civil war.  Just before his death in 1685 he was received into the Roman Catholic faith.
 
He was succeeded by his brother James II who was an excellent soldier but lacked his brother’s judgment.
 
Also unlike his brother,  James was honest about his faith and declared himself to be a practising Roman Catholic.  He was also a dependent of Louis XIV and relied upon his money to maintain a standing army outside the control of Parliament.
 
The fear of the King’s relationship with France and of his attempts to undo the Protestant efforts of the past 150 years and to take England back under the authority of Rome faced fierce rejection by Parliament who in their anxiety appealed to William Prince of Orange to help them remove the King.  Facing massive desertion from his army,  James fled and was held to have abdicated following the landing of William in November 1688.
 
James sought refuge with his benefactor,  Louis XIV, whose Archbishop welcomed him with the words: “There’s a good man who has given up three Kingdoms for a mass”.  Louis later financed an army for James to retake England but he was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in 1690.    James is supposed to have bitterly complained that his army had run away only to receive the response: “Sire, it is your Majesty who seems to have won the race!”
 
It is interesting to note here that the then Pope,  Innocent XI,  despite being the godfather of James’s son,  was openly sympathetic to his removal.  Innocent was wary of the extremism of Louis and the French Jesuits and,  as was the case of most Roman Catholics in England,  far preferred the sort of religious toleration promised by William than the alternative of Britain becoming a vassal of France.
 
After a short interregnum Parliament offered the Throne to both William and Mary to rule jointly.  Although William came to the Throne essentially by right of his wife as the elder daughter of James II it should not be forgotten that William’s mother was the daughter of Charles I thereby making him a potential claimant to the Throne in his own right.
 It was not simply because William was a male that it was decided by Parliament that he was to exercise executive authority in the joint rule,  but rather because he was proven in the fields of administration and particularly in that of war.   However,  at the same time Parliament required that both he and Mary agree to a Declaration of Rights which was subsequently converted into the more formal Bill of Rights of 1689.
 
It was during this joint reign and following Mary’s death in 1694,  the sole reign of William,  that the major constitutional changes,  particularly those embodied in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement,   established once and for all the legal basis for rule by Parliament which was to develop over the following 150 years into the Westminster system we know today.
 
The reign of William and Mary therefore brought us three great liberties:
*    a free Parliament
*    a free press
*    and a free pulpit
 
encompassing:
*    liberty of conscience,
*    freedom of discussion,
*    freedom of the press
*    and liberty of faith.
 
The Bill of Rights,  whose full title is:  “An Act for declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and settling the Succession of the Crown” linked the succession to the popular rights of the people limiting the power of the Sovereign and making the Monarch subject to law and to Parliament”,  thus ending forever the concept of rule of the King by divine right.
 
In the words of King William himself in a letter to Parliament: “...restoring the rights and liberties of the Kingdom, and settling the same, that they may not be in danger of being again subverted.”
 
In 1701 Louis XIV promised to James,  as he lay dying,  that he would continue the war against England and recognize his son as James III.  William’s declining health therefore created a sense of urgency if the future of parliamentary rule was to be made secure.  The heir was Mary’s sister,  Anne who herself was in very poor health.  Her son, William of Gloucester had died the previous year at the age of eleven.
 
Thus we can see that there was much more behind the Bill or Rights and the Act of Settlement than appears on the face of it for at stake was the supremacy of Britain’s sovereignty and the supremacy of Britain’s parliament.
 
During the reign of Elizabeth I,  Spain sought control of England and supremacy of the seas and had caused Rome to incite rebellion amongst its faithful within England.
 
The reigns of Charles II and James II saw France using religion in its attempt to subjugate England.  The rejection of Roman Catholicism by the Bill or Rights and the Act of Settlement was not,  from a political perspective against the way in which people worshipped,  but rather against the use of religion by foreign powers to exert political influence over England’s domestic affairs. 
 
Entrenchment of the Church of England in the Monarchy and in the succession was the only way in which Parliament could ensure its own sovereignty as well as the future independence of the Crown from pressure and interference from foreign powers.
 
The substance of the Act was later incorporated into the Treaty of Union of 1707 and it is possible that the Treaty would also have to be broken if the conditions of succession are to be removed.
 
Whilst possibly politically incorrect in today’s language,  it is important to note that,  following the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement,  no British Monarch has ever attempted to rule without Parliament thus ensuring the stability of our Monarchy and what has developed into the Westminster System,  commented on by Churchill as ‘the worst form of government - except for all others’.
 
The challenge of the Guardian Newspaper is that: “The Act remains the crucial cornerstone of the British Constitution, exercising an extraordinary hold over the Monarchy and imposing limitations designed to tackle the imperatives of a political crisis at the dawn of the 18th century. But it is scarcely relevant to the 21st.’
 
However,  whilst times have changed and admittedly changed radically,  many of the circumstances which led to the need for the Act have not.  In a Constitutional Monarchy,  the Monarch must Assent to any law passed by the Parliament provided that such a law is constitutional.  To refuse would cause a constitutional crisis.
 
According to the Constitution of Belgium, the person of the King has immunity which places the King above religion and ideology.  However when,  in 1990,  the Parliament of Belgium passed the controversial Abortion Bill,  tremendous pressure was put on the then King Baudouin,  a practicing Roman Catholic,  not to sign it.    The King was courageous enough to stand by his religious principles and refused to sign and the only solution left for him was to abdicate,  which he did for a day.  King Baudouin died in 1993.
However our Coronation Oath commits our Sovereign to a lifetime of service which means that,  whatever her personal convictions,  the Queen cannot abdicate her duties for a minute,  let alone a day.
 
Should,  therefore,  a similar dilemma occur in Britain it could not be resolved so easily and would precipitate a severe constitutional crisis which is why the Sovereign of Britain was made Supreme Governor of the Church of England and thereby totally immune from any influence or direction from foreign powers.  Thus it is that the legal authority Blackstone was able to assert: “that English law is superior to that of other nations because liberty under the law was the purpose of the British Constitution.”
 
Recent attacks against the Act of Settlement are that it discriminates also against new British subjects and under the Act no Muslims or Hindus can ever succeed to the Throne!   To what will be its everlasting shame,  the Guardian itself admits that it has been advertising in Germany for a claimant to the British Throne but without success.   Obviously,  the head of what is left of the Stuart line,  Franz, Duke of Bavaria,  has no interest in this treacherous nonsense.  Indeed in its 300 years of existence,  no legitimate claimant to the Throne of the United Kingdom has ever formally challenged the Act and unfortunately this publicity gimmick will only serve to cause confusion in the minds of the people.
 
It was Napoleon who said: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets”,  and unfortunately in our society where,  I may say,  the constitutional freedom we enjoy is due to such laws as the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement,  an irresponsible media and embittered poseurs will always be with us.   They are indeed the downside of our constitutional democracy and we can only hope that through their constant abuse of the privilege of a free press,  they themselves will become entangled in their own duplicity before they succeed in tearing down the fabric of our own democracy.
It was Sir Walter Scott who wrote:
 
“O what a tangled web we weave.  When first we practice to deceive”.
 
Today it is a saddening sight to see how far and how fast the European Union is encroaching on the sovereignty of the British Parliament,  on English Common Law and indeed on the everyday life of the ordinary person.
 
There was a time,  not so long ago,  when the national interest was the prime consideration of any Member of the Commons.  However to their everlasting shame,   successive British Parliaments have bartered away a thousand years of rights and laws of the English people in exchange for a repressive officialdom and a fragile seat at the increasingly despotic table of United Europe.  Hailed as the resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire,  European Union is drawing to itself executive authority over its member states and is even now planning a centralised army and a centralised police force.
 
Whilst we now have our own unique Crown of Australia,  it,  in itself,  is meaningless without the Crown of the United Kingdom for it is through the Crown of the United Kingdom that the magnificent history of England, fine tuned over centuries of strife, warfare, death and deliberation comes down to us to perfect the checks and the balances gifted to us in the Westminster system and improved upon by our Founding Fathers with the incorporation of the referendum process.
 
Whilst the major Commonwealth Realms of Australia, Canada and New Zealand are democracies now politically independent of the British Government,  our constitutions evolved from Acts of the British Parliament and are inextricably linked to the Constitution of the United Kingdom through the Crown.
 
Regardless of whatever discussions may have been held between our Governments over the years,  the signing of any agreement or treaty by Britain which may have the potential to infringe upon our own constitutional arrangements should have received the agreement of the peoples of Australia and Canada through our individual referendum processes.
 
Just as the Guardian is seeking to use European legislation to challenge the British Constitution,  it is time perhaps for lawyers well versed in such matters to investigate the possibility of challenging the very acceptance of any European legislation entered into by the British Government which may have even the slightest potential of affecting constitutional arrangements within the Realms.
 
For what,  we in the Realms may ask,  did we sacrifice the lives of our young to defend Britain against the powers of darkness in Europe?  Sacrifices were made,  not only once but on two occasions,  only to find our peoples cast aside as Britain humbled itself before our once traditional enemies.
 
The Guardian has held a poll in an attempt to seek vindication of its attack on the Act but only 2,021 readers have responded.  Such is their feeble mandate.
 
However its challenge,  whilst obviously of no real interest to the general public,  has served to highlight the duplicity of the British Government and its infidelity to the Realms as it betrays us all to European control.
 
 
 
Sydney,  December 2000
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
 
IDEOLOGIES BEHIND THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION
 
I was asked to speak at a seminar in Sydney in January 2001 where I could choose the topic. I therefore wrote this essay giving thought to the Socialist and Fabian thinking prevalent at the time of the drafting of the Australian Constitution and which doubtless influenced the structure of our government thus ensuring democratic freedom in this country for over a hundred years.
 
 
On the 1st January 2001,  the Governor-General with the Prime Minister and all State Governors and Premiers gathered together at Centennial Park in Sydney to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Union of the former Australian colonies into Federation.
 
Despoiling the unity of the occasion were Republicans telling us that we should rather be celebrating a republic and aboriginal activists rejecting the viability of our democracy and branding the Constitution as a racist document.
 
The words of the Governor-General on the 1st January 2001: “Pride in the commitment to Democracy under the rule of law” whilst sounding warm and cosy failed to capsulate what Federation was all about.
 
Indeed not one of the speakers,  including the Governor-General and the Prime Minister,   at any time mentioned the very essence of our Constitutional Monarchy,   the Crown.
 
In accepting the tenet of Westminster we must also accept the Ten Commandments of Alfred the Great,  the liberties of England which include the Magna Carta,  the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement,  the Coronation Oath, the Common Law and the various statutes that combined make our Constitution the greatest protector of  democracy known in this world to date.  As Churchill has said it is:  “the worst form of government - except for all others”.
 
It may well be that future generations will develop some sort of system which is ideal.  However a republic is a retrograde step.  Under our Constitutional Monarchy the Crown is enshrined within our Westminster system but in a Republic the concept of the Crown is totally removed and replaced by a totally political entity.  By removing the Crown we remove the guidance of The Almighty and any association with Christian beliefs in the direction of our constitutional life and we replace it with the humanist ambitions,  political and personal,  of the individual.
 
As I have often said,  there is no former British colony which has accepted Westminster,  but removed the Crown,  which has survived as a true democracy for it is only the Crown which protects the interests of the people against the aspirations of the politician.
 
For years the politically correct have attempted to indoctrinate us with the idea that the Crown of Australia can exist without the Crown of the United Kingdom and whilst,  since the Statute of Westminster and the Royal Styles and Titles Act of 1954,   the Crown of Australia has become totally independent from influence by the British Government,  to cauterise all links to the Crown of the United Kingdom and all that the Christian Crown entails,  is nothing less than absurd.
 
Similarly,  you cannot have Westminster without accepting the myriad of laws,  of conventions and of implementations which,  for over a thousand years,  have contributed to develop our peculiar brand of democracy which protects and nurtures our freedom and our democracy today.
 
We often hear people talking about their ‘rights’,  but one cannot have ‘rights’ without ‘responsibilities’.
 
We, in Australia,  enjoy one of the greatest democracies in the world,  indeed we are considered to be the seventh  oldest,  but I personally believe that,  despite the manoeuvrings of our two party system to frustrate our constitutional safeguards,  we are the best.   However we cannot just accept the benefits of our Constitutional Monarchy without accepting the responsibilities that go with it.  Responsibilities such as allegiance to the Crown and honouring and respecting the Queen’s Majesty.
 
The theme of the Centenary Committee,  pervading even their advertisements, seems to propel the message that federation was solely the brainchild of Sir Henry Parkes.  In their anti-British bias they purposefully omit the part that the British Colonial Office played in encouraging the States to unite.
 
The truth is that union between the States was being promoted long before Parkes entered the political arena.  Indeed just four years after Parkes arrived in Australia in 1839 with his parents as ‘bounty immigrants’ the then Colonial Secretary in London, E D Thompson,  sought to establish a uniform law amongst the States.  Others around the time, including the Victorians Duffy and Service,  were promoting actual federalism.  However it was Earl Grey who became British Colonial Secretary in 1846,  who suggested a year later that some kind of central body be established in Australia to co-operate on such matters as communications and customs.
 
Parkes entered Parliament in 1854,   but it was not until 1867 that he first took up the cause of a Federal Council when Colonial Secretary.  However when a Council was established in 1885,  he decided to reject the concept and instead advocated total union.
The catalyst for union,  however,  lies in the report by Major General Sir Bevan Edwards which was presented to all six Colonies in 1889 highlighting the weakness of their individual military establishments against possible attack particularly by the increasingly aggressive German Empire and recommended federating the separate armed forces,  Parkes took up the initiative and called for a national convention,  which commenced the series of conferences which eventually led to Federation.
 
Parkes made his now famous and indeed inspiring speech at Tenterfield in 1889 which aroused tremendous support,  however he died before being able to consolidate that support and it was left to the Melbourne based Australian Natives’ Association to sponsor a meeting of representatives at Corowa in 1893 which resurrected the active moves towards federation.
 
Contemporaries of Parkes never knew which way he would turn and rather distrusted his politicking and this is why,  I believe,  he was never adopted by the Founding Fathers as an honorary member.  If anything Parkes could be called a ‘grandfather’ of Federation. He was not the father and it is wrong to eulogize him as such whilst ignoring the greater efforts of such selfless people as Deakin, Clark,  Griffith and Barton.
 
It was Barton who coined the phrase: “For the first time in history, we have a nation for a continent, and a continent for a nation”. Barton addressed some three hundred meetings in New South Wales within a period of four years!
 
Whilst,  amidst the wild and extravagant festivities of the Centenary,  there have been articles in the newspapers mentioning bits and pieces of Federation,  very few have actually gone into detail of why we federated and what it meant for the then known world.
Partial representative government was granted to New South Wales by the Constitution Act of 1842 with responsible government enabled in 1855.   Due to the enormous distances involved,  the remaining five Colonies,  whilst all having fragmented from New South Wales as various parts of Australia were settled,  were formed as autonomous entities each with their sovereign Constitutions and Governments including individual laws and taxes.
 
As the States developed,  the issues of State sovereignty and particularly the duties levied upon goods transported from one state to another became a matter of great concern.  However the absence of a central authority also meant that there was no coordinated defense system to protect the Australian shores.  In past years this had not really been an issue for,  since the collapse of the French as a colonizing force,  there had been no enemy sufficiently strong enough to pose a threat to the British Empire.
 
As the century drew to a close the increasingly militaristic German Empire was giving signs of support to the Boers and there were concerns,  albeit somewhat slight,  that Germany would enter the conflict on their side.  Of greater concern were German interests in New Guinea and their possible designs on expansion.
 
In 1899 Britain declared war on the Boers and the Australian States committed troops to fight in South Africa.    At the time of Federation the Boer War was still continuing and it is interesting to note that it was just 13 years following Federation that the first shot fired by Empire forces in the Great War was in Sydney Harbour.
 
The fears that led to Federation were very real fears indeed.  Today one can only wonder what may have happened had Australia not federated and had not our defense fallen under the single jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Despite living in the world’s leading democracy,  many Australians remain deep-rooted in their own prejudices.  Much is made of the fact that the franchise at the time of Federation was limited with women and Aborigines refused the vote conveniently overlooking the fact that South Australia was the first Colony within the British Empire to give women a franchise equal to men!  It is very easy for people today to criticize with hindsight but when considering the times and conditions of a hundred years ago,  it is clear to see that Australia was far in advance of the rest of the world.
 
And whilst we still face a fight against what many call the inadequacies within our population,  the fact is that every elector in this country,  whatever their race, their colour and their religion,  voted in the Constitutional Referendum and participated in the decision to retain our Constitutional Monarchy.  Those people that stand outside that decision and still agitate to tear down the very structure of our democracy,  are by rejecting the will of the people as a whole,  not only trivialising but rejecting our democratic process and prove only that the sort of republic they mean us to have is one which suits only their own individual prejudices.
 
THE RATIONALE BEHIND THE DRAFTING OF OUR CONSTITUTION
 
Republicans eulogize the Declaration of Independence of 1776 as the first peaceable attempt of a British Colony to withdraw from the Crown.  They forget that the skirmishes at Lexington preceded the Declaration by 14 months.  However  little has ever been written about the rationale which motivated the Founding Fathers of our Constitution.
 
It was following the 1891 Convention in Sydney that Samuel Griffith, Inglis Clark and Charles Cameron Kingston met to discuss the proposed Constitution.  A serious bout of influenza prevented Clark from joining the epic voyage on the Lucinda where Griffith, Kingston and Barton worked over the Easter weekend on Clark’s work,  presenting the first formal draft of a new constitution to the Government Printer on Easter Sunday,  the 29th March 1891.
 
Eighty-six sections from Clark’s original draft are present,  albeit most in the lucid writing of Griffith, in the document which became the Australian Constitution on the 1st  January 1901.
 
Inglis Clark was an American style Republican who despised the Monarchy. Although his draft gave executive authority to the Queen through her representative,  the Governor-General,  he looked on this as an interim stage before Australia severed links with the British Crown and became a republic.
 
Inglis Clark was enamoured with the varying socialist philosophies prevalent during the latter part of the 19th century.  As well as being a devotee of Joseph Mazzini,  the 19th century European philosopher who had once written: “Progress is the consciousness of progress. Man must attain it step by step, by the sweat of his brow”.
 
Inglis Clark was also a disciple of Jefferson and eulogised those principles which led to the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.
 
Others like Deakin also sought to produce a document which was relevant to a new country born into the new century.  Whilst Deakin was not a Republican,  he was what may be termed a quasi socialist.  His interests were more akin to the Fabian movement than Clark,  particularly his attraction to spiritualism whose forums provided a meeting place for Fabians both in the United Kingdom as well as in Australia.  Born in 1856,  Deakin was a lawyer and a politician and for over 20 years tirelessly campaigned for union between the States.
 
Clark’s radical approach in his draft constitution so pervaded the end document that following the Statute of Westminster,  people were apt to say that Australia was a ‘crowned republic’.
 
I personally disagree with the term ‘crowned republic’ which was first coined by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his ‘Idylls of the King’, published in 1859: “and crowned Republic's crowning common-sense”.  I surmise that this phrase was, however,  separately thought of as a counter to Republican propaganda.  We are in no way a republic.  Our Constitution protects the people in a manner far better than any republic could for the power of the people is vested in the Crown which encompasses a myriad of strengths whereas under a republic the power of the people is vested in an individual with all of his or her own weaknesses.
 
