CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE QUEEN OF THE SOVEREIGN SOUTH

CHAPTER FOURTEEN -
THE QUEEN OF THE SOVEREIGN SOUTH
(Written in February 2006)

In 1901 Rudyard Kipling²⁷⁴ composed a poem to commemorate the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on New Year's Day, 1901 entitled ‘The Young Queen’, meaning the new nation of Australia. In this metrical work there are two lines which seem to reach out to us today. These are:

Daughter no more but Sister, and doubly Daughter so

and:
How can I crown thee further, O Queen of the Sovereign South.⁵⁸⁷

Kipling was, of course, the author of many stories of Empire such as The Jungle Book⁵⁸⁸ and Gunga Din,⁵⁸⁹ and at the age of 42, he remains even today, the youngest person ever to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature⁵⁹⁰.

The Britain of Kipling’s era was unquestionably that of imperialism, which has been consigned to history and, rightly so, has no place in the world of today.

However, what is not right is that the Britain of ‘God, King and Country’, the Britain epitomised in Churchill’s patriotic pronouncements of ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’, ‘we shall not flag or fail’ and ‘We shall never surrender⁵⁹¹’ but above all, the country of ‘Rule Britannia’⁵⁹², ‘Jerusalem’⁵⁹³ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’⁵⁹⁴, has been made redundant in the new, sterile and secular society which is Britain today. Created by Britain’s politicians in their insatiable angst to not just be a part of the European Union, but to discard everything that the country has ever been, in pursuit of the inexplicable and irrational desire of becoming ‘European’, Britain today is prophetically similar to George Orwell’s⁷² 1984³²⁶.

Today in the United Kingdom those who publicly admit to being Christians, and to fly the flags of Christianity are discouraged and even disparaged. Local councils in England will support and finance ethnic festivals such as the Chinese New Year Celebration of the Dog, whilst determining St. George’s Day as ‘not a special occasion’. Worse still, the British Navy last year banned twelve of its warships from flying the flag of St George in case it disturbed Turkish sentiments!⁵⁹⁵ Apparently there are moves to update the Union Jack to accommodate the numerous multi-cultural ethnicities⁵⁹⁶.

This denial of British heritage by British officialdom and their enthralment with being ‘good Europeans’ has led to an increasingly isolated British people, too afraid even to declare themselves as British! I suppose it will not be long before the name of the English language will be changed to some other term innocuous to all except those whose mother tongue it is.

In Australia, this purge is referred to as ‘political correctness’. It has not succeeded in this country to the same extent as it has in others solely because we have a conservative Christian Prime Minister who has acted as a bulwark against this Fabian inspired eradication of traditional values. But this could well change once John Howard³⁸⁵ is no longer in Office.

Unfortunately the United Kingdom has no such patriot in its government, only those who, like vultures feeding upon the debility of the Conservatives and the apathy of the people, empower themselves at the expense of the Queen’s prerogative.

One cannot fully blame the European Union, for Britain’s pathetic subservience to the dictates of that entity are not the cause, but yet another result of its lack of self confidence as a nation, tantamount even to self immolation. I am strongly of the belief that much of what is wrong in Britain today results from the machinations of Fabianism¹⁰⁷, something the majority of people even in the western world which is so affected by its activism know little about.

THE FABIAN INFLUENCE

Fabianism is essentially Marxism without mob-rule violence. It is not a philosophy but rather a mind-set and was adopted by the thinkers, social activists, and jaded wealthy of the late nineteenth century. People like Bertrand Russell¹⁹⁰, H.G. Wells¹⁹¹, George Bernard Shaw¹⁹², Annie Besant¹⁹⁵ (later to found the cult of Theosophy⁸⁰¹) and the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst⁵⁹⁷.

More than two thousand Anglican clergy in the United Kingdom became devotees of Fabianism, which is perhaps why so many Anglican bishops actively support and promote the European Union in the United Kingdom, and a republic in Australia!

The movement also attracted such conservative politicians as Gerald Balfour¹⁹³, his brother Arthur¹⁹⁴, and later the Labour leader, Clement Attlee²¹⁰. All were aghast at the indifference of both the Tory and Whig parties towards the poor and the suffering. The first Fabian tract ever published was entitled ‘Why are the Many Poor?’⁵⁹⁸

So successful were the early Fabians that they delighted in describing themselves as the ‘Jesuits of Socialism⁵⁹⁹’. Even so they would probably never have succeeded in their objectives had not the prominent Fabian couple, Sidney¹⁹⁷ and Beatrice¹⁹⁶ Webb, founded the London School of Economics and Political Science²⁰⁸ in 1895, basing its teachings on the Marxist philosophy that economic development was basic to social evolution. Fellow Fabian traveller, Arthur Balfour (British Prime Minister from 1902 until 1905) facilitated legislation whereby the school was granted constituent college status within the University of London²⁰⁹ in 1900.