Although due to ill health and a disappointment in Griffith’s rejection of his more extremist views,  Clark did not participate in further conventions and actually voted against the final referendum thus denying himself a place amongst the Founding Fathers.  The reason why our Constitution is as relevant today as it was when Clark produced his original draft in 1890  lies in the compromise reached by Griffith between Clark’s fundamental socialist ideology and the stodgily stultified approach of imperialists prevalent at the time.
 
THE FABIAN MOVEMENT
 
Following the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,  Westminster democracy was working and political unrest in the far-flung British Empire was a thing of the past.  However this success led to a stodgy conservatism both in government and the Parliament.
 
On the other hand,  Europe did not have the benefit of parliamentary democracy and ever since the French Revolution of 1789 continued to be greatly unsettled.
 It was a time which saw Europe convulsed by despotism and anarchy.  In the short period of 60 years Europe experienced 30 revolutions with several royal dynasties exiled and even the Austrian Empire facing collapse.
 
Indeed even anarchism became a recognized form of political action and in the latter half of the nineteenth century there developed two main socialist philosophies; Marxism and Fabianism.  Karl Marx had turned the world upside down with his radical writings promoting socialism through civil unrest whilst the Fabian Society tended to be more in tune with the British way of life by promoting the introduction of radical socialism into the political environment without bloodshed and carnage.
 
Marx developed a philosophy that economic development was basic to social evolution,  demonstrating the inevitability of socialism and eventually of communism with the victory of the new class obtained by the elimination of the old order.
 
The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 but it was not until 1888 that it was translated into English despite Marx having moved to Britain in 1849 where he lived for the remaining 34 years of his life.
 
The Fabian Society grew out of many discussion groups and debating societies of comparable philosophies. Whilst these people were all intent on improving the lot of the ‘common man’,  they were all elitists believing that they,  as a superior caste,  were the only people who could govern effectively. It was thus that they developed the concept that social revolution must begin with educating the intellectual and wealthy classes as opposed to the Communist approach of fomenting agitation amongst the working class.
 
The latter part of the 19th century was a time when Britain ruled the civilized world and 'Empire' was everything.  The 1877 will of Cecil Rhodes in which he left his (yet to be made) fortune to 'form a society to extend the British Empire throughout the world',  indeed capsulated the very romanticism of contemporary conservatives and their dedication to Britain and the glory of Empire.
 
It was a time when the intelligentsia studied the volcanic ideals of Marx and Engels in their search for better government.
 
It was a time of the rise of socialism which led to the founding of the Labour movement.  A time when even the Christian churches were adopting socialist viewpoints.   Most early devotees of Fabianism and the preceding similar philosophies were,  I believe,  frightened of the tense situation pervading European countries whilst sincerely searching for a passive solution to the conformist atmosphere of Victorian politics stodgily entrenched in the Dickens-like environment of traditionalism and imperialism.
 
Just as in the 1960s and 70s the young turned to alternative philosophies,  to the hippy and flower power cultures,  so did the young of the 1870's and 80's.  Even young dons from Trinity College, Cambridge turned to psychic research as a substitute for their lost evangelical faith and it was thus that spiritualist séances became a meeting point for these doubting intellectuals.
 
It has been said but never proven that the name was adopted after the Roman Quintus Fabius Maximus is supposed to have appeared to members at a séance.  The family of Fabius was one of the oldest and most distinguished patrician families of Rome claiming descent from
Hercules and from the earliest of times playing a prominent part in Roman history.                                                                                                                
 
Fabius also called 'Cunctator' was the general who defeated Hannibal in the Second Punic War by tactics of masterly inactivity by refusing to fight face-to-face and only engaging in small actions with continuous delaying strategies which he knew he could win, no matter how long he had to wait.  Tactics immortalised in the words: “For the right moment you must wait...when the time comes you must strike hard”.
 
The Society attracted a surprisingly large number of influential people,  including some we today would not normally associate with socialist reform.  These included Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Gerald Balfour and his brother Arthur (later a conservative Prime Minister) and Annie Besant soon to become absorbed into the cult of Theosophy and to play a large part in the introduction of 'passive resistance' in India,  later so ably pursued by Ghandi.
 
In his search for a solution to the social problems besetting England in the late Victorian and Edwardian times,  Winston Churchill had sought advice and education from the Fabian Socialist leader Beatrice Webb,  whose husband,  Sydney,  was instrumental in drafting and welding Fabian ideals into the new constitution of the British Labour Party.
 
However Churchill failed to be convinced by Fabianism and later dismissed the teachings of Mrs Webb declaring his unwillingness to: “be shut up in the soup kitchen with Mrs Sydney Webb”.  In turn Mrs Webb said of Churchill that he was: "Restless....egotistical, bumptious, shallow minded and reactionary, but with a certain personal magnetism".
 
It was of course Churchill's concern for the poor and the slum conditions in which so many people existed that was a factor in his turning against the Tory Party and joining the Liberals for a time.
 
Sir Edward Grey together with eminent personages of the day including L. S. Amery, Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Milner were involved,  if not actually in the
movement,  then as what they termed ‘coefficients’  It was, of course,  Sir Edward Grey who later as Foreign Minister made the famous statement on the Declaration of War: “The lights are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”.
 
This prophesy  has become only too true,  but it has not been the might of the Kaiser that has thrown our liberty into darkness,  not the later sway of Hitler’s evil Nazism,  but the very Fabianism that Grey himself tampered with.
 
It was out of this philosophical menagerie that in 1884 (coincidently the year of Marx’s death),  an organization was built which would permeate not only the Labour movements, but also the conservative parties of the Western world.  It would also infiltrate the Christian church causing priests to use their spiritual position to foment political radicalism and dissent.
 
 Indeed it is a little known fact that the first Fabians were almost all lapsed Anglicans.  The Christian Social Union, formed in 1889,  sought to permeate the Anglican Church with Fabian ideals and soon attracted more than two thousand clerical members.
 
In 1894, the Fabian Society designated a large bequest to found the London School of Economics and Political Science,  now popularly known as the LSE and responsible for the education of a large number of British politicians.  The conservative Arthur Balfour himself contributed £2000 (an enormous sum in those days) and arranged the introduction of legislation in Parliament which would give the school university status.
 
The LSE is now one of the largest schools of the University of London, and through its former students exerts an enormous influence in the activities of many Governments,  particularly that of Great Britain as well as embracing the thinking of such world organizations as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations.
 
One can understand the motives behind Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s dismemberment of the British Empire when one realises that he himself was a Fabian.  In fact,  even though the Fabian Society never had more than 4,000 members, they originated, promoted, and steered through Parliament most of British social policy in the latter eighty years of the 20th Century.
 
However,  in a similar manner to the ‘green’ and ‘democratic’ factions,  the Fabian movement in a sense betrayed and corrupted the early ideals upon which it was founded when it joined in union with the Labour movement in the early 1900’s,  thus totally politicizing itself.
 
However mistaken the early thinkers behind this period of social reform may have been,  we must admit that they were quite genuine in their search for an ideal world and most would be horrified that they gave birth to a philosophy that was to vigorously oppose the principle of Westminster democracy.
 
Although not members of the Fabian Society,  Deakin and Clark moved in the same circles and in many ways shared similar views.  Both were involved in the sort of debating societies and groups which preceded and led to the Fabian philosophy becoming established as a Society in Australia in 1891,  coincidently the same year which saw the founding of the Australian Labor Party.
 
Of the two,  Deakin was the closer in accepted thinking through his dalliance with spiritualism.
A profound Protestant,  he wrote over a period of 29 years a book of nearly 400 prayers.  Some time after Federation,  in his book The Federal Story,  Deakin held that: “Federation and the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution were ‘providential’ and were secured only by a series of ‘miracles’”.  In 1905 he described his spirituality with the words: “sufficient to say that the religion of Jesus Christ is the life of the present, the light of the future and the hope of the world”.
 
Although linking itself to the Labor movement in Australia,  Fabianism found a stumbling block in the innate conservatism of the bulk of the active membership of Labor which unlike in Britain was predominantly Roman Catholic.  It was not until the advent of Edward Gough Whitlam that the Labor platform and subsequent Government was based almost entirely on Fabian principles.  In Britain,  although Attlee’s connivance with the American dream of superseding the British Empire was due to his Fabian outlook and even though every member of the late 1970s Cabinet of Prime Minister James Callaghan was a Fabian,  it was Blair with his ‘New Labour’ movement that actually led to the ‘Fabianisation’ of British politics.  One wonders whether this was why Murdoch brought Blair and Keating and others together at Hayman Island in Australia in July 1995 just prior to the British Election of 1996?
 
The speech of former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke to the Fabian Society Centenary dinner on the 18th May 1984 held in Adelaide epitomised the role that Fabianism has played in Australian politics.  He said: “It is of course the classic concept of Fabianism - the inevitability of gradualness - and nothing is more widely misunderstood or more frequently misrepresented...Let me insist on what our opponents habitually ignore, and, indeed, what they seem intellectually incapable of understanding, namely the inevitable gradualness of our scheme of change.
 
“For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did, most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless.
 
 “Almost from the beginning, its (The Fabian Society’s) founders envisaged that the vehicle would be a Labor Party...The (Fabian) Society drew its strength from its vision of the future of Labor and the Labor Party...
 
“Australian Fabianism and Australian Fabians have made a specific and significant contribution to the Australian Labor movement and the Australian Labor Party”. ..  “I gladly acknowledge the debt of my own Government to Fabianism”.
 
Also in his speech, Hawke named several prominent Labor politicians as Fabians, with former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, as their own Fabius Maximus.
 
For years people wondered what the Fabian Society was all about.  The very mention of the word would immediately lead one to be consigned to the realms of the ‘loony far-right’.
 
However, today the Fabian Society is not only openly encouraging membership,  but is also advertising itself on the internet and openly broadcasting the success of its surreptitious politicking over the past century and why wouldn’t it?  For years it has admitted some of the most prominent people in the world to its ranks.  It is a danger because it is able to exert tremendous influence on our future through its control of our politicians and the administrators of global organizations and its ability to link together the socialist think tanks of the Governments of major nations in the world today.   Indeed since the advent of Christianity,  never before has there ever been such a powerful influence on politics.
This is why member nations of the International Monetary Fund all follow specific economic policies whether individuals within their Governments concur or not.  This is why the way in which we live is essentially controlled on a global basis through a myriad of international bodies and treaties.
 
The historian George Macaulay Trevelyan described the Fabian Movement as: “intelligence officers without an army who influenced the strategy and even the direction of great hosts moving under other banners.”  Early Fabians delighted in describing themselves as the: “Jesuits of Socialism”.
 
Fabianism is unlike any other political ideal for it has no doctrine.  Indeed it is not a doctrine,  it is an attitude.  Whilst most political parties were founded on a range of fixed beliefs,  Fabianism has none and is responsible for the disregard and even elimination of the underlying principles of both Conservative and Labour movements in the Western world.  Without any fundamental principle to guide the Fabian movement,  the question that must be asked is: “who or what actually controls the wielding of this tremendous influence”?   
 
Many have wondered how it is that there is little difference in ideology between Costello and,  say,  Crean and why,   in the United Kingdom,  Hague and Blair are so alike and similarly in the United States with Bush and Gore?  It is simply because whether they are Fabians or not,  they and their political parties have been influenced by Fabianism so that today there is little difference between their politics and their policies.
 
We are now told that Fabians were responsible for the Marshall Plan,  which, of course,  led to the reconstruction of Europe as a social democracy,  the precursor to European Union.  Were they,  I wonder,  also responsible for the western attitude to the Baltic States,  using Stalin’s aggression to manipulate acceptance of their own policies in Western Europe?
Whatever the case,  their influence upon world affairs is undoubted and even now openly boasted by this very organization which once prided itself in its shrouded secrecy.
 
Fabianism and Westminster democracy have become an anathema to each other.  Fabianism can influence our politicians,  even a Governor-General,  but it cannot control the Crown,  which is why the Westminster System - wherever it is truly practised - has to be destroyed or otherwise corrupted by removing the Crown.
 
In a similar vein to the immortal words of the 17th century James Duport: “Whom God would destroy He first sends mad”,  the Fabians must first ensure that the population is constitutionally illiterate and patriotically impotent.  They must remove all visible evidence of the Crown and destroy any sense of national identity filling the void by channelling the natural fervour of the people to responsible but politically neutered albeit passions such as sporting and musical activities.
 
With the defeat of the republic at the recent Referendum of 1999,  we saw a tremendous outpouring of outrage from those who led the ‘Yes’ case.  This was not simply because they were unsuccessful,  but by failing to topple the Crown they also failed in their lifelong aspiration to introduce what they now openly admit to as ‘globalisation’ or what used to be called ‘the new world order’.  
 
With the support of almost the entirety of the media,  most politicians, the banks and big business,  they felt they could not possibly fail,  but fail they did because just over a hundred years ago,  a group of people of differing political and philosophical opinions,  but all patriots in their own way,  met together and produced a document which I believe was fashioned under Divine Inspiration.
 
Our Federation document,  our Constitution,  was and is a modern document and is as relevant to today’s needs as it was in 1901,  resulting from the enlightened thinking particularly of the socialist Clark and the Liberal Deakin but shaped in the conservatism of Griffiths and Barton.
 
The Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement delivered the power inherent in the Monarch to the British Parliament.  However our Founding Fathers deliberately placed emphasis on the supreme authority of the people rather than that of Parliament.  This is why  in Australia today our Constitution differs from British Westminster because in Australia it is the people and not Parliament which is supreme.
 
The inclusion of provision for change to the Constitution to be made only by referendum as drafted in Section 128 delivering authority into the hands of the people received great opposition from the more political of the delegates and indeed many wanted Parliament itself to have the power to amend.  They,  quite rightly,  said that it would be difficult to implement radical change if proposals had to be put to the people.
 
In the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America,  Thomas Jefferson advocated that constitutions should be fluid documents with facility for unfettered amendment saying: “.. we might as well require a man to wear the coat that fitted him as a boy”.
 
However the Founding Fathers preferred an opposing view: “It is easier to prevent the politician from assuming new clothes than to cloak the individual in a mass of protective rights”  and followed closely the Swiss referendum provisions.  Switzerland,  like Australia,  is a federation and is reliant upon popular direct democracy. 
 
In fact in a typical year the Swiss are likely to vote on up to 16 federal propositions and double or triple that number at state or local levels.  It has amended its Federal Constitution 47 times since 1901!  An interesting requirement which,  had it been adopted by Australia,  could well have prevented many problems faced in this country is that in Switzerland it is obligatory for referendums to be held on foreign treaties as well as on all constitutional amendments.
 
Australians jealously guard their constitutional rights and since Federation have passed only eight out of the forty-two proposals for constitutional amendment.  It is therefore highly unlikely that they will ever allow politicians to receive greater power.  Most of those who sought change sought it not for the benefit of the people,  but to facilitate their global ambitions and this is why they failed miserably.
 
THE PREAMBLE
 
One of the reasons for their failure can be sourced to the Preamble which established an ‘indissoluble union’ which was never meant to be broken.
 
We,  in this country,  have a heritage of British institutions descended from the disputes and wars of Britain going right back to Alfred the Great and beyond.  We have inherited the rich tradition of the Biblical coronation.  We have inherited a Constitution under God.  The Christian heritage of Australia did not start with the Preamble but rather the Preamble was a result of the deep-seated Christian beliefs in this country.   I have for many years said that I believed that the Preamble was written under Divine inspiration and the more I have researched into our Constitution and the Preamble,  the more convinced I am that my words are correct.
 
At a time when radical socialism and atheism was prevalent amongst many influential people,  I find it remarkable that those few individuals who met over a hundred years ago could have forced through the inclusion of the words: “humbly relying upon the blessing of Almighty God”,   thus giving to our constitution an aura of divinity.  Similarly,  I must say that I find it particularly reprehensible that ministers of the cloth,  persons who profess to be of God,  would condone the removal or the dilution of the words ‘Almighty God’.
 
When Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the Act of the British Parliament on the 9th  July 1900, which brought the Australian Commonwealth into existence,  it was the Act (termed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act) rather than the Constitution which was itself a clause of the Act,  which contained the Preamble forever unique in its opening words:  “Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established”.
 
The founding fathers devoted little time to debate on the issues surrounding the framing of the Preamble with two notable exceptions;  a concern over the word ‘Commonwealth’ with its Republican connotations and the inclusion of the word ‘Almighty’.
 
The first draft of the Preamble was debated at the National Australasian Convention of 1891, but it was not until 1899 that the final words: “humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God” were incorporated thus guaranteeing the free exercise of religion.  We owe these words predominantly to the efforts of the South Australian, Patrick McMahon Glynn and the Victorian, Henry Bournes Higgins.
 
Whilst not formally part of the Constitution,  the Founding Fathers intended that it be available for interpretation by the High Court.  As a result of this,  the Preamble has been the subject of some considerable debate,   providing a platform for political change and influencing legal decisions and establishing the doctrine of legal equality ensuring the constitutional unity of the Australian people ‘‘in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth’’.
 
The founding fathers believed that the purpose of the Preamble was to declare:
 
1)         the agreement of the people of Australia
2)         their reliance on the blessing of Almighty God
3)         the purpose to unite
4)         the character of the union-indissoluble
5)         the form of the union-a Federal Commonwealth
6)         the dependence of the union-under the Crown
7)         the government of the union under the Constitution, and
8)         the expediency of provision for admission of other colonies as States.
 
Of these only the purpose to unite, the form of the union, the government of the union under the Constitution, and provision for admission of other colonies as States are found elsewhere in the Constitution and the remaining four,  according to Quick and Garran:  “have therefore to be regarded as promulgating principles, ideas or sentiments operating at the time of the formation of the instrument, in the minds of the framers, and by them imparted to and approved by the people to whom it was submitted”.
 
CONCLUSION
 
In this year of 2001,  the Centenary year of our Federation,  is it not an occasion to celebrate 100 years of peaceful, democratic existence as a Constitutional Monarchy free from any prolonged period of crisis.  A period under which all of our problems have been settled lawfully and constitutionally.  A period in which the people of this country have never been forced to accept any other government other than that for which the majority,  through the electoral system,  have voted.
 
Admittedly there have been times when things have seemed to go wrong but the fact that we have continuous elections,  interspersed with parliamentary enquiries and Royal and other Commissions,  is evidence that our democratic system is indeed working,  and working well.
 
Was it not Bishop Heber who so aptly wrote: “Though every prospect pleases and only man is vile”.   One cannot blame the problems of the corruptness of man on our Constitution.
 
The Centenary of Federation celebrations,  despite being chaired by an Anglican Archbishop are,  I believe,  evidence of the corruptness of man,  for in their republican prejudice,  the organizers together with the media,   completely and absolutely ignored both the Crown,  the very essence of our Constitution,  as well as avoiding mention of Her Majesty  the Queen,   the embodiment of the Crown.
 
This is the state in which we find ourselves just one year after the decisive defeat of republicanism in this country following a decade of divisive arguments, misinformation and pure emotional propaganda all costing millions of dollars.
 
At a time when we should have celebrated the positive aspects of our Constitution,  aspects obviously appreciated by the people who rejected any concept of change,  we have been subjected to a barrage of Republican propaganda during the taxpayer-funded Federation celebrations which seemed to be commemorating the achievements and the life of some country other than Australia which was once proud to have been under the British mantle.
Not only has our heritage been discarded by media and quasi government and political institutions but the High Court has,  since its ruling that Britain is a foreign power,  further eroded our links to English Common Law by declaring that neither Magna Carta nor the Bill of Rights has any relevance in Australia today. 
 
I suppose it should come as no surprise that we are now told,  again by the absurdly named ‘politically correct’,  that the arrival of the First Fleet comprising 1,030 persons,  was an ‘invasion’.  To paraphrase the idiom of Churchill: ‘Some invasion, some defence’.
 
In Parliament House in Sydney,  there is a huge painting of Captain Phillip raising the Union Jack on Australian soil. From the time of the raising of this flag on the 26th January 1788,   the people of this country,  whatever their ethnic origin,  have enjoyed a maturing democracy unparalleled in this region,  for the Fleet brought not only people and provisions but the Common Law and the Liberties of England encompassing the principles of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights.
 
We live in the only State in Australia where our Government House has become a reception centre.  State Governments continue to legislate to dismantle symbols of our Constitutional Monarchy,  including Oaths of Allegiance. Even churches,  in the Republican bias of their priests,  have arbitrarily abandoned prayers for the Queen, as Sovereign of Australia and yet The Queen would be one of the most Christian Monarchs in existence occupying a Throne founded on biblical principles.
 
This is all the result of a ten-year long campaign by Republicans to water down our monarchical birthright and it is time that we,  the people put a stop to these covert actions.
 
It is time that we dispelled the myth of  political correctness which is but the attempt by those in control of public communications to imprint their will upon the people to remove that which exists in order to create their idea of a new world,  and demand a return to common decency and to morality.  A return to the times when we all knew what is was to be patriotic and to be proud to be called an Australian.
 
The underlying principle of the Monarchist League is ‘to retain the Crown in the Constitution’.  A principle which has guided us for the past 58 years of our existence.  A principle we have never betrayed and will never betray,  whatever the cost may be.
 
As the status of the Crown and Her Majesty our Queen continues to be marginalized as republicans continue with their agenda of stealth,  our realism and our idealism can only too well be described in the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson:
 
“Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
 
Let us never yield in defense of our Constitution and our democracy and above all its guardian and protector,  Her Majesty our Queen.
 
 
 
Sydney,  January 2001
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
KITCHENER  -  LAST OF THE GREAT WARRIORS
 
Often when I do research in preparation for a speech I come across some quotes or comments of interest and make a note to do some further research sometime in the future.  One area of such interest was Field Marshall Lord Kitchener and during some spare time I wrote the following article.
 
 
During the past few months we,  in Australia,  have been subjected to a ‘politically correct’ version of the events leading up to the celebration of our Centenary of Federation.
 
However it has been a celebration in which anything to do with the Crown has been obliterated in favour of the biased ramblings of a jaded leftist consortium who are as out of touch with the cultural and constitutional heritage of this country as most politicians of today seem to be with the people who elect them.
 
The British Empire has produced many things,  the most sacred of which is the development of parliamentary government and the separation of powers refined over the past three centuries into the Westminster system.
 
Integral to the expansion and retention of the Empire were the British Navy and the British Army whose commanders were often left to their own devices in the far-flung settlements to which they were posted and over a period of time great soldiers and sailors became the heroes of Empire.  Names such as Drake, Raleigh, Cook, Nelson, Marlborough, Wolfe, Clive, and Wellington are but a few which come readily to mind.
 
From the First World War onwards,  modern communications virtually eliminated the need for independent thought in action in the field and this is why I feel that the title of ‘the Empire’s last great soldier’ must go without argument to Field Marshall The Earl Kitchener of Khartoum who,  for decades,  captured the imagination of the world with his daring exploits and brilliant successes.
 
Herbert Horatio Kitchener (named Horatio after Nelson) was born on the 24th June 1850 in Ireland.  His father,  a retired Army Colonel,  had purchased two properties in Kerry and Limerick which he restructured into successful estates.
 
He was educated in Switzerland and was accepted into the Royal Academy at Woolwich.
 
Prior to his commissioning and just twenty years old,  Kitchener volunteered for action in France against Prussia with what was fast becoming a French resistance.  After contracting pneumonia and pleurisy in the field,  he was invalided out and returned to England where he commenced his career as a cadet with the School of Military Engineering following in the footsteps of his hero Charles Gordon whose later killing at Khartoum he would revenge.
 
Kitchener spent little time in England,  working tirelessly to promote and defend the ideals and the actuality which was the British Empire,  for he believed so very strongly that the Empire was a civilizing force in a pagan world.
 
From the time he became a cadet until he died,  Kitchener threw himself into his work,  continuously disregarding danger to himself both from action in the field and to his disregard of his health from working - always assiduously - at whatever task was set him.  One of his later ADCs,  Lord Edward Cecil said that Kitchener had a belief  ‘that he was defrauding the Almighty if he did not carry out his task’.
Following his retirement from the position of Commander in Chief in India,  in 1910 Kitchener paid his only visit to Australia touring all six States to inspect and report on military facilities at the invitation of the Australian Government.
 
Around this time he had made a request to be appointed Minister in Constantinople and had this been granted the esteem in which he was held by the Turkish powers would most probably have enabled him to cause Turkey to side with Britain and not Germany in the First World War and the tragedy that was Gallipoli would never have occurred.
 
In fact,  following a visit to Constantinople,  he corresponded with his confidant Lady Salisbury in November 1910 deploring the state of affairs in Turkey:  “We are out of it altogether” he wrote “as the present Ambassador does nothing, and the German is allowed to do as he likes” referring to the huge bribes the German Government was making to Turkish Ministers and the refusal of the British to sink to such depths.
 
However this was not to be and Kitchener was appointed to the coveted position of British Agent and Minister in Egypt,  a position he held until his appointment in 1914 to the Cabinet as the first soldier Secretary of State for War since General Monck following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.
 
On the 13 November 1915,  disregarding danger to himself,  Kitchener went to the Front Line at Gallipoli landing in a small boat on North Beach and inspecting the Turkish line from the Australian trenches inland of the Sphinx and at Lone Pine.  His submission to the Cabinet to allow him to re-deploy the forces was rejected and in view of this,  together with the prospect of increasing Turkish forces and the problems of supplying Gallipoli throughout the winter with its many severe storms,  he recommended that Gallipoli (Anzac, Suvla and Helles) be evacuated.
He spoke to the men and said: “The King has asked me to tell you how splendidly he thinks you have done.  You have done splendidly, better, even, than I thought you would” and he then took it upon himself to ensure that the evacuation proceeded with as little loss of life as possible.
 
Much is made of the tragedy that became known as ANZAC,  but few appreciate the importance of Gallipoli for had the campaign succeeded;  it would have created a backdoor passage to the Balkans as well as eliminating the potential Turkish threat to Egypt and Mesopotamia.
 
Today this man of humility and simplicity and yet of such total strength and zealous self-control in times of stress is virtually unknown despite his enormous achievements and victories which constantly saw him on the front pages of the press.  Only the famous World War One poster ‘Your Country Needs YOU’,  taken around the time of his entry to the Cabinet is familiar today through its current use for commercialised purposes.  However,  no one could fail but to be impressed by the strength of character radiating from Kitchener’s face and above all from his eyes.
 
The Field Marshall died as he had lived,  in action.
 
He was travelling to Russia at the invitation of the Czar,  to visit and report on conditions at the Russian Front,  when on the 5th of June 1916 the cruiser ‘Hampshire’,  which was carrying him,  hit a German mine and was sunk with all but a dozen drowned.   In this day and age,  where honour has no place,  doubtless a seat on the lifeboat for a person of such eminence would be ensured and worse,  accepted.  An anathema to a person of the principles and integrity of Kitchener’s generation.
 
Today the Empire which Kitchener defended so assiduously is no more.  It has disappeared in the winds of change along with so many of the very things which made people like Kitchener so outstanding.  However in Australia and the other Dominions,  the benevolent and protective nature of what Empire came to mean remains through the Westminster system of government and lives on in the hearts of those who cherish the Crown.
 
In his 1877 will, Cecil Rhodes left his future fortune  to form a society extending the British Empire throughout the world.  His money ended up  financing the Rhodes Scholarships which now seem to educate the young to despise everything Empire once stood for.  Likewise it is regrettable that the achievements and more importantly the principles Kitchener represented,  have little chance of being recognized and promoted.  In fact,  as we approach the 85th anniversary of his death,  there is little that is now left of the man who was once Britain’s hope.  His estates in Kenya have long disintegrated and the home he cherished,  Broom Park in the village of Bridge whose Post Office was used by Lord Kitchener to send his first dispatch in 1914,  is now a hotel.  Only his statue in Horse Guards Parade and the memorial in St. Paul’s Cathedral,  stand witness that this was a very great soldier and indeed a very great man.
 
Today when everything British is despised and where those who are properly placed to defend this injustice remain silent,  we in the Australian Monarchist League can do our part by vigorously defending and aggressively promoting the unique heritage that is ours of democracy under the Crown.
 
 
 
Sydney,  May 2001
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 

 
THE DANGER AHEAD
 
By mid 2001 it was becoming apparent that Labor was in the ascendency in State politics and that within a year they could well be governing in all six States thereby opening an opportunity under the Australia Acts to pursue both individual and federal Republican agendas.  This article was written to highlight the potential danger to our Constitution.
 
 
OUR CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
 
The 1st January 1901 was never intended to be an occasion of complete secession  from the motherland of Britain,  but rather a major and vital stage in the continuing ongoing process of constitutional development and separation from British governmental authority.  Like a parent unwilling to let its child go,  Britain continued to refer to Australia and indeed the other British Nations as the ‘Great Colonies’ and it was not until 1907 that this rather disparaging term was replaced by ‘the self governing dominions beyond the seas’, later shortened to ‘Dominions’.
 
The First World War provided the impetus for the Dominions to call upon Britain to surrender diplomatic control which it finally did in 1923.  Following a series of aggressive Imperial Conferences,  Britain enacted the Statute of Westminster in 1931 which restrained its Parliament from passing laws relating to the Dominions unless requested by a particular Dominion to do so.  Each Dominion was also empowered to repeal or amend acts of the United Kingdom Parliament which applied to them.
 
The Australian State Governments,  however,  were unsure of how the Commonwealth would handle this new power and Australia refrained from adopting the Statute and it was not until 1942 that it was agreed necessary to enact adoption legislation (backdated to 1939) to facilitate Australian sovereignty over its war footing.  However the Statute did not apply to the States which continued to be subject to British Acts, predominantly the pre-Federation (Imperial) Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865.  Furthermore the Statute of Westminster did not touch upon provision for appeals from Australian courts to the Privy Council and it was not until 1975 that the Whitlam Government abolished appeals from the High Court.
 
THE AUSTRALIA ACTS
 
By the early 1980’s the attitude of the States apropos the Commonwealth had radically altered.  In 1982 the States and the Commonwealth decided to abolish Appeals from State Supreme Courts to the Privy Council and  following a lengthy debate and the final agreement of Queensland Premier Joe Bjelke Petersen it was agreed that legislation be enacted to remove the vestiges of Colonial Acts and the right of the States to appeal.  Section 15 of the Act also empowered the States to amend the 1931 Statute of Westminster adopted by Australia in 1942 provided there was unanimity.
 
Although there was limited news reporting there were vigorous protests but the legislation was steamrolled through all Federal and State Parliaments and through the UK Parliament itself.  On the 4th December 1985 the Australia Act received Assent and was proclaimed on the 3rd March 1986 and the legislative and judicial institutions of the United Kingdom ceased to have any jurisdiction in respect of Australian affairs.
 
Few realized at the time that the passage of the Australia Acts meant that the UK Constitution Act of 1900,  and thereby indirectly the Constitution itself, could be made subject to the legislative will of the Commonwealth Parliament through a simple amendment to the Statute of Westminster.
 
Whilst both the Statute of Westminster and the Australia Acts manifestly affect the constitutional rights of the Australian citizen,  the actual wording of the Constitution was not amended and therefore it was taken that neither the Statute nor the Act required approval of the people under Section 128 of the Constitution.  It is unfortunate that their legality has not been tested in the High Court which has since adopted a greater interventionist approach to constitutional matters.
 
I,  myself,  must admit that for years people had been warning me about the dangers of the Australia Acts but I did not appreciate the real peril  until just prior to the Referendum, when the Howard Federal Government requested each State to use the Australia Acts to enact two bills:  the Australia Acts (Request) Bill and the Constitution (Requests) Bill.
 
The Australia Acts (Request) Bill 1999 was passed by all States to repeal Section 7 of the Australia Act 1986 thereby enabling each State to become a Republic. Whilst the Queensland and Western Australian Constitutions each required a referendum for change,  it could be said that since the Australia Acts (Request) Bill was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament and as Section 109 of the Commonwealth Constitution provides that when there is an inconsistency between a State law and a Commonwealth law the law of the State is invalid to the extent of the inconsistency,  a requirement for a referendum was unnecessary.
 
The Constitution (Requests) Bill was passed by some States but - following our lobby campaign - not all,  to empower the Commonwealth Government to amend the Statute of Westminster and to repeal all clauses of the 1900 Constitution Act except for Sections 1 (the Short Title) and 9 which is the section containing the Constitution.  The current Preamble was also to be deleted (and this was when the Government was openly stating that the existing Preamble would remain unchanged!).  Both Bills were subject to the passing of the Republic Referendum.
 
THE DANGER AHEAD
 
This year, 2001,  may well see Labor governing in all six States as well as federally for the first time since Federation.
 
No one should underestimate the acumen of the Labor Party nor should we take the intellect of leading Republicans for granted.  With only eight out of forty-four proposals successfully passing the referendum process since Federation, they more than anyone else would realize that within the next decade there is no way in which they will be able to persuade the Australian people to trust politicians sufficiently enough to vote for a republic under Section 128 of the Constitution,  whether the President were to be elected by the Parliament or by the people.
 
I therefore believe that we could potentially face a scenario where a Beasley Government will introduce a plebiscite with an innocuous and misleading question such as ‘Do you want an Australian as Head of State?’ and will take a simple majority of 50 percent plus one as a mandate to use the Australia Acts,  the powers of which have never been tested in this area,   to circumvent Section 128 by repealing the Constitution Act in its entirety and replacing the Constitution with a republican one of their own drafting.
 
Whilst this would be very unconventional,  its illegality could only be challenged in the High Court after constitutional change has taken effect.
 
 
One must bear in mind that the majority of Governments in the world today have come to power through illegal or irregular means and that most of these Governments are not only simply recognized by the United Nations and,  where appropriate the Commonwealth,   they are also welcomed as members and most as equal partners.
 
Whatever may be the case,  it is very important that we be prepared to face an onslaught against our Constitution and particularly against our Monarchy for,  if we are not prepared and the scenario I have painted comes to pass without a concerted opposition,  would we ever be able to forgive ourselves?
 
 
 
Sydney, June 2001
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
THE MONARCHIST VOTE
 
By August 2001,  Australia was gearing up for a Federal Election and it was by no means certain that the Howard Coalition Government would be returned.  Obviously it was in our interests to keep Howard as Prime Minister,  although there were fears regarding the republican sentiments of Costello and other senior members of the Liberal Party.  This speech was delivered in several parts of the country to emphasise that Monarchists could and should play a part in ensuring the election or re-election of Monarchists,  particularly within the Coalition Parties.
 
 
INTRODUCTION
 
By the end of this year Australians will be called upon to make a decision that could well decide the ultimate future of this nation for never before will any single vote have counted for so much as in the forthcoming Federal General Election.
 
The gulf between the thinking of Howard and that of Beasley is possibly wider than that of any previous opponents since Federation,  excluding,  of course,  McMahon and Whitlam.  The only difference is that today all Parties have become ‘politically correct’ with Labor also shedding its once intrinsic orthodoxy and allegiance to the Crown in favour of a well honed and communalist political machine.
 
Interesting though these politics may be to each one of us as individuals,  we cannot allow personal preferences to influence our duty to the Crown.
To us in the Australian Monarchist League,  the Federal Election is not just about who will govern Australia.  It is not just about deciding between the philosophies of temperate conservatism as opposed to radical Fabian socialism.  It is about electing to Parliament those persons who will best guarantee our future constitutional stability.  It is about making each Monarchist vote count and at the coming election we must not allow the Monarchist vote to be taken for granted and this paper will explore the situation before us.
 
I must say that talking about votes brings to mind the American politician who stood up and told his audience that he had ‘never paid a cent for a vote and never would’ and then expressed surprise when only half a dozen applauded and all the rest walked out greatly disappointed.
 
We are fortunate in Australia that even taking into account the problems with our
electoral system and particularly the machinations of branches of a certain party to ensure that its members ‘voted early and voted often’,  it is nothing like the corruptness of so many other countries.
 
Winston Churchill had once said: “Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once” and indeed treading a political pathway is not something that comes easily to the Australian Monarchist League for we have always maintained total independence from political parties and have always refused to be influenced from our sole criterion which is simply ‘to retain the Australian Crown in the Australian Constitution’.
 
Our support base comprises people from all walks of life,  from many ethnic,  religious,  social and political backgrounds all united together in one fraternal association dedicated to retaining the Crown within our Constitution and thus ensuring the integrity of our democratic traditions.
Whilst our active involvement in the Constitutional debate has not been of our choosing but is something that has been forced upon us,  we have an obligation to our cause to scrutinize without fear or favour all political parties on their attitudes towards the Crown.  It is our duty to encourage our members to support those politicians who support our Constitutional Monarchy and to withhold their support from those who support a republic.
 
THE POLITICAL PARTIES
 
Whilst it would be true to say that most of our members would be Liberal voters,  we,  as Monarchists,  have no reason whatsoever to be slavishly loyal to the Coalition Government. 
 
We are outraged that the elimination of many of our monarchical symbols,  such as the removal of mention of the Queen from the Citizenship Oath in 1993,  have not been reversed by the Howard Government nor has the Liberal Party,  State or Federal,  done anything to stem the unrelenting attack on the Constitution and the continued dilution of the Monarchy.
 
The vendetta-like pursuit by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) for costs for the righteous action we took to expose their scheme to allow, as genuine votes,  various markings in place of a plain ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ is well known to most of you as is the fact that the Government,  at the behest of the AEC,  rejected every appeal for relief, even a personal one from the Deputy Prime Minister,   forcing us to pay some $12,000. 
 
However whilst the treachery of politicians will always be with us,  we must place ourselves above politics and even bitterness and concentrate solely upon what is best in the long term for our constitutional security.
 
The platform of only one of the six political parties represented in the Federal Parliament now upholds the Constitutional Monarchy and that is the,  now disintegrating,  National Party.
 
The Liberal Party was once indisputably a ‘Monarchist’ Party but an analysis of their contemporarily termed ‘beliefs’ shows how the once triumphantly virulent and unambiguous philosophy of Menzies has become immersed in ambiguity with the watered down sterile words of: “basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy - the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.”       
 
Despite this mediocrity I think that it would be fair to say that whilst a large number of Federal Liberal politicians would be Republicans,  the majority of its Party members and voters are Monarchists.
 
The Liberal Party must realize that just because voters in Liberal held city electorates voted for the Republic does not mean that they are all Liberal voters.
 
There has never been a Conservative Party of conservative tradition in this country.  The closest was the Liberal Party formed by Menzies but by 1990,  as written by Gerard Henderson in his book ‘Menzies Child’,  former Menzies minister and Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck is said to have implied: “that non Labor had no political philosophy of its own - except to oppose the left in general and the ALP (Australian Labor Party) in particular”.
 
Menzies is accused,  even by Liberals,  for his British-ness and it is true that he did solidly believe in the sanctity of our British heritage,  but never,  ever,  did he allow his affection for tradition to affect his loyalty to Australia and particularly to the Australian Crown.
 
What these dissidents fail to realize is that the foundation for Australia as an independent nation was laid with Federation in 1901.  The enactment by Australia in 1946,  but backdated to 1942, of the Statute of Westminster simply confirmed procedures for our existing status as a Dominion under the Crown.
 