It is through this College, recognised as one of the top four academic institutions within Great Britain (and eleventh in the world overall) that the Fabian Society has been able to pass on its teachings to the political elite of the international community. Considered to be the world’s best political science educator, the LSE has the highest proportion of international students of any university college in the world.

There are at least thirty current or former ‘heads of state’ amongst the alumni, including former US President John F. Kennedy⁶⁰⁰. Cherie Booth⁶⁰¹, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and a person accredited with Marxist sympathies, is also a former student.

The Fabian Society expanded its operations by jointly forming, with the Unions, the Labour Party in 1900;⁶⁰² and by the time Clement Attlee, himself a Fabian, won his landslide election of 1945, some 220 Labour Members of the new British parliament were members of the society⁶⁰³! This is similar to the 1972 election win in Australia of Gough Whitlam²¹³.

Whitlam proclaimed himself ‘Maximus’ claiming the dubious mantle of his idol, the Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus¹⁸⁹ after whom the ‘Fabian’ Society is named. Fabius Maximus himself was known for his tactics of masterly inactivity by refusing to fight face to face, preferring to engage in small actions only regulated by continuous delaying strategies, which he knew he could win no matter how long the wait. 

Fabianism is based and immortalised in the words For the right moment you must wait... when the time comes you must strike hard. The historian George Macaulay Trevelyan²²¹ described the Fabian Movement as intelligence officers without an army. ⁶⁰⁴ Needless to say, the Fabians while aggressively promoting European integration, are also directly responsible for influencing many politicians to vote for Union policies regardless of national concerns.

I have crossed swords with Fabians on several occasions, the latest being my successful opposition early last year to a Bill seeking to amend the Act of Settlement introduced into the Lords by the Fabian Executive Councillor, Lord Dubbs⁶⁰⁵, a child war refugee from Czechoslovakia who rose to become a Labour Minister.

Whilst Fabianism has clearly changed the way in which Governments act under our shared democracy, it is the people who have the right to determine whom they want to govern them and how they want to be governed.

Regrettably though, when often less than 50% of the people in the United Kingdom actually bother to vote⁶⁰⁶, they must shoulder at least some of the blame together with politicians for the pathetic state of British-ness (should it not be today ‘British-less’), and the manner in which their Parliament has contributed to the steady erosion of their freedoms as devised by the European Union

THE UNION OF EUROPE

Never has a truer word been said than the often quoted comment: All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing⁶⁰⁷, said to have been adapted from the writing of Edmund Burke.¹³⁹

This is not to say that there are not those who have warned from the very beginning against the Treaty of Rome⁸⁹ and what would ensue. I would mention a dear friend of mine, Mrs Betty Simmerson, now nearing eighty years of age, and one of the first campaigners against Union. A founding member in the 1970s of the ‘Keep Britain Out (of the Common Market) campaign’, Betty was arrested whilst waving the British Flag in a peaceable protest in Brussels and was imprisoned for a short time.

Of course such a thing could never have occurred at that time in Britain itself for British law was the very antithesis of European law in which the rights of the State are paramount over the interests of the people.

I say ‘at that time’ as, sadly, it could well occur today because successive parliaments of the United Kingdom have handed over not only the rights of parliament itself, but also signed away not just the entirety of British law, but indeed, the very freedoms of the British peoples themselves. Freedoms which have been nurtured along with the concept of the British Crown since the times of the Saxon kings, a thousand years ago and more.

For many years I have been writing extensively on the concerns I have regarding Britain’s submission to European domination.

What has actually occurred amongst the Member States of the European Union is similar to the manner in which the Australian colonies handed over much of their power to a central authority when they federated into the nation of Australia and became states within a Federation. Indeed, according to a 1971 report produced by the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Pierre Werner⁶⁰⁸: ... the degree of freedom vested in national governments might be less than the autonomy enjoyed by the States of the USA... ⁶⁰⁹

I had been an enthusiast of the European Common Market for there were numerous advantages in belonging to a trading zone incorporating so many of the world’s richest nations. There are obvious adjustments to law and even some sacrifices of sovereignty that must be made when entering into any treaty, but for the parliament of the United Kingdom to have relinquished so much of its constitutional and legal power to the political Union of Europe is tantamount to a betrayal of their very being.