The powers that we had hitherto let remain with the British Government were of our own choice and not that of Britain’s.  The same applies to Appeal to the Privy Council and indeed with the awarding of Imperial Honours.  It was Australia’s own decision to retain Appeals and Honours and it was Australia’s own choice to remove such rights.
 
The Royal Styles and Titles Act of 1954 introduced by the Menzies Government itself explained how the Crown was the Crown of Australia and how the Queen was the Queen of Australia.
 
By far the majority of One Nation members and voters would be monarchists and indeed several are our members,  but nowhere can I find in its policy platform support for the Constitutional Monarchy.
 
The penchant for One Nation to punish the Coalition by heedlessly putting sitting
Members last will result only in delivering power to Labor and will serve no purpose for its cause other than to appease its anger at the treatment meted out to them.
 
The uprise of independents,  primarily from the National Party,  may result in a few being elected.  However the sitting Members they are targeting so far are all committed Monarchists and this of course is a matter of concern to us.  However in a realistic sense it is the policies of the two main parties that matter:
 
* Labor under Kim Beasley who,  despite such a large percentage of his electorate voting in favour of the Constitutional Monarchy,  has as its prime mandate the spending of millions of taxpayer moneys to force a republic on an unwilling Australian public,  and:
* Liberal under John Howard who has continually repeated that the Debate on the Republic is over.
 
However a Liberal Government under Peter Costello, particularly with Baird as Deputy,  gives us no comfort especially following his recent comments in July of this year at Corowa alongside the ‘born again’ Republican Tim Fischer:  “I think Australia will become a republic .. I don’t think we see ourselves in monarchical terms any more.    I think it’s time to renew the symbols while keeping the machinery of government safe and secure. I think the proposal that was put in 1999 could have done that, but it was defeated.”  As with most politicians,  Costello’s ‘thinking’ is out of tune with the majority of the people who so positively rejected his idea of what is ‘safe and secure’.
 
Kim Beasley himself may appear to be inoffensive but we must never make the same mistake as Winston Churchill did in dismissing Clement Attlee as irrelevant.
 
For instance Churchill,  undoubtedly the greatest wit of his time,   said that Attlee was: “a modest man with plenty to be modest about”.   He told of an ‘empty taxi arriving at 10 Downing Street, out of which stepped Mr Attlee’.
 
But this great man,  this demagogue of democracy,  this saviour of the free world,  this lone harbinger of the dangers of National Socialism could not have been more mistaken about the supposedly unassuming Attlee whose participation in the War Cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister well prepared him to oversee the dismantling of the British Empire on the instructions of the United States and to so radically socialise Britain that it has never been the same again.
Few people are aware that the Government of Clement Attlee was the first to be based on Fabian ideals as was Whitlam’s ‘New Labor’ in 1972 but Attlee never,  ever,  betrayed the Monarchy.
 
With the very high percentage of Labor Front Benchers who today openly espouse Fabian Socialism,  the triumvirate Government of Beasley,  Crean and Ferguson will pursue a far more radical path than any previous Australian Administration.
 
Benjamin Franklin had written: “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech” .
 
It took many years for me to realize the attack on our Constitutional Monarchy is but a part of a greater intent to destroy the Crown and the Westminster System wherever it exists.
 
If there is one thing that is clear it is that the aspirations of the multi-national cartel on the one hand and the sort of democratic freedom we enjoy in Australia on the other are totally incompatible and if the global experiment is to succeed they must first eradicate the Crown to remove the control of the Constitution from the people and to transfer that power into the hands of our politicians.
 
LABOR’S REPUBLICAN PLANS
 
Labor’s policy is unequivocally to: “Reform of the Australian Constitution and other  political institutions to ensure that they reflect” as they erroneously say “the will of the majority of Australian citizens and the existence of Australia as an independent republic”.
 
Kim Beasley has firmly committed a Labor Government to the creation of an Australian republic before 2010.  In his paper ‘Planning For A New Republic’ delivered on the 7th  October 2000 at Notre Dame University in Fremantle, he said:  “I think the 1999 Referendum campaign indicates that there is a greater likelihood of success for a Yes case led by a broad coalition of elected political representatives than by a more informal gathering of republicans outside the mainstream political process”.
 
With these words,  Labor has relegated the Australian Republican Movement to the outer and has assumed control of the Debate,  treating the Referendum as a minor hiccup in their agenda for political control of our Constitution.  In the same speech Beasley set out his proposals:
 
*          To begin with, a plebiscite would be held on the threshold question: do we want a republic in which an Australian is the Head of State, or do we want to continue as a constitutional monarchy in which the Head of State must be the British monarch.
*          If a majority of people wants a republic, a second plebiscite would follow to determine the preferred model.
*          Finally, a constitutional referendum would be held based on the outcome of the two plebiscites.
 
THE MARGINAL SEATS
 
Seventy-two percent of the 151 Federal Electorates in Australia voted NO.  Of the 151,  forty-two electorates,  or just under one third, are marginal where a swing of 4 percent or less is required to unseat the sitting candidate.  Of these 15 are ALP seats, 20 Coalition, 4 National Party and 3 new seats (two in the Northern Territory and one in Western Australia).
 
Of the 39 existing seats all but three voted NO to the Republic in the 1999 Referendum.  These are the South Australian Liberal Seat of Adelaide and the Victorian seats of Deakin (Liberal) and Chisholm (ALP).  Of the 24 marginal Coalition seats,  22 voted for the Constitution,  many with fairly wide margins and of the 15 ALP marginal seats,  14 voted for the Constitution,  again several with wide margins.  One may indeed wonder at the folly of the ALP for putting at risk these 14 electorates for the sake of aggressively pursuing their Republican agenda.
 
John Hay had written in 1872: “The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it” and perhaps this explains why the Liberal Party is intent on committing suicide by arrogantly brushing aside the concerns of its Monarchist voters and by fielding republican candidates in its marginal seats,   all but two of which rejected the republic.
 
Keating’s republicanism was driven by his ethnic hatred of all things British,  but what,  we wonder,  is the agenda which drives Beasley,  particularly when 61 percent of Labor electorates rejected the republic,  with many in excess of a 60 percent ‘No’ vote?
 
It is very probable that should the Referendum have been held under a Keating Government,  the National ‘No’ Vote would have been at least 10-15 percent higher and the question that we Monarchists much ask ourselves is whether it would be in the best interests of our cause to have a Labor or a Liberal Government introducing another referendum on a republic?
 
Under a Beasley Government it is unlikely that traditional Labor Monarchists would vote for constitutional change.  On the other hand and particularly in an environment where so many Liberal and National Party politicians,  such as Tim Fischer,  are continuing to jump onto the once failed Republican bandwagon it is highly likely that non Monarchist Liberals voters would be influenced by a republican Costello Government to support a republic.
 
Therefore,  unless the Treasurer can diffuse our concerns about his republicanism and the possibility that he will follow Beasley’s republican plans for a series of costly plebiscites and referendums,  we will have to accept that a future Liberal Government could well be just as great a danger to our Constitution as Labor is today.
 
THE AUSTRALIAN REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT
 
In early July the National Press Club granted Greg Barnes,  former staffer to Liberal Party Minister John Fahey and now Chairman of the Australian Republican Movement,  an opportunity to address them,  an opportunity they blatantly denied to us.  However Mr Barnes clearly showed that neither he nor his organization had anything new to offer us.
 
In fact so tedious and repetitive are the comments of Republicans that they become reminiscent of Disraeli’s comments following an unduly long speech of his nemesis Gladstone: “The man” he said “needs no reply.  He is inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity”.
 
Goebbels,  in an early 1930s minuted statement to Hitler,  wrote: “It does not matter how many lies we tell, because once we have won, no one will be able to do anything about it.”    No doubt Republicans have this in mind when they repeat in parrot like fashion,  ‘We want an Australian Head of State’.
 
I have news for the Republicans.  If we are to have a Head of State we have one in the Governor-General and he is an Australian.  More importantly,  we also have a Sovereign who commands far more international respect that any of our Prime Ministers have done since Menzies and furthermore we have a system that works and works well and has done so for over a hundred years which is more than you can say about your republics.
 
Sir Harry Gibbs,  former Chief Justice of Australia and a person whom I believe to be the soundest authority on constitutional matters in this country has said: “There is strong argument that the Governor-General,  although the representative of the Queen,  is the Head of State of Australia.  It must be remembered that the expression ‘Head of State’ does not appear in the Constitution and is an expression which is strictly used in international rather than domestic affairs”.
 
The Republicans also inferred that we Monarchists use scare tactics and ‘it simply isn’t fair’,  but on the contrary,  their proposals and irrational request that the people take a leap into the unknown and trust our democracy to Republican politicians is indeed something which is not only scary but indeed terrifying.
 
THE REPUBLICAN MEDIA
 
The issue of a republic would never have gained momentum were it not for the lead set by Murdoch with his innate hatred of all things monarchical.  The media enthused with their own anti-establishment and anti-the monarchy mindset constantly betray the trust bestowed upon them as purveyors of information to the public and even today continue to broadcast totally biased,  misleading and even untruthful tales purposefully designed to mollify their own sensationalising animosity.
 
It is thus that even a minor disruption will be misreported with major headlines such as ‘Scouts Dump Queen’ as recently occurred when the National Council of Scouts Australia introduced a second, alternative, pledge for Scouts.
Whilst the very worthwhile lifetime’s work of the Prince of Wales amongst the youth and disadvantaged is totally ignored in our media,  the mere peck on the cheek of Camilla gives rise to a multitude of malevolent headlines and malicious articles.  Were we not living in this sterile age of political correctness,  the media would be culpable of nothing less than sedition for their blatant bias and relentless denigration of our Constitution and obdurate disparagement of our Monarchy.
 
THE DANGER WITHIN
 
It is therefore very clear that we face great danger ahead,  particularly with  the very real potential of a Republican government by the end of the year,  but as Aesop  said so very long ago: “We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction”,  we also face the danger within for there are many supposed Monarchists who say that a republic is inevitable,  not realizing  the danger of such an unstudied comment.
 
Far worse than Republicans are those within royal organizations who,  in their hatred of all things British or for fear of losing their phoney popularity,  have put aside their loyalty to the Queen and to the Crown of Australia and in a subserviently timorous and often snivelling manner have done away with Toasts to the Queen and with the Royal Anthem,  for these people are the cancer which has the power to destroy us.
 
Then there are those sycophants of political correctness seeking compromise in every dispute and explaining themselves away with the lie: “Oh but the Queen is not popular”.  They fail to realize that there can be no compromise as far as change to a republic is concerned for either we remain a Constitutional Monarchy or we replace the Crown with a political presidency.  There are no halfway measures.
 
Constitutionalists and Republicans alike must realize that change to a republic is not just a simple matter of changing the Crown for a President.  The Monarchy and Parliament can be likened to matter and anti-matter but when restrained under the constitutional confines of the Crown,  as in the case with Australia,  they each work exceptionally well as a check on each other.
 
In centuries past the person of the Monarch would seek greater power and personal glory.  Today  there can be no ambition,  only duty and service.
 
History has proven that,  of all the former British Colonies,  it is only those Dominions such as Australia which have retained the Crown that have kept their freedoms and democracy intact.
 
In a republic,  civil and military authority is vested in the State which is controlled by Parliament whereas in Australia such authority is ultimately protected from political control because  it is vested in the Crown which is responsible to the people.  This was why the people and not Parliament alone had to vote on the proposal for constitutional change in 1999.
 
The Queen and her representative,  the Governor-General are,  in effect,  trustees of our Constitution.  The hereditary principle of the Monarchy and the appointment and dismissal of the Governor-General by the Queen,  although always only on the recommendation and at the request of the Prime Minister,  effectively protects the system from total political control.
 
However the question of the hereditary principle is one which seems to antagonise so many people,  even those who support the Constitution, and to thrust them into the arms of Republicans.
 
These people find it so very difficult to accept that the hereditary principle can underpin our democracy by removing the selection of our Sovereign from total political control.  The same mindset occurred in the United Kingdom when the Fabian inspired Government of Tony Blair successfully reformed the Lords,  unseating all but a few hereditary Peers and in so doing removed a major check within the political system on the excesses of the Commons which is now almost totally subservient to control from 10 Downing Street.  The hereditary Peers may have been a relict of an anachronistic past,  but they were parliamentarians totally independent of the Party Whip. They owed no favours or allegiance to any Government,  only to their own conscience and above all,  through their Oath,  to the people
 
Whilst the process of Constitutional Monarchy may seem to be anachronistic and even cumbersome,  it is nevertheless a system well tried and proven and one which has made Australia,  one of the youngest nations,  the seventh oldest democracy in the world.
 
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE
 
Then there is the disloyalty, indeed the despicable treachery,  of those who are sworn to defend the Queen and who have received,  and who continue to enjoy,  high office under the Crown. 
 
Companions of Honour, Privy Counsellors and the like,  all of whom have taken serious Oaths of Allegiance to the Queen and who have betrayed their honour for a pottage of supposed popularity.
 
All Members of the Federal Parliament and those of most State Legislatures are constitutionally required to swear or affirm allegiance to the Queen for it is a public declaration formally binding the swearer to honourably govern in the best interests of the people.  Many would have us believe that the Oath they take is ‘just words’ probably unknowingly misquoting Samuel Butler who wrote over three hundred years ago:
 
“Oaths are but words, and words but wind”
 
However,  whilst the breaking of an oath to tell the truth in court proceedings is considered to be so serious that there are criminal consequences for perjury,  there is today no penalty for the breaking of an Oath of Allegiance for it is held that the taker does so upon his or her honour.
 
With moves by politicians to remove or otherwise absolve themselves from the taking of the Oath the words of Tennyson are only too apt:
 
“His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”
 
The Oath of Allegiance encompasses not only loyalty to the Queen as an individual but also to the Crown which itself embodies far more than just the physical characteristics of our continent Island or its people.  It is the fulcrum on which our Constitution is based,  the font of our Laws and the single entity which unites all Australians into one nation.
 
An Oath to the Queen also embodies the binding and demanding Oath which Her Majesty swore at her Coronation in which she promised to govern all those nations of which she is Sovereign according to their respective laws and customs and to cause law and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all her judgments.  Above all Her Majesty swore to maintain the Law of God.
 
Nearly 50 years have now passed since the Coronation and yet on each and every day since her Majesty pledged this covenant,  She has never broken her Oath to her peoples.  Something that no politician,  whatever their repute,  could possibly claim!
 
Whilst the Crown is founded on Biblical and Christian ideals its protection is not restricted to Christians but rather encompasses all of its peoples regardless of race, religion, social background or economic status.
 
An oath to Australia or even to the people of Australia has none of the meaning or intent of the Oath to the Queen.  When a member of the Defense Forces swears Allegiance to the Queen,  his or her loyalty is to the Crown and not to any single politician.
 
Politicians would like to be absolved from their Oath to the Queen because they know that this would remove their accountability for I ask: “would it not be the politicians themselves who would determine the responsibility inherent in an oath to Australia or to its people”?
 
With only eight out of forty-four proposals successfully passing the referendum process since Federation, the Australian Labor Party would obviously realize that within the next decade there is no way an honest campaign will be able to persuade the Australian people to trust politicians sufficiently enough to vote for a republic under Section 128 of the Constitution,  whether the President were to be elected by the Parliament or by the people.
 
It is not beyond the realms of belief that if a plebiscite with an innocuous and misleading question such as: ‘Do you want an Australian as Head of State’ were to gain a simple majority of 50 percent plus it would be taken as a mandate opening the way for the Australia Acts to be used to circumvent Section 128 (the Referendum Procedure) by repealing the Constitution Act in its entirety and replacing the Constitution with a republican one of their own drafting.  Whilst this would be very unconventional,  its illegality could only be challenged in the High Court after constitutional change has taken effect.
 
This is why Republicans are now waiting with baited breath for the advent of a Beasley Government which will do far more than legitimise their corrupt cause, for Labor will not simply champion a renewed campaign but will embrace and politicise it as their very own crusade.
 
You may well say,  as do so many people,  that under these circumstances a republic is overwhelmingly inevitable.  Admittedly it is indeed overwhelming,  even devastatingly so,  but never, ever,  inevitable.  Those of you who were alive in the 1930s will doubtless recall the enthusiasm with which so many politicians and society leaders embraced National Socialism as the answer to the problems of the then world,  even putting Mussolini and Hitler on pedestals.  Other,  that is,  than the lone voice of Churchill going against the tide,  in his always politically
incorrect manner,  to caution and to warn of the dangers ahead.
 
Today we ridicule Neville Chamberlain and his famous - or should I say infamous - words made on his return from signing the Munich Pact in 1939: “I think we have peace in our time”,  however it was these words and appeasement and not the dire warnings of Churchill that the media and the ‘politically correct’ of the time embraced.
 
Is the situation today any different?
 
Churchill,  that great champion of British democracy fought against the tide,  but he fought with truth and justice on his side.
In 1999,  we all fought against overwhelming odds and in the years ahead we will continue to fight knowing that our cause is no less true or just and that we have in our hearts the best interests of Australia and the Australian people and indeed of future generations to come.
 
The Monarchist vote could well provide or deny government to either Party.  In this,  of all elections,  we must look to the long-term security of our constitutional Crown and not simply allow our support to be taken for granted.  We will be presenting to each candidate for election a petition of our requirements and if these are either rejected or even worse ignored,  the candidate,  whatever his or her political Party,  cannot expect to receive our votes.
 
In our fight for democracy we indeed chart a dangerous course,  but we may well adopt the last rebuke of former Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley to his enemies within the Labor ranks: 
 
“If an idea is worth fighting for,  no matter the penalty,
fight for the right,  and truth and justice will prevail.”
 
 
 
Sydney, August 2001
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
NINETEEN SEVENTY FIVE
 
I was asked to speak on the 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam Government on its 26th Anniversary.   I adopted an independent approach to the matter which,  I have since been told,   was not very much appreciated by ardent members of the Liberal Party.
 
 
Nineteen Seventy Five was a momentous year in many ways.  It was a good year for port wine and some brandies but a bad year for the then still embryonic global economy.  The world lost the famous authors P G  Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer as well as the international political figures Chiang Kai-shek  and Eamon De Valera.
 
It was also the year in which the Australian Labor Government and the maverick Prime Minister Gough Whitlam brought discredit to the fiscal reputation of Australia through official dealings with financial brokers of dubious repute.  The Fraser-led Opposition through its possibly illicit control of the Senate,  rather irresponsibly created political crisis after crisis by blocking 21 bills and then the greatest crisis in Australia’s political history by deferring supply.
 
The whole political scenario following the March 1974 Federal election itself a double dissolution brought upon the nation by the - perhaps - injudicious use of its control of the Senate by the Coalition,  could be likened to the closing days of a fragile republic.
 
The only saving grace that protected the people of Australia from total political collapse were the checks and balances that are an inherent part of our Constitutional Monarchy and I think it totally irresponsible and indeed disgraceful that not only Labor but also now Liberal politicians continue to denigrate Sir John Kerr for his act in declaring an election thus ensuring that the issue was taken out of the hands of the warring protagonists who created the crisis in the beginning to be decided ultimately by the people.
 
It was a stalemate situation with the Labor Government offering only an election of the Senate but obdurately opposed to a full election of both Houses and the Coalition implacably opposed to anything but a re-election of the Lower House.  It created intolerable circumstances for the Governor-General who did everything he could to resolve the situation,  meeting with both the party leaders as well as Ministers and legal officers of the Government.
 
Had the loans affairs,  with which I will deal later,  not occurred it is possible that the Dismissal may never have happened and some other resolution might have been found.  Whatever the case and whatever the faults that some may attribute to Sir John Kerr,  it is not easy to judge with hindsight particularly when taking into account the stubbornness of the two main characters,  Whitlam and Fraser.
 
Doubtless I will be criticised when I say this - but I believe that the principal characters were all venal men.  The Liberal Party,  believing themselves to be the inheritors of Menzies and born to government,  could not believe that they had been defeated in 1972 and in this belief they risked the stability of the nation by injudiciously blocking major bills of the Whitlam Government.
 
The Labor Party,  introducing for the first time their Fabian inspired doctrines,  governed from the inception in an irresponsible and amateurish manner.  Both Whitlam and Fraser were intent on power at whatever the cost and Kerr,  by his own admission,  seems to have been unduly influenced by concerns over his financial situation.
Having said this I cannot but admit that in the end the Governor-General took a very brave decision and should always be remembered for his courageous patriotism.
 
It is very unfortunate indeed that this decision led Labor,  in their grief at losing power,   to cause blame to be cast on the Crown.  Even more unfortunate were the reprehensible actions of Fraser, Anthony and Sinclair when they betrayed all those who supported them in 1975 by irresponsibly and irrationally aligning themselves with Whitlam and other socialists in condemning the Constitution that protected the people throughout the crisis they caused.
 
Current ‘politically correct’ historians point to the Dismissal as a constitutional calamity.  However it was anything but.  Indeed there was no crisis of the Constitution and it,  combined with the Reserve Powers,  worked superbly well throughout the process of the political crisis,  the Dismissal and the ensuing double dissolution.
 
As with the Kennedy Assassination,  1975 will be theorised about for many a year to come and the travesty of the loans scandal continues to provide a smorgasbord for conspiracy theorists.  This is particularly on the internet where a brief purview of which throws up a multitude of irrational explanations from being a payback for the Government raid on the ASIO headquarters in 1973 to a conspiracy of  the banks, the oil companies, the CIA and even of an alien alternative Government operating from Roswell!
 
Many years later Clyde Cameron,  Minister for Labor in the Whitlam Government,  publicly cast blame on what he called ‘a well organized plot which included ASIO, the CIA, the US Embassy, a couple of high ranking public servants and politicians and the Clerk of the Senate’.  Whilst the intelligence agencies of several countries,  including those of Britain and the United States,  would have undoubtedly been keeping a close watch on the situation and were reporting to their masters accordingly,  there is no proof of any sort of conspiracy whatsoever.  The total scenario was dependent on which course of action the increasingly erratic Whitlam would take thus making it impossible for there to be a ‘master plan’.
 
Whilst the Westminster system provides for an alternative government in the form of the Opposition,  which is always formed by the Party securing the second most number of Lower House seats,  there is a major problem when an Opposition is voted into power after a large number of years as the Government which is formed comprises few persons of ministerial experience.  This was the case in 1972 when a Labor Ministry was sworn in on the 5th December after a period of 23 years of unbroken Liberal and Country Party Government with not one of the new Cabinet having ever served in any prior Administration.
 
The first Whitlam Ministry which lasted for three weeks was comprised of only two ministers,  Whitlam himself and his Deputy Lance Barnard who shared between them 27 ministries.  The reason for this was that the results in some electorates were still be to determined and a full Cabinet could not be formed until Caucus - that is all Labor Members of the Parliament - met to elect them.
 
Lack of experience and lack of a proper Cabinet,  however,  did not deter the Whitlam ‘duumvirate’ Government from taking 40 important administrative decisions,  including the abolition of National Service Training and troops withdrawn from Vietnam.  Draft resisters were freed from gaol,  sporting teams from South Africa were banned and Australia’s voting on Southern African questions in the UN were modified and negotiations were set in train to open diplomatic relations with the people’s Republic of China. Imperial Honours were abolished thus setting in train a series of moves away from the Constitutional Monarchy.
Over the ensuing months legislation was drafted giving equal pay to women, a national health service free to all, the reform of divorce laws and the establishment of the Family Law Courts system.  The Federal Government also accepted responsibility for Aboriginal affairs including their health, education, welfare and land rights,
 
The 12 months from December 1972 was therefore a period of violent and radical change with untold effects on the national economy and it was not long before the Coalition majority in the Senate was used to reject legislation which culminated in Whitlam requesting the then Governor-General, Sir Paul Hasluck, to grant a Double Dissolution on April 9th 1974.
 
The 1974 Double Dissolution was caused by the rejection of six Government bills by the Senate and eventually by threatening to block supply.  Supply refers to any legislation introduced into the Parliament to provide funds necessary for the business of government.   Section 57 of the Constitution relates to the resolution of deadlocks between the House of Representatives and the Senate.  If a Double Dissolution,  that is an election of both the Representatives and the full Senate,  does not resolve the impasse,  then a joint sitting of both houses is permitted under Section 57 to pass the deadlocked legislation.
 
To the chagrin of the Coalition,  Labor was returned with a majority of 15 seats and all Democratic Labor Party Senate candidates,  who normally voted with the Coalition,  were defeated.  The main parties were deadlocked in the Upper House each with 29 Senators.  Two Independents,  Steele Hall and Michael Townley,  therefore formed the balance of power.
 
Steele Hall was a former Liberal Premier of South Australia who later formed the Liberal Movement on which ticket he was elected to the Senate in this Double Dissolution.
He merged the Movement with the Liberal Party in 1976 and was later given Liberal endorsement for the Lower House Seat of Boothby which he represented until 1996.    Despite this background,  Hall often voted with Labor whilst in the Senate.
 
Michael Townley came from a Liberal political family.  His father had been Liberal Leader in the Tasmanian Parliament and his uncle,  Athol, a high-ranking Minister in the Menzies Government.  Townley had successfully stood as an independent in the 1970 Election having failed to get Liberal preselection.  However he normally voted with the Coalition.
 
The ensuing 20 months could well have featured as a work of fiction,  so many were the incredible and often irrational activities of the increasingly autocratic Whitlam Government.  When the Opposition blocked supply in the Senate and the Governor-General was forced to determine (or bring to an end) the Prime Minister’s Commission it was not simply a dispute between political parties that was resolved,  but more importantly his action forced a Government which was out of control and in breach of the Constitution to face the people at an election.
 
However the Dismissal would probably never have occurred if Sir John Kerr himself had refused to sign the Executive Council Minute which was the product of the illegal Executive Council Meeting held on the 13th December 1974 in the absence of both the Governor-General and the Vice President of the Council and held without the knowledge of the Governor-General.
 
Under the Australian Constitution an Executive Council meeting can only be called by the Governor-General or by the Council’s Vice-President. In this case, neither the Governor-General nor the Vice-President was present at the meeting.
 
Normally, such a meeting would be attended by the Governor-General or if he be overseas or otherwise unavailable,  by the Vice President of the Council,  and two or three ministers.  Gough Whitlam together with three of his Ministers,  Cairns, Murphy and Connor,  declared themselves to be an Executive Council and resolved to: “borrow a sum not exceeding four thousand million dollars in the currency of the United States of America for temporary purposes”.  The temporary purposes being: “to deal with exigencies arising out of the current world situation and the international energy crisis..”
 
Since these purposes could in no way be considered to be outside the guidelines of the Loan Council,  they were in clear breach of the Financial Agreement.  Kerr was faced with a dilemma.  As Governor-General he had to be advised by his Ministers.  In his 1936 book,  The King and His Dominion Governors constitutional expert Herbert Vere Evatt,  a former High Court Judge and then Labor Minister and eventually Parliamentary Leader from 1951 to 1960,   had written: “the principle that constitutional practice excludes from the consideration of the Governor in any Dominion the determination of all legal questions because direct responsibility for the action of the Governor in assenting to bills or any proposed administrative act rests upon the Ministers holding office”.  Kerr therefore thought that the matter was justiciable and open to be corrected in the Courts.
 
Whilst,  from a judge’s point of view,  this may be and probably is legally correct,  Sir John Kerr was not in the position of a judge but that of Governor-General.  He was there to represent the interests of the Crown and through the Crown,  the people.  The Crown is not an inert entity confined to turgid laws and dusty textbooks,  for not only does it encompass the historical precedents of the British Monarchy and English Common Law,  it is rather an organic being comprising living history, tradition, conventions and above all the sufferings of a nation which broke forever the autocratic rule of Kingship and instead replaced it with a Parliament still under the Crown but now answerable to the people.
 
This is why military men generally make better Governors,  for from the taking of their Oath of Allegiance their very being is dedicated to service and duty to the Crown.  Their Oath does not just include the Crown as a book of laws but embraces the moral being of our civilization;  indeed it can be likened to a life-force based on the very Oath and Dedication that Her Majesty took at Her Coronation.
 
Under no circumstances should it be morally right to give credence to an illegal proposal emanating from an illegal meeting.  Admittedly the Governor-General should be advised by his Prime Minister,  but this does not mean that he should be the simple rubber stamp of the Government regardless of the rights of the people.
 
Kerr was obviously concerned that if he opposed Whitlam,  he might be sacked.  Whilst I doubt that Whitlam would have replaced Kerr,  had he refused to sign the Minute,  Kerr was obviously afraid for his future and doubtless this played a large part in his early reasoning.
 
A Governor-General must put aside any personal concern,  however difficult that might be,  and look only to the national interest.  This was why Menzies reverted to the practice of recommending the appointment of senior military personnel from Britain with the outstanding appointments of Field Marshall Sir William Slim (created a Viscount in 1960) and Viscount De L’Isle VC.
 
The recommendation by Menzies of the Australian politician Lord Casey in 1965,  just prior to his retirement in 1966, broke forever the tradition of British appointees.
 
Labor has always looked upon the Dismissal with a jaundiced view and many of those who were not born or who were too young to understand the implications that led to the Double Dissolution have been influenced by the misinformation still broadcast by the media and even by politicians of both sides.  Few,  however,  have ever bothered to study the events with impartiality.
 
The situation is not helped by recent comments by Malcolm Fraser,  one of the main protagonists,  who said that he would have done things differently but declined to explain what he would have done,  possibly because in the light of Whitlam’s intransigence,  there was no solution other than for Fraser to have stood down and passed Supply.
 
The fact is that the Coalition did block Supply thus creating an impasse between Fraser and the Liberal/Country Parties and Whitlam and the Labor Party.
 
By the 10th November 1975,  an incredible total of 21 bills had been twice presented to,  but not passed,  by the Senate thus more than meeting the requirement for a Double Dissolution under Section 57 of the Constitution.
 
However Whitlam was not prepared to go to the Country with another Double Dissolution and instead wanted to bring forward a half Senate Election hoping that in so doing the Coalition would lose control of the Upper House with new Senators being elected for the first time from the ACT and Northern Territory and with their loss of the two spurious Senators appointed by the New South Wales and Queensland Governments who would be replaced by true Labor candidates.
 
The controversial appointment by Whitlam of Lionel Murphy to the High Court,  caused a Senate vacancy from the State of New South Wales.  Normal convention was to appoint the person recommended by the party of the retiring or deceased Senator.
However NSW Premier Tom Lewis broke with convention and instead appointed the long term Mayor of Albury,  Cleaver Bunton,  who had always declared himself to be a political ‘neuter’. 
 
Possibly in a sense of moral vicissitude,  Bunton,  however,  tended to vote with Labor,  However the death of ALP Senator Bert Milliner created another vacancy,  this time from Queensland and Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was not the sort of person to be crossed.  Bjelke-Petersen rejected all recommendations and appointed Albert Field who,  although a member of the ALP,  had declared that he would do anything to bring the Whitlam Government down. 
 
As it was the ALP expelled Field and challenged his appointment and he was barred from voting whilst the challenge was being heard,  but this gave the Coalition the tactical advantage of one vote over Labor.
 
The 1974 Double Dissolution had given 29 seats each to Labor and the Coalition.  Hall and Bunton normally voted with Labor and Townley with the Coalition therefore ensuring a deadlock.  However,  with the sidelining of Field through the ALP challenge,  this gave the Coalition 29 votes over Labor’s remaining 28.
 
A half election of the Senate was therefore not in the best interests of the Opposition and on the 16th October 1975 they tried to force a Double Dissolution by using their extra vote in the Senate to defer the passage of  the money bills which meant that by the 27th of November the Government would not have sufficient moneys to pay wages and other expenses.
 
A situation had therefore been created which had to be resolved and resolved without delay.
 
The Governor-General met with all parties involved in the impasse.  Fraser would not budge from his position and insisted that supply would continue to be blocked unless there was an election of the Representatives along with the half Senate but Whitlam had no intention of allowing this.  He was prepared to bargain on the date of the half Senate election to allay Coalition fears but that was as far as he was prepared to go.
 
Despite the maverick nature of Whitlam’s governance,  he would possibly have been able to maintain public sympathy had it not been for the attempts by his Government to raise funds illegally.  Whitlam was above all a Nationalist and he greatly resented the foreign involvement in,  and ownership of,  many of Australia’s natural resources.  By the time his Government had come to power in 1972  60 percent of the mining industry was under foreign control.  His Minister for Minerals and Energy,  Rex Connor,  was so imbued with a hatred of multi-national corporations,  that he would be dammed if they got their hands on Australia’s mineral and energy reserves which he estimated were worth $5.7 trillion dollars.  Therefore,  together with Whitlam and others, he embarked upon a policy of ‘buying back the farm’. There were grand proposals for a petroleum pipeline across Australia with updated port facilities.  Above all was to be the establishment of an Authority to oversee development and investment in key areas, including solar energy development and uranium enrichment plants.  (There were no ‘Greens’ Senators who needed to be placated at the time).  All this was expected to cost around four billion dollars,  double that of official borrowings for the entire National Programme through the Loans Council.
 
Possibly these attempts to raise funding would probably have been accepted by the electorate had the Government followed proper protocols and not sought to circumvent procedures and mislead the Treasury and even Parliament itself,  particularly in view of the beneficial reasons put forward for the funding.  However central to the loans issue was the Government’s dealings with bogus agents.
 
The Treasury was known to be guarded in its dealings with the Whitlam Government which was why Whitlam sought to circumvent procedures and bypass the necessity of submitting his proposal through the Loans Council. 
 
Whitlam would also have known that had Sir John Kerr been present he would have baulked at agreeing to the Executive Council authorizing  a loan for such an amount particularly since it was clearly not as stated a ‘temporary’ loan and this was undoubtedly why the Executive Council meeting of the 13th December 1974 was held without the knowledge of the Governor-General who was presented with a fait accompli.  With obvious reservations Kerr eventually signed the Minute of the Council Meeting and it was then ‘all gloves off’ to commit to loan funds before the Treasury found out and raised a fuss.
 
It was soon clear that no self-respecting bank would touch the loan.  Not because Australia had a bad credit rating,  but because repayments on a loan of this size could not be substantiated.  Furthermore any offers would be at current interest rates which were too high.
 
The Loans affair took a very dangerous turn following a meeting between Gerry Karidis and the Minister for Labor Clyde Cameron, at a party in Cameron’s South Australian electorate. Karidis told Cameron that he could provide contacts with Middle Eastern sources.  Connor later met with Karidis who introduced him to a Pakistani broker operating from London called Tirath Khemlani,  at that time manager of a London-based commodities firm called Dalamal and Sons, which was involved in all sorts of dealings,  including armaments.
 
Empowered by the Executive Council Minute,  Connor quickly authorized Khemlani to canvass the OPEC countries to seek out Arab funds.  An increasingly alarmed Federal Treasury applied strong pressure on the Government, resulting in Connor’s Authority to obtain loan funds being revoked by Whitlam on 20 May, 1975,  but Connor later continued to seek funds without Government Authorization, and was forced to resign when exposed in the media.
 
Dr Jim Cairns, at that time Federal Treasurer, was contacted by George Harris, a Melbourne businessman,  also with an offer of overseas loan money ‘with a once- only brokerage fee of 2.5 percent’.  It later appeared that Harris and Khemlani were apparently connected with the same sources.  Cairns gave Harris two letters saying that the Australian Government was interested in raising a loan.  When,  some two months later,  Cairns was asked in Parliament whether he had signed a letter committing the Government to a 2.5 percent brokerage fee he denied he had signed any such agreement. However, several days later, an incriminating letter with Cairns’ signature was reproduced in major newspapers around Australia and he was forced to resign his position for misleading Parliament.
 
There was also much speculation at the time on the close friendship Cairns had with his assistant Junie Morosi and later on her competence when, in parliamentary debate Cairns was attacked on his attachment to the policies of John Maynard Keynes and Morosi called the Ministry staff together to go through the files to: “see if we’ve got anything on this guy Keynes who’s causing so much trouble for Jim”.
 
Whole books have been written on this incredible period,  and I will not go into any more detail other than to say that when they were exposed for this incredible piece of stupidity,  the main players actually continued to deal with these and other brokers and lies were told in the Parliament to cover their irresponsible activities.
It was rumoured that Whitlam endorsed,  or at knew of,  the continuation of the search for funds but it was the Ministers,  principally Cairns and Connor,  who were sent to the backbenches and their dream,  the only worthwhile thing of the entire exercise,  became a nightmare.
 
Australia’s reputation was in tatters and the Opposition’s unceasing attack on the Government became justified and their intent on blocking supply legitimised.
 
Throughout this period,  Sir John Kerr had been expressing concern,  particularly over the possibility of Supply being blocked by the Coalition in the Senate.  He conferred often with Whitlam and his Ministers and,  with Whitlam’s permission, with Fraser.
 
With supply about to run out,  Whitlam then sought to obtain bridging loans from the banks who listened seriously but to protect their interests sought legal opinions.  Bob Ellicott QC,  former Solicitor General and at that time Shadow Attorney General,  published his Opinion on the 16th October 1975,  which of course Kerr read,  and he asked Whitlam for his permission to seek advice from the Chief Justice,  Sir Garfield Barwick.  Whitlam refused on the basis that if the Chief Justice gave advice on a matter - any matter - and that matter subsequently came before the High Court then it would create a perhaps insurmountable conflict of interest.  He indicated that the Governor-General had no alternative but to accept the advice of the Government Law Officers’ and offered to have the Attorney General provide him with advice.
 
However in his book Matters for Judgment  Sir John Kerr wrote: “Mr Enderby (the Attorney) handed me a document signed neither by him nor by Mr Byers (the Solicitor General) .. So there was the Government, already embarked upon the arrangements to get money from the banks in order to bypass the processes of Parliament, and no signed Opinion of whether if the Law Officers Opinion was being offered to me in support of the legality of what was being done,  but merely this unsigned draft”.
 
As it turned out the banks rejected Whitlam’s request.  Not only were they concerned about the legality of the scheme but they also had grave doubts about the security and the complexity of administering the loans.
 
As Governor-General,  Kerr could not sit idly by whilst the Government brought on economic crisis after crisis and dissatisfied with the ‘draft’ advice received from the Attorney General he decided that he would approach the Chief Justice despite Whitlam’s earlier refusal of permission for him to do so.  Therefore on the evening of the 9th November,  when in Sydney,  Kerr telephoned Sir Garfield Barwick who agreed to call at Admiralty House the following morning on his way to the Court.  At the meeting Kerr asked the Chief Justice whether he could give advice and if so whether it was within his (Kerr’s) constitutional authority to dismiss the Government.
 
Barwick intimated that he could not advise on a matter which could come before the High Court but undertook to give it thought and to report later that day and proceeded on to the Court.
 
Obviously of the mind that the action the Governor-General was to take was not justiciable the Chief Justice provided his Opinion in writing at lunch and shortly thereafter the Governor-General proceeded to Canberra and the next day determined Whitlam’s Commission.
 