It seems that having made the decision to enter the Common Market on the 1st of January, 1973, and having lied about the consequences of doing so to the people, British Governments since that time have proceeded along a downward pathway of self deprecation It is a tragedy that Baroness Thatcher⁶¹⁰ did not realise, as she claims, what the Union was all about until it was too late both for her own survival and that of the British people.

Following the release of documents from the 1970s and the frank admissions of former Prime Minister Edward Heath⁵²⁰, it is clear that, even at a time when politicians were supposed to have integrity and honour, the British people were purposefully misled by their government, and polls indicating anti-Europe sentiments were suppressed.

In a 1990 BBC interview, Edward Heath was asked if he had known all along that Britain was signing up to a federal Europe and replied Of course, yes⁶¹¹ whereas in his 1971 government White Paper ‘Britain and Europe’ it is stated: There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty.⁶¹² Heath had also reassured the parliament that Britain was only joining a ‘trading partnership’. Worse still, a BBC documentary of February 2000 exposed that the Government’s promotion of Europe was run on the basis of: ‘Never tell the truth’⁶¹³

Even Members of the British Parliament blithely accepted whatever they were told. Many have since admitted that they had never read the Treaty of Rome⁸⁹, and yet the opening words of the 1957 Treaty manifestly state:

Determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.

This ‘ever closer union’ is not based on any sort of democracy as we in Australia know it, but rather a huge bureaucracy answerable to an unelected Commission, or executive, exercising enormous authority with the frontispiece of a Parliament having limited and diminutive powers.

The five main institutions of European Administration are:
The Presidency
The European Council of Ministers
The President
The Commission
The Parliament of the European Union

The Presidency is essentially symbolic and is rotated every six months and occupied by the head of government of the member state whose turn it is.

The Council of Ministers is comprised of the twenty-five heads of state or Government of the member states who are ‘authorised to commit their governments to decisions made by the Council’. Their foreign ministers also generally attend. Council members do not sit in relation to their political parties but as representatives of their state, and the votes that each exercises are in proportion to the populations of their respective countries.

The Council is essentially the governing body of the Union and together with the parliament, forms the legislative section of the Union. It establishes the policy guidelines for European Integration and no minutes of its meetings are published. The Council is nothing like the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings or similar conferences for it is an institution of the Union.

The President is a different office from that of the Presidency; which, as I have said, is symbolic. The President, as the head of the European Commission is the highest ranking and most powerful of the unelected officials within the Union. The Commission itself is headed by twenty five European commissioners who are nominated by the Governments of member states and then elected, or rather ‘rubber-stamped’ by the European Parliament. As with the Council members, loyalty of the Commissioners is to the Union not to their own countries. It, together with the Council, essentially forms the ‘government’ of the Union.

The Commission is the executive body of the European Union and exercises enormous power and, whilst it cannot itself enact legislation, it does draft nearly all bills which are presented to the parliament which, itself has, limited powers.

The European Parliament currently comprises 732 members who, although directly elected on five-year terms by the citizens of the Member States, can exercise only a restricted authority.

The Union has been empowered by five main treaties:

The Treaty of Rome, which was originally signed on the 25th of March, 1957, by the six countries who then comprised the European Economic Community: i.e. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. It was on 1st of January, 1973, that the United Kingdom officially joined the Community, the then Prime Minister Edward Heath having signed the treaty on the 22nd of January, 1972.

The Single European Act of 1986, which was signed on behalf of Britain by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The treaty tightened its stranglehold on the member states and abandoned the word ‘Economic’ from the title of ‘European Economic Community’.

The Treaty of Maastricht of 1992, which empowered the Union Government to ‘...achieve the objectives of the Treaty’. The word Community was replaced by ‘Union’ thereby creating the ‘European Union’. All subjects and citizens of member states became ‘Citizens of the Union’, including the Queen!  Proposals were established to create a common defence policy, including an European Army. It was this Treaty which also conferred jurisdiction to the Union over the internal laws of member states.

Following Maastricht were its two amending Treaties of Amsterdam in 1997, and Nice in 2001. In absolute contempt of democracy, Article 191 of the Nice Treaty states:

...political parties at European level are important .. .for integration... they contribute to forming a European awareness. The Council shall lay the regulations governing political parties and, in particular, their funding.