At Barwick’s request both visits to Admiralty House were recorded in the Vice Regal notices.
 
Sir Garfield Barwick was roundly criticised by all sides for formally advising the Governor-General,  and Kerr himself was likewise criticised for requesting such advice.  However in all fairness what else could he do in the absence of proper advice from the Government Law Officers?  The advice Kerr sought was not primary but rather in confirmation of the decision he was proposing to make.
 
It is interesting to note that it was not until many years later that Whitlam realized that Barwick’s letter of Opinion to Kerr included the words: “the course Your Excellency has already resolved to take”
 
Sir William Heseltine who was Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen at the time recently gave an interview in which he made it clear that the Governor-General did not consult the Queen and said that he believed that the Queen would have advised her Vice-Regal representative not to act when he did.
 
He added: “I’m very surprised myself that he, Kerr, didn’t take the advantage of the Queen’s long experience and consult her about what he intended to do. ... my own feeling is that she would have advised him to play out the situation a little longer.”
 
Of course one must realize that no British Monarch has dismissed a Government of Britain since 1783 when George III sacked the Government of Lord North.
 
It is therefore clear,  as responsible people have always believed,  that the action taken by the Governor-General to resolve the issues of 1975 against all sorts of obstacles which were put in his way was indisputably his own and without consultation with the Queen,  It was an action which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the electorate but despite this,  Sir John Kerr was vengefully vilified by Labor into his grave.
 
Both Labor and Liberal parties benefited from the checks and balances brought into play by our Constitutional Monarchy.  The outcome of the Dismissal was the election which followed and it is pertinent to question: ‘what other deposed leader in most of the republics Whitlam seems now to love so much would have been given the opportunity of putting his case to the people at an election?’
 
It is therefore reprehensible that the Dismissal,  instead of being commented upon to justify the integrity and value of our Constitution and proof that our system of Constitutional Monarchy does indeed protect the democracy of the people,  is instead used to justify a republic and to vilify the Queen,  who clearly played no part in Sir John Kerr’s decision,  Most of the principal Coalition players have all since repudiated the Monarchy and their Oaths of Allegiance.  Fraser, Anthony and Sinclair continue to be Privy Counsellors and in conflict with the solemn undertaking sworn or affirmed by them:   “to bear faith and allegiance to the Crown and to defend its jurisdiction and powers against all foreign.....persons.....or states”,  are all now prominent supporters of the Republican movement.
 
Fraser put at risk the Crown he served by his actions in forcing the dismissal of the Whitlam Government and set in train the downward path which has led to the denigration of our political system and the spectre-like threat of a republic.
 
When Prime Minister he had upheld the Crown,  commenting on various occasions: “The monarchy with the Queen at its head,  is an intrinsic part of our constitutional process.    It is the last safeguard to make sure that all the processes are carried out”.  “In this way the monarchy is the ultimate protector of the people”.  “I see no cause to move Australia along a republican path.  I do not agree with those who say it (a republic) is inevitable. It would be a tragedy for Australia for I believe we would be less well governed”.
 
In a schizophrenic-like conversion not only is he now a staunch supporter of a republic,  but he has also turned on his own Party!
 
It is also pertinent to note that Labor did not seek to go to the High Court to challenge the Dismissal nor when it was in office from 1983 until 1996 did it ever seek to introduce constitutional amendments to curtail the power of the Senate.  It sought only to denigrate our Monarchy and to vilify the Queen.
 
Despite all the angst portrayed by Labor over 1975,  the republican proposal they endorsed at the 1999 Referendum sought merely to remove the Crown and dealt in no way with the power of the Senate to block supply under a Republican government,  thus making a mockery of their attack on Sir John Kerr.
 
In spite of whatever reckless decisions were made,  the system worked.  It worked because under our Constitutional Monarchy,  power resides in the hands of the people and not in those of the politicians.  This is why the condition of handing government to Malcolm Fraser was on the strict understanding that a General Election would be held of both the House of Representatives and the full Senate so that the people - and not the politicians - could resolve the issue.
 
However the main outcome of 1975 and the Dismissal is that all these points have been conveniently forgotten and it is today looked upon as a defining moment for the Monarchy,  for rightly or wrongly the Dismissal brought the Crown into a politically controversial situation which gave impetus to the republican cause.
 
In 2001,  twenty-six years after the event,  Whitlam,  the impetuous Prime Minister who without delay pulled Australian troops out of Vietnam and the visionary leader responsible for so many innovative social welfare policies such as Medicare,  literally dragged Australia into the 1970s,  but he did it too drastically and in doing so divided public opinion as never before.  Today he is mooted always by the media as some sort of elder statesman!
 
The Liberal Party looked on 1975 as a sort of returning of the anointed,  but what they actually got was a Prime Minister who seemed to have lost confidence in himself and eventually turned on his own party.
 
Sir John Kerr is perhaps the one who came off worst.  He did the only thing he felt he could to resolve the conflict.  He naively requested Fraser to take responsibility for the Dismissal,  which Fraser agreed to do,  but it was Kerr who was maligned and under attack and it was Kerr who was finally sacrificed and put out on the scrap heap whilst Fraser and Whitlam became ‘buddies’ joining together in a despicable advertisement in support of a republic.  Sir John died an embittered man,  resentful not of what he had done,  but indignant at the manner in which the truth had been twisted by Labor and the media and even later by the Liberals themselves!
 
We can only hope that time will perhaps see Sir John vindicated,  although history seems only to record one side.
 
Today it is not only Labor which resents the checks and balances inherent in the Senate and the Crown but also many amongst the Coalition.  If the republican politicians ever succeed in removing the Crown,  there is no doubt that the next target will be the emasculation of the Senate and in the States the Upper Houses, so that our politicians,  who become our friends only for a few weeks at election time,  will be able to forever closet themselves in their ivory towers and rule without restraint.
 
 
Sydney,  November 2001
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 

 
WE ARE ONE PEOPLE
Address To The St. George’s Day Rally
at Trafalgar Square, London
 
 
In April 2002 I was again asked to speak at Trafalgar Square and to the Swinton Circle in the House of Lords.  I took the issue of the separation of the English speaking peoples further and also raised concerns regarding the sovereignty of the Crown shared by all sixteen Realms.
 
 
It was two years ago when I spoke in this very spot to warn of the separation of the British peoples.  How we who have all derived from this great land are now so distant that even our courts have declared us foreigners one to another.
 
It is within living memory that so many people from the then colonies of the British Empire and later from the Realms rushed to the aid of the Motherland   giving freely of our blood whenever called upon particularly in the two great wars of the last century.
 
We did this not just because we are one people but also in gratitude for the gift of constitutional freedom and democracy Britain freely gave to us.  Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine that this very freedom and this very democracy matured in these islands over a thousand years of strife and conflict would be endangered by the acts of those elected to guard Britain’s welfare.
 
In past years,  your colonies and particularly the British Realms of Canada,  Australia and New Zealand, without reservation rushed to the defense of Great Britain when it was in danger and few families in our lands were untouched by the loss of loved ones.
 
We did this gladly in gratitude because Britain had always been looked upon as our ancestral homeland.  However just 16 years following the closure of the last World War,  we of the Realms who all fought with you as one,  were discarded as you would a faithful but unwanted dog,  for in 1961 your Government sent out Duncan Sandys,  your Commonwealth Minister,  to tell us that Britain was joining Europe and its special relations with the Commonwealth and its commitments to the British Realms one to another were to be put to an end.
 
Later that year your Government introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill and it was thus that so many of British descent were led to discover that their homeland had become for them a foreign country.  British passports were denied to us,  but the sting has been in the tail,  for now British sovereign passports are also now denied to those in Britain itself!
 
Just as Europe was the battlefield which bound us in ties of blood,  it became the catalyst which split those ties asunder.  Those former political leaders,  revered by so many,  Churchill,  Attlee and in Australia, Menzies,  all warned of the dire consequences,  not of the creation of a trading block,  but of political integration which was always to be the end purpose of the Treaty of Rome.
 
That we in the Dominions have survived,  and survived well,  is a tribute to the secure nature of our constitutions which protects Australia and Canada,  but not unfortunately,  New Zealand nor even Britain itself,  against the perfidy of our politicians.
Although the same blood may mingle through our veins,  years of treachery by our politicians have so separated us that today when we are allowed to arrive in what should be our spiritual homeland,  we are cast into limbo whilst your new European allies,  many of whom are the very people you pleaded with us to help save you from,  are given special preference of entry.
 
Having betrayed us in the Realms,  your Government then continued to humiliate Britain by humbling itself at the feet of Europe and committed upon its course then lied to and deceived not only the Commonwealth but the British people themselves.
 
Our Magna Carta,  that holiest grail of our freedom,  lies cast aside by the very Parliament that has been established to protect our liberties.
 
Magna Carta and that other mainstay of our democracy,  the Bill of Rights,  have always been looked upon with derision by European politicians,  for in Europe it is the State which is always supreme whereas within the British sphere it has always been our practice to place the rights and the liberties of the individual above the interests of the State.
 
European politicians laugh at and deride the checks and balances existent within our Westminster system.  European Governments have always been despotic.
 
We can understand this,  but what we cannot understand,  what we cannot accept,  is the fact of British politicians themselves suborning Westminster to European political control when they realize very well how totally alien it is to the very   essence of our British democracy.
 
Indeed Britain has never had friends in Europe.
It has for a thousand years or more,  stood alone as a sentinel of Christianity and freedom in a world of corruption and greed.  These islands have had their times of evil and strife,  but the seeds of decency and democracy implanted in the soul of the very people themselves have always won through.
 
Some sceptics have termed the European Union a ‘farce’.  I would venture,  however,  that it is anything but.  Indeed it is the most dangerous force ever to invade our lives since 1066,  for today we face a situation that within a few years there will be no England. There will be no Britain.
 
The powers of Europe will have won;  not due to their superiority in battle,  nor to their political ingenuity but to the betrayal of the ancient liberties of this great land by those who are elected to govern us.  As has been proven by the case of the ‘Metric Martyrs’:  to all intents and purposes Britain is now a vassal State owing suzerainty to Europe.
 
You may well ask,  for what did our forefathers shed their blood to protect Britain from European powers in centuries past? 
 
Above me is the statue of Nelson and,  indeed all around London there are monuments to Britain’s great men and women who gave their lives to protect these shores.  Their glory now lies shattered along with the freedom they and so many others fought so bravely and died for.
 
I am here to put forward the case on behalf of the people of Australia,  who fought so very hard to protect our own sovereignty;  that in its insane purpose to submit to European domination,  Britain has not only disqualified itself from membership of the Commonwealth of Nations;   but it has also greatly endangered the sovereignty of the Crown which we all share.
 
This cannot be and must not be.
 
The former Dominions that remain under the Crown have,  through the Statute of Westminster,  power and authority to reject any attempt to alter the status of the Crown.
 
The breaking of the links with the British Realms,  the tacit moves of support for Australia to become a republic,  are these all not a part of a greater plan to isolate this Kingdom,  this bastion of democracy,  to make it easier to merge it into Europe?
 
Never forget that Europe will not tolerate the dilemma that is Northern Ireland and it will not be long before the British Government betrays the North and forces through union with Eire regardless of the consequences in bloodshed!  Gibraltar is also destined to lose its British sovereignty to Spain regardless of the wishes of its people!
 
Like an army of white ants,  these Fabian inspired creatures,  following the ideology of the Roman general Fabius Cunctator himself:  “For the right moment you must wait,  ... but when the time comes you must strike hard”  have for years chipped away,  changing the foundations of our liberty,  whilst we the people sat idly by,  steeped in our own apathy and ignorance,  as so many did in the years before the last World War mocking the warnings of Churchill with ridicule and derision.
 
Make no mistake,  now that these ‘politically correct’,  these harbingers of the ‘New Age’,  are in positions of authority today,  they will strike harder and harder and the only thing that can stop them now is the will of the people,  the very same ‘will’ that stopped a republic in Australia against all odds.
On her assumption of Prime Ministerial Office in 1979,  Margaret Thatcher said on her arrival at 10 Downing Street: “Where there is error,  may we bring truth.  Where there is doubt,  may we bring faith.  And where there is despair may we bring hope”.  Whatever else this grand lady may have achieved,  whatever great things she may have done,  it is of everlasting regret that she allowed her advisers to persuade her to vote for the Single European Act,  something she has bitterly and publicly regretted ever since.  It was these advisors,  whose treacherous counsel continued throughout the totality of the Major years in government,  who ensured that we were given not truth,  but falsehood;  not faith but doubt creating a desperate situation and leading us today into our present sorry state.
 
We share with you the concerns of the Barons’ Constitutional Committee established under Magna Carta that there has been a significant but silent erosion of the prerogative of the Crown whose Authority is now almost totally exercised by the Prime Minister.
 
Never forget,  however,  that the power of the Crown derives from the people and yet until now I have never ever heard the voice of the people raised against the encroachment of the Crown’s Authority by both the Parliament and Prime Minister!
 
Nor did I hear what should have been the anger of the people when the Blair Government removed the hereditary peers and thus enhanced the power of the Commons though the elimination of those Lords who had neither cause nor reason to be shackled to party politics.
 
Had I been involved in the constitutional defense of this country in a similar position to that in Australia,  I would have fought tooth and nail against the proposals to restructure the House of Lords,  not because I am against necessary reform.  but because these very proposals have served,  not just to remove  a vital link in Britain’s democracy,  but to bring the totality of the Lords under the patronage of the Prime Minister.  The involvement of the hereditary peers may have appeared to be an anachronism from the past,  and eccentric though some may have been,  nevertheless they could never be totally controlled or totally influenced by party politics and this is why they had to be removed.
 
Precedent holds that the Queen herself no longer has the power to refuse Assent to any lawful Bill of a lawfully elected Parliament.  In fact we the people have allowed the Monarch’s powers to be so diminished that it is doubtful that today Her Majesty would even be allowed to publicly express an opinion which is contrary to that of her Government!
 
From the time of Henry V,  Monarchs of England and Great Britain have upheld the motto ‘Dieu et mon droit’ - ‘God and My Right’.  However restrained by precedent and protocol Her Majesty might be,  her duty is always to protect the rights and the liberties of the British people. 
 
We live in an age of reconciliation;  an age where we are told that we must always turn the other cheek,  but it appears that this age of reconciliation is only for us;  not for them,  for they continue with their aggression and they use our weakness to their advantage.
 
The British people have never been an aggressive people and it is rarely that they will stand up and be counted. The last time was more than 60 years ago following the almost too late realization of how right Churchill’s exhortations were.
 
However today when Britain is under attack as never before,  it is time not just to stand up and be counted;  it is time to fight,  to march forward and to rid us of this menace which is attempting to destroy our very liberty and our very freedom.
 
Let us never forget that the Parliament is there for the people,  not the people for the Parliament.  Indeed,  the democracy we all share is dependent on the will of the people and it is only through the will of the British people that you will be able to defeat the menace of European domination for this is the heritage,  this is the right,  that has been passed onto us all by our forefathers.
 
It is with this in mind that I come to you here today with a promise;  a promise to pledge the support of the people in my country and those of the other British Realms of Canada and New Zealand who are now aware of what is happening to their Motherland.
 
A pledge that although our Governments will sit idly by and even give tacit support to your politicians as they betray a thousand years of democracy,  we who love Britain will support your cause in whatever way we can.
 
We will fight tooth and nail to ensure the integrity of the Crown.  For I say to you that your England is also our England.
 
-           Your heritage,  the Common Law of England,  is also our Law.
 
-           Your Constitution,  the font of Westminster,   is also our Constitution.
 
-           Your Queen is our Queen and your Crown is also our Crown.
 
Let us not forget for these are the links that bind us together.
 
We are one people with a common culture and a common language and it is as one people that we must march forward and bring to an end the tragedy that is happening to this our motherland.
 
What I ask of you in return is that you all combine and stand up as one fraternity with the sole objective of removing the stigma of European domination from this land.
 
I plead with you to put aside any personal differences or ambitions and to come together as one force dedicated to destroying this invasion of our ancient liberties and freedoms.
 
Our democracy,  our inheritance descended from the mists of time,  is our only hope of freedom for our government is of the people and by the people and in the end it is only the people who must count.
 
Let us therefore march forward and as one united body destroy the peril to our great Kingdom and to the British Realms.
 
Very soon the people of these islands will vote on whether or not to retain the British Sterling currency.
 
Every force imaginable will be used in support of the Euro;  millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be exhausted by the Government; for they know that if they win this,  it will be the last nail in the coffin of the freedom of the British subject.
 
Our fight must not be in vain.
 
We who are patriots here today have a duty and a responsibility under our great heritage;  the ancient liberties of the English people,  that sacred trust handed down to us all,  to ensure that the people reject European domination,  not just over our currency,  but over the democracy of the British people themselves.
 
The words of Cromwell,  repeated by Leo Amery in May of 1940 in his attack on Neville Chamberlain,  are only too apt today with regard to all those who so treacherously seek to destroy the great liberty of this Nation,  ‘Depart,  I say,   and let us have done with you.  In the name of God go’.
 
Please,  I beg of you,  for the sake of Britain,  for the sake of Australia and the other Realms;  let us be done with Europe.  In the name of God let it go.
 
 
 
London,  April 2002
 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE
 
MATTERS OF SOVEREIGNTY
Address To The Swinton Circle
The House of Lords, London
 
 
This was the second time I had spoken to the Swinton Circle and the fourth time to meetings at Westminster.  My intention on this occasion was to raise issues that had to be considered as Britain moved further into the Union with Europe.  The issue of Britain alone was one thing,  however the British Parliament seemed to forget that the Crown of the United Kingdom was a Crown shared by fifteen other countries and that whilst in several Realms it was an independent Crown,  as with the Crown of Australia,  none could survive in the absence of the Crown of the United Kingdom.  The Statute of Westminster was enacted in 1931 to protect the constitutions of the then Dominions and bars the United Kingdom Parliament from enacting legislation which would affect certain elements of the Crown.  I also spoke to several meetings around the United Kingdom on these concerns and met with some success in making people within and outside the Parliament at least give some consideration to these matters.
 
 
This is the fourth time that I have spoken to meetings in this place and over the past three years I have made several friendships which will last long into the future.
 
I am sorry that I cannot say the same for our peoples,  for Britain is drifting further apart from its old Imperial relationships intent on submerging itself into Europe.
Tragically the sole thing that is uniting us today is membership of an increasingly uninspiring Commonwealth and unquestioning obedience to the whims and fancies of the President of the United States of America.
 
When I was last in the United Kingdom some two years ago,  I talked about the tragedy that was the separation of the British peoples.
 
I told of the anguish and the bitterness felt by Australians and indeed so many who once held British passports,  but now being relegated to individual citizenship of the Dominions to which they belong,  find themselves shunted into queues for ‘aliens’ or ‘others’ whenever they are allowed to enter Britain.  These are people who were of Britain and whose loyalty was to Britain,  even to the extent of willingly shedding their blood whenever Britain faced danger.  These loyal subjects of the Queen had always looked on Britain as their real ‘home’ and it is these people who,  together with English Common Law and so many other facets that put the ‘Great’ into Britain,  have been sacrificed on the altar of subservience to Europe.
 
I am afraid that the situation has not improved.  In fact it worsens as each day passes.
 
Fresh from elections,  the Blair Government has successfully channelled the passage of the Treaty of Nice through the Parliament of the United Kingdom.   Despite calling upon the age old bastions of the democracy of our nations,  Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the Coronation Oath,  it is now clear that the Queen’s prerogative is held to have been so eroded in Great Britain that Her Majesty has no choice but to grant Assent even if it may lead to the detriment of her people!
 
The Prerogative of the Monarch is a power that derives from the people through the Common Law of England.  It is one of the ancient liberties of the people and one of the major checks against the excesses of the Executive.
 
Despite the current view that the Royal Prerogative is limited to the convention that the Sovereign must only act solely on the advice of her Ministers,  it should always be clearly understood that the Monarchy is not there for the benefit of the Government nor even of the Parliament but exists to look after and to protect the interests of the people
 
Whilst the other Realms have their written constitutions,  that of the United Kingdom is uncodified.  Consequently whatever their individual constitutions,  the authority of the Crown in all the Realms is generally determined through convention and the determination of the reserve powers. 
 
Since the Statute of Westminster of 1931,  the constitutional conventions of the Realms evolved in accordance with their own precedents.  Since we in Australia have provision that our written constitution can only be changed through a referendum process,  we have so far been able to maintain the prerogative (which is exercisable through our Governor-General) in a fairly intact state despite the machinations of our Governments and the passage of the Australia Acts,   the constitutionality of which is highly questionable.
 
What has become known as ‘Westminster democracy’  is a system evolved over the centuries to best protect our democracy.  In fact the word ‘democracy’ in its original Greek translation means ‘people power’ and despite the assertions of Republicans,  democracy does not mean republicanism nor does it mean monarchism,  but simply that the power of the nation resides in the people,  something which we believe our Constitutional Monarchy is best equipped to provide.
In the 1926 Imperial Conference,  Lord Balfour very clearly defined the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Dominions with the words: “They are autonomous communities within the British Empire equal in status in no way subordinate to one another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely  associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations”.  It is these words which form the basis of the Statute of Westminster.
 
Whilst the French may have popularised (some say corrupted)  the word ‘liberty’,  make no mistake;  it was Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and all those other bits and pieces of English history that had made Britain the forerunner of modern democracy.
 
It was this heritage and English Common Law that the United States of America took to its constitutional heart and which helped to bring it within the circle of the free world.
 
This process to democracy has not been an easy road for the British people,  and I find it amazing that a people,  predominantly descended from anyone brave enough to invade and settle Britain’s shores,  had been able to develop within them a spirit of freedom which has never yet been extinguished.
 
Was it not Baldwin who said just 65 years ago: “From the earliest days whatever the mistakes we have made,  whatever we have suffered from,  there are no two things so alien to our people as tyranny and intimidation.  Neither of them has ever taken root in England nor I believe ever will”.
 
How things have changed!
 
In the years since the last Churchill Government,  there appears to have been somewhat of a metamorphosis in the thinking of our leaders,  other than the brief administrations of Eden and Home;   for the spirit of freedom,  patriotism and   loyalty that was once their lifeblood and indeed which ran through the veins of the entire nation seems no longer to be present and is today replaced almost solely by totalitarianism and ambition.
 
In Australia I believe that we have more of a democracy than that of our Mother Parliament here in Britain for our Constitution is superior to the British Parliament because it cannot change the Constitution,  only the people can do that.  However in Britain Parliament is supreme and can itself effect constitutional change.  This is a dangerous situation particularly now that the Government has emasculated the independence of the Lords and by swamping it with Labour Peers has tried to make it somewhat subservient to the will of the Prime Minister.
 
In Australia,  however radical a Federal Government may be,  it cannot tamper with the Senate or with our federal arrangements unless put to the people at referendum,  as occurred when we rejected attempts to turn us into a republic.
 
The recent attack on our constitutional arrangements had its initial roots way back in the 1960’s with the treachery we in Australia experienced at the hands of the Macmillan Government when Britain reneged on its traditional arrangements with the ‘Crown Commonwealth’ to join Europe.  However the rapid rise of republicanism was fed by the breakdown of the marriage of the Prince of Wales followed by the antics of the younger Royals as these issues created a tremendously dismal situation leading many Australians to accept that they may be better off without the Monarchy.
 
Even anti-Republicans shied away from and even refused to mention the Queen during the recent Referendum,  so low had their ideal of the Monarchy fallen.
 
The recent passing of the Queen Mother has given us all cause for reflection and I believe that most here today would not only mourn the passing of a great lady but also of a more decent, more moral and more understandable age.
 
It is said that the Queen was surprised at the extent of the outpouring of grief,  but is Her Majesty now so closeted from ordinary folk that she is no longer aware of the love and affection with which she is personally held?  the Crown is not just an ingredient of our Constitutional Monarchy but is indeed the very soul of the ancient liberties of the British peoples in all those countries of which Her Majesty is Queen.
 
In Her Majesty’s farewell broadcast at the end of her tour of Australia in 1954 she said: “I hope that this visit has served to remind you of the wonderful heritage we share.  I also hope that it has demonstrated that the Crown is a human link between all the people who owe allegiance to me, and allegiance of mutual love and respect never of compulsion”.
 
We all pride ourselves on our allegiance to the Queen,  however having described the Crown in this manner and bearing in mind that ‘allegiance’ is a two way street,  how,  we ask,  can circumstances have made it possible for Parliament to require Her Majesty to acquiesce in the abrogation of the authority of the British Parliament and, as a potential consequence,  that of the Crown,  to Europe thus endangering the links Her Majesty so aptly describes?
 
How is it that our English Common Law handed down to us over the centuries and which embodies our ancient liberties has been made subject to a totally alien body which by tradition has never had any empathy with liberty or true democracy?
 
How is it possible that our system has allowed the irregular establishment of new conventions through the gradual usurpation of power and authority both from the people and from the Crown?
 
For long we have known that the allegiance of our politicians is no longer to the people but to their Party Whips and that it was only the Lords which could be  independent of the party political system which was why its very structure had to be destroyed by the Blair Government.
 
Our system of Westminster democracy created the delicate balance termed the ‘Division of Powers’  between the Legislature (which is the Parliament), the Executive (comprising the Crown, the Ministry and the Public Service) and the Judiciary which is, of course, the Courts of Law.
 
The warning by the Frenchman Montesquieu that the combining of any of these powers created the risk of despotism is now only too apt,  particularly with Britain’s judicial independence being continuously diminished by the superiority of European law.  The Executive and the Legislature are now indirectly if not directly controlled from the Office of the Prime Minister and the Monarch has now become subject in almost every way to Parliament which in the absence of a functional Lords is now only effective through the Commons which itself has become subservient to the Office of Prime Minister.
 
Since the creation of a more democratic franchise with the Reform Act of 1832,  it is appreciated that the Sovereign has always been required to be totally independent of politics,  to act impartially and to follow the advice of her elected Government,  however the supreme responsibility of the Monarch must always be to protect the interests of the people.  If this means breaking with convention then convention must be broken,  constitutional crisis or not.
 
I am afraid that over the past 350 years we have turned the full circle from the then belief in absolute monarchy which led to the execution of Charles 1,  to the Bill of Rights and the later establishment of the Cabinet Council and now to the presidential Prime Minister-ship.
 
However,  the intention of the Bill of Rights of 1689 was never to transfer the totality of the Sovereign’s power to politicians but rather to limit the Sovereign in acting against the interests of the nation as a whole.  The ‘powers’ that were assumed by the Parliaments were solely as trustee for the people.   It was required that Parliament thereafter be allowed to function free from interference by the Monarch.  Whatever dispensing and suspending Powers that remained with the Monarchy were removed and taxation could not be levied without Parliamentary consent.
 
All written constitutions within the Westminster system have provision for change.  In Australia this can only be effected by a majority vote Australia-wide plus a majority vote in a majority of States.  The Canadian Constitution can only be amended by a unanimous vote of all ten provincial Parliaments.  However in the Mother Parliament of the United Kingdom,  because its Constitution is largely unwritten and draws upon a myriad of precedents and laws,  there is no defined provision for constitutional change.  In the absence of any arrangements for a referendum process or a joint sitting,  the British Constitution is continually updated and amended by Acts of the Parliament subject only to the consent of the Monarch obtained through the Royal Assent.
 
This is why parliamentarians in Great Britain hold that Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and the other documents which form a part of Britain’s constitutional arrangements are not binding upon the Parliament for all time.
 
In his Silver Jubilee address to Parliament in 1935,  King George V described the Constitution in these words:  “The complex forms and balanced spirit of our   Constitution were not the discovery of a single era,  still less of a single party or of a single person.  They are the slow accretion of centuries,  the outcome of patience, tradition and experience.”
 
In the early years of the 18th century we looked to Parliament to protect the people against the machinations of the Monarch.  Today in the 21st century,  we now look to the Monarch to protect the people against the machinations of the Parliament.  Not even the wisest of our parliamentary forefathers would ever have dreamed of how the sort of party political control that exists today has been able to subvert democracy to allow today’s Prime Minister to exert similar,  dare I say dictatorial,  authority to that of Cromwell during the Protectorate.
 
Whilst Walpole is considered to be the first ‘Prime’ Minister,  he never acknowledged himself as such.  He was the ‘First Minister’ and the Leader in the Parliament on behalf of the Sovereign.  Any power he exercised was on behalf of the King who was in effect the nation’s Chief Executive.  It was the King who chaired the Cabinet Council and it was only in his absence that it was chaired by the ‘First Minister’.  In fact the term ‘Prime Minister’ was only first used in an official document when Disraeli signed the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
 
It was not until the reign of George III that what had developed over the years in practice,  was put into words by Lord North: “Your Majesty is well apprised that in this country the Prince on the Throne cannot with prudence oppose the deliberate resolution of the House of Commons”.
 
King George III was the last Monarch to chair a Cabinet Council (in 1781) and William IV the last to dismiss a Government which still held a majority in the Commons when he dismissed the Melbourne Ministry in 1834.
By the time Queen Victoria died in 1901,  the outward appearances of the system of government was very similar to that of today.  Gladstone had established many of the parliamentary procedures which are the groundwork for the practice of  parliament today and following the rejection of Lord Curzon in favour of the commoner Baldwin in 1923 to become Prime Minister,  the custom was established that all future Prime Ministers would be from the House of Commons.
 
Whilst the reign of George V saw some erosion of the Royal Prerogative it was nothing compared to the assumption of authority by Churchill during the years of the Second World War but even that faded into insignificance with the virtual removal of any freedom of initiative by today’s rigid control of parliamentarians by the Party Whips.  The majority of changes occurring since the period of the Walpole Administration in the early 18th century had hardly been noticed at the time but over the centuries they have accumulated to represent a tremendous progression of authority all passing into the hands of the Prime Minister.
 
Indeed,  the evolvement of the supremacy of the British Parliament since 1689 and the separation of the Cabinet from a Privy Council Committee and the assumption of much of its authority by the Office of Prime Minister,  accelerated since the days of Lloyd George,  has today led to a situation where the Prime Minister can be termed an ‘elected dictator’.  Britain has never tolerated despots for long but the totalitarianism of Tony Blair is cleverly disguised in the constitutional cloak of parliamentary democracy.
 
In January of 1999 Tony Benn himself has admitted that under Blair: “We have shifted from a parliamentary system to a presidential one because the British Constitution allows that to happen because the powers of the Crown are at the disposal of the Prime Minister”.
 
No Monarch of Great Britain has refused Assent to any Act of the Parliament since Queen Anne in 1707.  Following the passage through Parliament of the Scottish Militia Bill there was great concern that Queen Anne’s half-brother James Francis Stuart, the pretender Prince of Wales, was planning to invade Scotland with the support of Louis XIV of France and that the proposed militia could be used to attack England.  Therefore the Queen and her Government considered it wisest to refuse Assent in the ultimate interests of the security of the Nation.  This was only 18 years following the Declaration and the resulting Bill of Rights with the ideal of the supremacy of parliament yet to mature.  At that time the Monarch still selected the Ministers and chaired the Council meetings.
 
Whilst the passage of almost 300 years should in no way mean that the Queen’s Prerogative in this regard has lapsed totally it is doubtful that the people would accept a veto of a Bill by Her Majesty unless there was a very valid reason such as it being declared unconstitutional by the Law Courts.
 
In Australia in 1975 the then Governor-General Sir John Kerr was asked to sign a Minute of an Executive Council held in his absence relating to Government borrowings outside the guidelines of the Loan Council.  Sir John,  himself a former Chief Justice of New South Wales,  held that the matter was justiciable and open to be corrected in the Courts and that he therefore did not need to  interfere but should meekly accept the request of the Prime Minister and sign!
 
Evatt,  the Australian Labor politician and eminent constitutional lawyer held that: “the principle that constitutional practice excludes from the consideration of the Governor in any Dominion the determination of all legal questions because direct responsibility for the action of the Governor in assenting to Bills or any proposed administrative act rests upon the Ministers holding office”. Therefore constitutionality or even legality can only be decided in the Courts.
 
However,  had Kerr refused to sign the Minute,  the events that led to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government may never have occurred and Australia would have avoided a constitutional crisis.
 
It seems to many to be somewhat of a paradox that our Governor-General,  as the Queen’s representative,  can exercise far greater power than Her Majesty can today as Queen of the United Kingdom.
 
In Australia,  we have a monarchical system of which the Queen becomes not a part,  for under the Australian Constitution,  once the Queen has appointed the Governor-General (always upon the advice of the Prime Minister),  the Governor-General assumes to himself (or herself) very specific and wide-ranging powers.  Gough Whitlam,  who more than any other Prime Minister should know, itemizes these powers:
 
*          He can dismiss the Government.
*          He can appoint and dismiss individual Ministers.
*          He can decide which department each Minister is to administer.
*          He can dissolve the House of Representatives. If, for instance, the Senate refuses to vote on a  budget, he can dissolve the House of Representatives and if, after a fresh election for the House of Representatives, the Senate still refuses to vote on the Budget, he can again dissolve the House of Representatives.
*          He can call or prorogue both Houses.
*          He need not grant a double dissolution even though the Government asks for it.
*          He need not call a Joint  Sitting if the Houses still disagree after a Double
*          Dissolution. He need not Assent to a Bill or Bills passed at any Joint Sitting. He need not submit to the electors a bill to alter the  Constitution which has twice been passed by one House and rejected by the other. He need not in fact Assent to a Bill to alter the Constitution even if it has been approved by the electors. He need not Assent to any Bill which has been passed by both Houses.
*          He could even refuse to take the advice of his Ministers to send a message to Parliament asking for grants of money.
 
The defeat of the Referendum to make us into a republic together with the two extremely successful visits of the Queen during the past two and a half years, proves,  I believe,  that our Crown is safer than it has been for many years,  and I doubt very much whether,  over the next decade,  any future referendum on a republic will succeed under Section 128 of our Constitution even if it were to have the bipartisan support of both Liberal and Labor.
 
However we need to watch very carefully the consequences of any potential erosion of the authority of the Crown particularly as a result of those Acts of Parliament passed to facilitate European Union over the past 29 years since 1973 whereby European law has been enabled to supersede the law of the United Kingdom,  thus crippling the very heart of British sovereignty built up for over a thousand years.
 
The question we must all ask ourselves is that whilst the British Parliament is now supreme,  in the sense of the internal constitutional arrangements of Britain,  does it have the right,  bearing in mind Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and other treaties the substance of which lies with the people and not parliament,  to pass the sovereignty of the Kingdom to an alien entity?
 
There are only two venues to oppose the will of the Government.  One is to determine the constitutionality of its Acts in the Courts and the other is to work for its defeat in the electorate.  The uncodified Constitution of the United Kingdom leaves much to the interpretation of the Courts.
It was hoped that there might be a court decision upholding the supremacy of the laws of the United Kingdom in the legal action taken by the ‘Metric Martyrs’ but the Judgment of Lord Justice Laws instead made it clear that: “All the specific rights and obligations which EU Law creates are by the European Communities Act incorporated into our domestic law and rank supreme”.
 
In this manner, by acknowledged lies and by acknowledged deceit our Governments,  supported by past Parliaments of the United Kingdom,  have betrayed the awesome trust that has been bestowed upon them by the people.  Not only have they cast aside Magna Carta and English Common Law,  but they also have handed over to foreign powers the ancient liberties of the English people,  liberties for which over the past thousand years and more the English peoples have shed their blood and given their lives.
 
There are three main vows and declarations made by the Queen in which she has dedicated herself to the service of the people.
 
The first was on her 21st Birthday when the then Princess Elizabeth broadcast:
 
“I declare before you all that my whole life,  whether it be long or short,  shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong,  but I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in with me,  as I now invite you to do. I know that your support will be unfailingly given.  God help me to make good my vow and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it”.
 
The second was the Declaration which followed the Proclamation:
 
“On the sudden death of my dear father I am called to fulfill the duties of sovereignty ... My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than that I shall always work,  as my father did throughout his reign,  to uphold the constitutional government and to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples,  spread as they are the world over.  I know that in my resolve to follow his shining example of service and devotion,  I shall be inspired by the loyalty and affection of those whose Queen I have been called upon to be and by the counsel of their Parliaments.  I pray that God will help me to discharge worthily this heavy task that has been laid upon me so early in my life”.
 
And the third was the Coronation Oath where Her Majesty solemnly promised and swore:
 
“to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern    Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon, and of your Possessions and other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs”.
 
The Declaration is to rule: “by the counsel of their Parliaments” and in Her Majesty’s Coronation Oath She vowed to govern: “according to their respective laws and customs”
 
Over the past 300 years the wording has changed but the meaning has always been the same.  Some have held that the word ‘law’ is meant to relate to the Law of God but the very Coronation Oath taken by William and Mary in 1689 was specifically to govern according to the ‘statutes in Parliament agreed on’.
 
It is therefore clear that those three words in the Coronation Oath ‘according to law’ make it subject to Parliament,  itself now subservient to the paradoxical laws of Europe.
 
In its supremacy Parliament can no longer allow the Monarch the power to refuse Assent to any lawful Bill of a lawfully elected Parliament.  In fact the authority of the Monarch has today been so diminished by Parliament and Prime Minister that it is doubtful that Her Majesty could even publicly express an opinion which is contrary to that of her (elected) Government!
 
The word ‘sovereignty’ derives from the French word ‘souverainete’ meaning the equivalent of ‘supreme power’ and ‘freedom from external control’.   It is a sad fact that European control of Britain’s laws means that there can be no supreme sovereignty whether resting with the Sovereign or with the Parliament.
 
The authority which rests with the Parliament,  however,   is only on a temporary basis as the Commons must submit to the people at regular intervals.  The question must therefore be asked,  perhaps in the Courts,  whether the Parliament,  as the provisional custodian of such authority on behalf of the people,  is able to transfer sovereignty to another body,  particularly a foreign one?
 
The past few hundred years have seen soldiers, explorers and settlers travelling from this island Kingdom and colonising a quarter of the world.  It then held out its hand to so many of those nations it conquered or settled to help them into adult independence.  Most went their own way bound lightly only by their voluntary association through the Commonwealth.  Others,  like Canada and Australia,  New Zealand and Papua New Guinea charted their own constitutional independence but retained Westminster under the Crown.
 
In 1913 when King George V laid the foundation stone of Australia House in London he told the audience: “I am well assured that as in the past in any national emergency Australia will play her part for the common cause and that the loyalty of her sons will never be appealed to in vain”.
The next year more than 50,000 had enlisted to fight for Britain in Europe.  The Labor leader and soon to be Prime Minister Andrew Fisher promised to defend Britain: “to our last man and to our last shilling”.
 
By the end of the Second World War,  Australia had sacrificed thousands of men in a common fight against a common enemy.  Imagine therefore, the horror that spread throughout the Australian Government following the 1961 visit of the British Commonwealth Secretary Duncan Sandys when he told us that Britain was going into Europe and that we must thereafter find our own way.
 