Given the pervasive nature of the Union over the internal affairs of its member states, the interests of the ‘European level’ could well be seen to apply to national and even local government politics thereby making all political parties in all countries within the Union subject to being banned or disciplined if their policies or activities do not accord with Union interests!

It is, in reality, a further erosion of free speech and democracy along the downward spiralling pathway towards totalitarianism.

Furthermore, the Union requires its member states not to implement or support any policy which may endanger the objectives of the Union! The famous Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot,¹²¹ was so very right when he coined the phrase: ‘democratic despotism’⁶¹⁵.

The Union has already carved lines through the integrity of the United Kingdom by splitting it into twelve regions answerable not to the Westminster Parliament but direct to the Union.

A factor that the Union has learned from the old British adage of ‘divide and rule,⁶¹⁶ or perhaps even more appropriately from the words of the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne⁶¹⁷: divide and rend⁷⁶⁷!

As early as 1996, the Union issued a map of its Regions, obviously taken from an as yet un-issued blueprint. Gibraltar was shown as being Spanish, a section of Kent and the Channel Islands were shown as being French; and nowhere on the map was there any indication that there existed a country called ‘England’!

The office of John Prescott⁶¹⁸, Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote last year to a constituent stating:

..there is no such nationality as English .. Persons born in the United Kingdom are citizens of the United Kingdom and are therefore British/English!

Churchill would indeed be turning in his grave for did he not extol:

On this one night (St. George’s Day) in the whole year we are allowed to use a forgotten, almost a forbidden word. We are allowed to mention the name of our own country, to speak of ourselves as ‘Englishmen’. ⁷⁴⁰

Whilst Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are each separate UK Regions and all have their own parliaments, there is no ‘English’ parliament. Other Regions have their own Assemblies (London is called UK-1), but they are based on the European model of democratic impotency.

It is, furthermore, clearly the purpose of the Union that all members states be eventually required to adhere to one Union Foreign and Defence Policy removing the sovereign capacity of its States to individually declare war, send peace-keeping forces or even defend their own borders without Union approval.

The term, European Union, is itself now a misnomer as it has gone far beyond a ‘union’ or even a Federation, for what we have today is an ‘empire’ with a landmass which would make it the seventh largest country in the world; and a population making it the third largest after China and India!⁸⁸

From being what was generally thought to be a glorified trading alliance, the Union now has:

1. A European parliament and a European public service.
2. Supra-national borders, the inhabitants of which possess European    citizenship and European passports (albeit at this moment issued nationally)
3. A European anthem, a European flag and a European currency
4. European courts with European laws and a European system of justice with a European prosecution system and a European police force
5. There is a European Central Bank, with a larger lending rate than even the World Bank, and plans are underway to create a European taxation system.
6. The Union administers its own European foreign policy with European Overseas Missions
7. All of which is backed up by not just the European police force but also by a European Army!

Because this, the most massive administration in the world, is founded solely on the few treaties and supporting legislation of member states, the Union endeavoured to bring together the Statutes of the Union into one operating document and thereby formalize what has been a metamorphosis from a trading alliance into a political empire. 

These statutes are

• the primacy of EU law - in areas where member states have made legally binding agreements at EU level, they may not then pass national laws incompatible with those EU laws.
• the principle of conferral - that all EU competences are conferred on it voluntarily by member states;
• the principle of proportionality - that the EU may only act to exactly the extent that is needed to achieve its objectives;
• the principle of subsidiarity - that governmental decisions should be taken as close to the people as possible while still remaining effective;

Considered to be the most far reaching of these statutes is that of Primacy, where the law of a member state which is incompatible with a law or even an agreement made at Union level is deemed to be ‘dis-applied’.

Initially, in February of 2002, a convention on the future of Europe was established under the chairmanship of former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing⁵⁰⁹. Within one year he unveiled the proposed constitution’s first 15 draft articles in February of 2003.

Unsurprisingly, the media focused their attention not on the democratically oppressive nature of the intended constitution, but on the fact that nowhere did it mention ‘God⁶²¹ but few constitutions, including that of the USA, actually do! The surprise, of course, in the creation of a secular empire is that the majority of member states are Roman Catholic and one of the most enthusiastic promoters of the Union from its inception has been the Vatican, not that the Church of England is far behind with so many of its bishops actively involved in actual promotion of EU regionalisation within the United Kingdom!⁶²²

I have written elsewhere on the proposed Constitution for Europe, which was signed by representatives of all member states of the Union in 2004. However, ten of the twenty five member states wished to have their approval ratified at referendums of the people.