It was no wonder that Australia felt that it was being ‘sold down the river’ particular since it was just 20 years following the time when so many Australians volunteered to fight in Europe for Britain against Britain’s enemy!  To add insult to injury,  that November,  the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was introduced into the British Parliament and it was thus that thousands of British and Australians discovered that their homeland had become for them a foreign country!
 
In reminding Macmillan of the mutual obligations imposed between Australia and Britain by the ties of history, language and culture,  the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies wrote in May 1961 to say: ”Your European partners would require obligations of you in respect of world political and strategic problems and in respect of United Kingdom decisions on these matters. What, in these circumstances, would be the United Kingdom outlook towards Australia, towards Canada, towards the Commonwealth collectively?”
 
Macmillan responded with an assurance that no approach to Europe would be made until ‘satisfactory arrangements to protect Commonwealth interests had been found’.
Earlier in 1955 the then Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden had advised Menzies that Britain would not join a project that would so: “substantially weaken the Commonwealth relationship, both economically and politically”.
 
This sentiment was continued by Macmillan who went even further to assure us that provision would be made for the Commonwealth when at the same time Europe was stating that this was not to be so.  Clearly we were all to be cast adrift with Britain,  then still considered to be our Motherland,  intent on reneging upon all of its treaties and obligations!  In fact,  had not Britain found itself rejected by de Gaulle’s veto,  the economies of the Commonwealth would have been even more detrimentally effected than they were,  but as it was,  the period of Britain’s waiting as it humbled itself before the powers of Europe,  gave us sufficient time to find our own feet and our own markets.
 
In rejecting the initial application of the United Kingdom,  De Gaulle so very aptly described Britain as ‘maritime and insular’ and that our nature, our structure and our ‘very situation differs profoundly from those of the Continentals’.
 
However having destroyed any integrity the British Government had with the British Commonwealth it decided to plunge into what had changed from the Common Market to the European Union in 1973 and it was thus that the process of the undermining of Britain’s sovereignty by its own Parliament began.
 
In signing the Treaty of Rome on the 1st of January 1973,  Edward Heath,  reassured the Parliament and the British people that what they were joining was solely a ‘trading partnership’.  Indeed in the 1971 Government White Paper,  entitled ‘Britain and Europe’ one can find the statements:
 
*          “There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty;”
 
*    “The British safeguards of habeas corpus and trial by jury will remain intact.  So will the principle that a man is innocent until he has been proved  guilty.”
 
That Edward Heath had spelled out the benefits but hid all the liabilities was proven in his 1990 interview with the BBC when asked if he had known all along that Britain was signing up to a federal Europe and he replied: “Of course, yes”.
 
In his ‘Schuman Declaration of May 1950’ Robert Schuman referred explicitly to the ‘Federation of Europe’ as one of the long-term political objectives of the European Coal and Steel Community,  the prototype of the Common Market itself the forerunner of today’s European Community.
 
Indeed,  anyone with any common sense at the time having read the 1957 Treaty of Rome would have had a clear understanding that the principle objective of the Treaty was ‘the ever closer union of the peoples of Europe’.  It was evident that this was the basis by which member nations would develop into a European Federation in fact if not in name.  Tony Blair himself in Warsaw has stated: ‘Europe is no longer just about peace .. It is about the projection of collective power ... Europe must become a superpower’.
 
Perhaps it is pertinent at this time to quote from Gwilym Lloyd George the son of David Lloyd George and a politician himself,  who wrote: “Politicians are like monkeys: the higher they climb up the tree the more revolting are the parts they expose”.
 
There have been several amendments to the Treaty which have served to diminish Britain’s national sovereignty and enhance the once ostensibly palatable ‘Common Market’ creating the unpalatable ‘European Union’ of today.
However the multitude of stages in the absorption and indeed encapsulation of Britain into Europe are too numerous to discuss here.  Suffice it to say that more laws have been passed within the European Union than in the entirety of Britain’s constitutional democracy.
 
In his book Measure of the Years Sir Robert Menzies,  then 75 years old,  pondered upon Britain’s entry into Europe and the consequences to Australia and indeed to the whole Commonwealth.  It is very interesting to see how his   prophetic words of wisdom had been cast aside by those in Britain intent on forcing Europe on an unsuspecting people:
 
“I rather gather that though the parties in the House are pro-European,  the people outside the Parliament are not so sure .... I think there are deep-seated instincts and a sort of patriotic insularity which combine to make the Englishman distrust the idea of subordinating his interests, and his political rights to any institution established in Europe,  empowered to give him orders but not responsible to him ... Britain is the home of responsible government, of the supremacy of Parliament and of the rule of law, the law involved being British.
 
“In incorporating ‘European Law’ into the body of legislation in Britain the    Parliament would not be exercising its own judgment or the judgment of the electors, but would be carrying out its duty to the European Community.
 
“My only constitutional concern has been to show that the normal concept of sovereignty which is applied to the British Parliament would be qualified in a large number of very important ways”.  He went on to say that: “the structure of the European Commission and Parliament can in no way be termed ‘responsible government’ in British terms”.
 
Immediately following his first election victory in 1996,  Prime Minister Blair with the highest popularity rating of any post-war Prime Minister supported by the most pro-European Government since that of Edward Heath,   has,  in his Napoleonic like posture,  aggressively pursued the absorption of Britain into Europe and in the course of doing so has effected more constitutional changes than any other Prime Minister before him.
 
To list but a few of the radical changes his Government has:
 
*    Enabled the supremacy of the European Convention on Human Rights to supersede domestic law in the United Kingdom
*    Broken up the Kingdom into regions to better facilitate control from Europe,  which has done more than even the Industrial Revolution to divide England into North and South.
*    Dispersed the political independence of the House of Lords through the removal of hereditary peers.
*    Introduced proposals for electoral reform and the further centralization of government.
 
Lord Acton’s words are only too apt when he said: “Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
 
The case of what has come to be called the ‘Metric Martyrs’ where the High Court has held that European law now supersedes British law has brought home to the public for the first time officially the extent of Britain’s loss of sovereignty and the extent of the lies that were told to them in the 1975 Referendum.
 
Napoleon had boasted: “The great glory of my reign is not in having won forty    battles ... That which can never be denied and that [which] will live on forever,  is my Civil Code”,  but even he with all his guile could never have imagined how his ‘Code’ would come to supersede even the laws of the United Kingdom,  the one country,  other than Russia,  that escaped his awesome clutches.
 
As more people fight against the increasing control of Europe over their lives, the more they begin to realize what has happened to the Britain they love.  We can only hope that that realization will not come too late for if the Referendum on the Euro is won, whether by hook or by crook,  it will be the final catalyst which will bind Britain firmly to Europe.  Whatever their stance on the Euro today,  the   Conservative Party will follow the decision of the people and if the Referendum is successful they will embrace European Union in its totality.
 
Whilst the Commonwealth of Nations does not have a charter,  its declarations persist in stating that it is composed of a ‘voluntary association of independent sovereign states’.
 
Whilst membership of the Commonwealth is ‘compatible with the freedom of member Governments to be non-aligned or to belong to any other grouping,  association or alliance’  being a member state of the European Community is clearly far more than simple membership of a ‘grouping, association or alliance’.
 
In the 1960’s when Australia was growing closer to America ,  questions were raised that should Australia become a State within the Federation of the United States of America it would have to leave the Commonwealth.
 
Today Britain,  as a member of the European Community,  is to all intents and purposes a State within the European federation.  The Oath of Allegiance taken by all Members of the European Parliament is ‘to represent no individual or National interests and to uphold the aims of the European Union’.
 
 
The awesome authority of the European Community is far greater than the Holy Roman Empire ever was.  Europe today has its own parliament, its own executive, its flag and anthem and its own courts.  Most member states have joined the single currency of the Euro.  Soon we will have a European Constitution and overriding legal and taxation laws and a single foreign policy with individual embassies a thing of the past.  This vast structure will soon be supported by a single European army and a single European police force answerable not to any individual nation state but to the centralized European control.
 
Alien to our democratic tradition is an un-elected Executive with immeasurable power and an elected Legislature which is totally ineffectual.
 
The supremacy of European law over British law is now undoubted.  Indeed Habeas Corpus and particularly the right of trial by a jury,  the fundamentals of Magna Carta,  will soon be considered an accident of history for it will not be long before Europol (the European Police Force) will have authority to arrest anyone in Britain,  to hold them without bail for up to nine months and then, if charged, to assume, under European law, that they are guilty until or unless proven innocent.
 
When as Prime Minister,  Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act,  she handed over Britain’s commerce,  its industry, and its environment to European control and if this erosion is allowed to continue,  it will not be long before Europe will have authority to dissolve the British Parliament itself.
 
The 1992 Treaty of Maastricht specifies that its States may be allowed independence of action,  but only ‘in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence’
 
The British Government would,  of course,  refute that they have surrendered absolute sovereignty,  but it is without doubt that Britain more than meets the essential requirements of submission to a federal authority for it cannot legislate or act for itself in any way contrary to the European Union.
 
It is an absurdity that this country,  the Mother of the ‘free world’,  has over the past 50 years overseen the division of its peoples overseas and more recently forced the partition of Scotland and Wales from England.  Today not only has the essence of Empire been destroyed,  but also the unity of the United Kingdom with Britain itself to be split into 12 Assembly Regions answerable to Europe.
 
Indeed so much that has made Britain different from the rest of the world,  that had made Britain great,  now lies trampled in the dust,  cast aside by every Government since Macmillan,  all for the suicidal sole purpose of subjugating Britain,  its laws and its people to European domination. 
 
It is not only the union between our peoples that is affected but indeed the very spirit of liberty born within our very souls is being stamped out and replaced by something so very alien and hitherto obnoxious to our heritage.
 
Whilst the written Constitutions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand give to us our independence,  our own sovereignty,  they,  together with even those republics operating under the Westminster system,  draw from the various precedents and conventions of the United Kingdom to complete the practice of governance.
 
However with the ‘Mother of all Parliaments’ itself becoming a scion of Europe and the Queen subject to European law,  the loss of sovereignty of the Crown and that of the Westminster Parliament has the potential for the buckling and erosion of our own constitutional arrangements,  for how can we draw upon the precedents and the conventions handed down to us by Westminster when Westminster in effect is no longer there?  How can the Crown of Australia exist as sovereign for us when its very heart is allegiant to Europe?
 
As well as the gradual assignment of power to Parliament,  the very structure and meaning of the Crown,  particularly as far as the Coronation Oath is concerned,  has altered radically for Parliament requires the Queen to assent to European law even though it may be eventually detrimental for Her Majesty’s subjects but be for the good of the European Community.
 
That there are Crowns which seem to sit comfortably within a United Europe is true.  However the British Crown is distinctly different from the European Crowns,  most of which are of recent creation.
 
The Queen has allegiance not just to the people of the United Kingdom but also to the other 15 Realms of which she is Queen,  each having their own constitution and most their total sovereign independence from the British Government.  The declaration of John Major that the Queen is a citizen of Europe raises the question ‘is not now the Crown subordinate to Europe’?
 
Apart from God,  the Crown is the most important thing in this Kingdom and in the Realms for it is the Crown which underwrites our democracy and our freedom of worship.
 
The British Parliament,  by dutifully passing every law put to it by Europe,  is not only signing away the blood of this nation,  it is making our Crown,  and therefore our own brand of democracy and our freedom of religion,   subservient to those very powers against which we have hitherto always stood as a bastion.
 
In our independence,  we in Australia have determined that our Crown is the Crown of Australia and whilst our parliaments have enacted legislation from time to time to specify how the Queen should be termed,  the preamble to our Constitution remains unchanged that we have agreed to ‘unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established’.
 
The late Sir Garfield Barwick,  former Chief Justice of Australia,  in his Menzies Lecture of 1982 said: “Let me say at once that the concept of the Monarchy in Australian affairs does not involve formally or substantially any element of the British connection, or any possible subordination of Australia to any British institution ... Time, the facts of history, and the development of constitutional practice have worked to secure and maintain our independence.  There are now, and for long have been, no remaining ties in the Commonwealth area with the Monarchy in the United Kingdom or with the Government of that country.
 
“The Queen is actually, and not merely nominally, Queen of Australia - in that capacity separate and distinct from the Crown of the United Kingdom.  She, as Queen of Australia, not as Queen of the United Kingdom, is one of the components of the Parliament.  The Monarchy in Great Britain relates and is limited to a different territory, is held under a different constitutional regime to the Monarchy in Australia.  Each is isolated from the other.  None of the powers vested in the Sovereign or in relation to the United Kingdom can be exercised so as to control, affect or influence Australian  affairs, and this is so notwithstanding the fact that the succession is determined by the laws of Great Britain.”
 
In his dissertation,  however,  Sir Garfield Barwick never contemplated what would become of those nations,  such as Australia which are existent under the Crown of the United Kingdom,  in a situation where the British Crown would  become subordinate to what is to us,  if not to Britain,  a ‘foreign entity’!
 
Despite the Realms each declaring their  own sovereignty,  there is nevertheless only one Queen,  one Coronation Oath and in accordance with the Statute of Westminster 1931 there is but one Crown under which the Realms are united by a common  allegiance.  To quote: “.. inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol to the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown ...”
 
In a similar manner to the concept of the Trinity of ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ where each is separate but all are one,  The ‘Crown of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland’ is also separately the Crowns of Australia and of the other fourteen Realms,  but it is also one.
 
The Statute of Westminster in effect ‘fetters’ the Parliament of the United Kingdom from enacting legislation which may affect the sovereignty and the stability of the Crown unless with the consent of ‘the Dominions’,  or as they are now held to be ‘the Realms’.
 
Has Britain’s abrogation of the authority of its Parliament and the supremacy of the laws of the Kingdom also led to an erosion of the sovereignty of the Crown and if this is the case then surely such legislation must be contrary to the essence of the Statute of Westminster?
 
These are serious questions that must not be brushed away as they go to the heart,  not just of our Monarchy,  but of our very democracy itself.
 
 
 
London,  April 2002

 
 © PHILIP BENWELL MBE

 
LOYAL ADDRESS FOR THE QUEEN’S GOLDEN JUBILEE
Delivered at Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, Melbourne.
 
This is the last chapter in this book and quite appropriately deals not with any matter relating to politics but with the remarkable and inspiring fifty years of dedication and service of Her Majesty our Queen to her peoples.
 
 
It is indeed a very great pleasure to speak at this,  one of the foremost gatherings in this country to celebrate Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee in Australia.
 
Last month I was privileged to have been one of the select few to be invited to attend the Jubilee Presentation of Addresses to the Queen by the Lords and the Commons in the historic Westminster Hall originally built nearly 1000 years ago.
 
In 1947,  five years prior to her Accession,  the then Princess Elizabeth in a broadcast to celebrate her 21st birthday whilst on a tour of South Africa,  established the principles upon which she would reign with the extraordinary and inspiring vow:  “I declare before you all that my whole life,  whether it be long or short,  shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong”.
 
It was thus that Her Majesty did not wear a formal gown for the occasion,  purposefully dressing down with a blue business-like suit to emphasise that the theme of the Golden Jubilee was not to portray the magnificence of the Crown set upon a distant throne but rather to celebrate the fiftieth year of a people’s Monarchy dedicated always to the service of the nation.
 
It was truly an historic occasion and brought to mind that whilst Jubilees have been celebrated for over five thousand years,  Her Majesty,  our Queen,  is not just unique in being only the fifth Monarch in the entire history of Britain to have reigned for more than fifty years.
 
She is unique in that she,  more than any other King or Queen who has gone before her,  has selflessly dedicated her life to her people without regard for her own benefit or personal comfort.
 
Indeed,  during the entirety of the fifty years of the reign of Her Majesty,  at no time has she ever misbehaved or even lost her temper in public despite the many aggravations there must have been for her to do so not the least of which must have been the encircling Australian Prime Ministerial arm around her waist.
 
We are indeed fortunate to have such a very special lady,  indeed such a very Christian person as our Queen.
 
With no thought at the time that she would ever become Queen Her Majesty was born on the 21st of April 1926.  She was named Elizabeth,  not after the first Queen Elizabeth,  but  after her mother.
 
Having difficulty as a baby in pronouncing her name,  her attempts ended in ‘Lilibet’ which became her nickname.
 
When Winston Churchill visited the then Duke of York,  he later commented that the two year old Princess Elizabeth: “is a character.  She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant”. 
 
At the same age, there is the story of the officer commanding the Guard at Buckingham Palace striding across to the pram bearing the two year old Princess. “Permission to march off,  please Ma’am”,   he asked and in answer there was an inclination of a small bonneted head and a wave of a tiny hand.
 
The reflective attitude mentioned by Winston Churchill continued throughout her childhood.  When a Minister of the Cloth said that he would send the young Princess Elizabeth a gift of a book:  “Not about God” she replied “I know about Him already”.
 
Ever since the commencement of the War,  Princess Elizabeth was determined to play her part and not sit idly by in spite of the recent responsibilities which had been added to her onerous schedule and which would clearly have crushed any of her peers and on reaching her 18th birthday,  she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service,  training in driving and vehicle maintenance.
 
The Princess could easily have avoided joining up by simply claiming that by the time she was of age the end of the War was now in sight.  However,  the calibre of the person who was to become our Queen  can be found in the comment she made many years later that it was the only time in her life when she had been able seriously to test her own capabilities against others of her own age.
 
In a similar manner,  the Queen Mother,  when a teenager, had dedicated herself to caring for the injured billeted at her family home,  Glamis Castle.
 
There is no doubt that the Royal Family of the 1940s were the most seen and the most popular on a continuous basis than ever before.  The combination of a sick King,  supported by a stalwart Queen and two daughters provided a sort of fairy tale picture.  In fact when Princess Elizabeth was visiting the United States of America with the Duke of Edinburgh in 1951 President Truman commented: “When I was a little boy,  I read about a fairy princess,  and there she is”!
 
It was in this spirit that the world had earlier joined with the Princess in her joyful happiness on her engagement to her third cousin Prince Philip of Greece,  in July 1947 as it did on their marriage a few months later on the 20th November 1947.
 
However,  the real tragedy of the life of the young ‘fairy tale’ Princess was that it was not in any way a fairy tale.  Princess Elizabeth’s life changed when her uncle abdicated and the awesome responsibility of not only the Throne but the conduct of a world war fell upon her ailing father.  This meant that,  as heir,  she had to forgo the sorts of things that children and teenagers are wont to do to commence her training to become Queen.  At the request of her father King George,  the British Parliament passed legislation creating her a ‘Counsellor of State’ and in July of that year,  1944,  Princess Elizabeth at eighteen was giving the Royal Assent to Acts and yet people of that age were still not eligible to vote in an election!
 
Indeed there were few blissful moments in her life and even those were short-lived.  The radiance that became the newly married princess and the ensuing happily married years encompassing the births of Prince Charles in 1948 and Princess Anne in 1950,  lasted just over four years and was sadly replaced by the agonising sight of the young new Queen dressed in black walking alone down the steps of the plane which had brought her home to fulfil her destiny.  To live out the rest of her life in the service of her people.
 
Under our Constitutional Monarchy there is no hiatus between Monarch and Monarch.  ‘The King is dead, long live The King’ has been the dictum of the Kingdom for centuries.
 
Her Majesty’s grief had to be kept to herself.  There could be no breakdown or public shedding of tears,  for she was now Queen with the overwhelming responsibilities of the governance of the Kingdom.
Her title would in future simply be: “Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms and Territories:  Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”.
 
At the time she was proclaimed Queen,  her late father and her mother,  the recently departed Queen Mother,  had through their gentle decency brought the Throne from the depths of despondency at the time of the Abdication to the high levels of