These were: the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Republic of Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK. Referendums in Spain and Luxembourg held in 2005 were successful but those in France and Holland were defeated and following that rejection, it was considered by the remaining six not to proceed as approval of the constitution required the unanimous vote of all member states.

With the September, 2005 words of the then European Commission President and Portuguese Prime Minister José Manuel Barroso:⁶²³ let’s work with what we’ve got. Political will and leadership are more important than institutions ⁷⁶⁸, it is clear that the rejection and subsequent decision not to proceed with ratification of the proposed constitution has not deterred the Union from continuing with its ultimate purpose of binding its members into one entity.

The latest EU Report proposes that:

 the European Parliament and national parliaments jointly organise conferences – Parliamentary Forums - in order to stimulate the debate and to shape, step by step, the necessary  political conclusions. ⁶²⁴

This is but one example of the arrogance verging on the tyrannical that the Union government exercises at every stage of its governance. In this instance it will ‘stimulate’ to ‘shape’ the necessary political conclusions!

However, as only thirteen member states had ratified the constitutional treaty prior to the rejection by France and the Netherlands, and twelve thereafter postponed making any decision, it will be almost impossible to resuscitate it, either as it is or in an amended form and seek mandates from each member state using their individual traditional methods of voting.

It is, therefore, possible that the Union will change tactics and seek to bypass the referendum process by implementing treaties which would comprise most of the provisions of the failed ‘constitution’. In this manner it will still create the process towards a federal empire.

Whilst we, with our ‘Westminster Democracy’ rose-coloured glasses, may look aghast at these despotic antics, it must be realised that European democracy is totally different from that which we ourselves practise. In Europe, government and justice is dispensed in the name of the State whereas in the United Kingdom it is done in the name of the Crown, which is the People. It is thus that to ‘administer’ is to us what in Europe it is to ‘dictate’! Truly the words of Byron,⁵⁵⁶ I am ashes where once I was fire⁶²⁵ could well now be likened to Britain and everything that it used to be!

THE POTENTIAL IMPACT ON OUR OWN CONSTITUTION

Australians may well ask What has all this about Europe got to do with us? and on the surface they would be right to be sceptical. The reason why I have for many years been raising fears regarding the European Union, and incidentally being resoundingly criticized for so doing by other monarchists both in Australia and the United Kingdom itself, is not because of the manner in which the Union has smothered the very essence of Britain, although this is of obvious disquiet, but my apprehension is rather to do with the potential effect that this ‘smothering legislation’ has on the Crown of the United Kingdom, and the consequent effect it may possibly have on the Crown here in Australia.

Of great concern is the situation of the Queen, having already been declared to be a ‘Citizen of Europe’, in her position as Queen of Australia under what may become an Executive Presidency of the Union should that office be determined to be the ‘head of state’ of all member nations.

It is fundamentally clear that the powers behind Europe seek total control over the Crown of the United Kingdom, which, of course, opens yet another argument amongst monarchists and that is: What has the Queen and the Crown of the United Kingdom to do with us when we have the Queen and the Crown of Australia?

This is a subject that I have gone into quite extensively in another paper, delivered at St. Andrew’s University in April 2005 and entitled ‘the Crown of the Commonwealth Realms’ (see Chapter 8).

The fact is that, whilst there is a Queen of Australia by right of the Australian Parliament, there is no legislative or constitutional document actually creating the Crown of Australia.

The Crown in Australia is actually, by our Constitution, ‘the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ under which our Federal Commonwealth is firmly established and which furthermore shall: ‘extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.’ (‘Her Majesty’ referring to Queen Victoria.) What is termed the Crown of Australia is the Crown by right of the Australian Constitution endorsed by the Royal Style and Titles Acts of 1953 and 1973.

The title ‘Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ actually ceased to exist in 1922 when the Anglo-Irish Treaty was ratified and it was thought that the British parliament could simply change the title to ‘Northern Ireland’ in the Preamble to our Constitution by amending their own Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK), but found that they could not do so as section 128 of our Constitution places the entitlement of change to the Preamble solely with the Australian people through the referendum process.

Unfortunately there are those who lack the confidence in our constitutional system to acknowledge this and the benefits that accrue therefrom, preferring to substitute the status of the Crown of the United Kingdom for the Crown of Australia, but, although there are two Royal Style and Titles Acts creating and confirming the title ‘Queen of Australia’, there is no constitutional or legal document creating the Crown of Australia.

In 1953 the Australian Parliament passed the ‘Royal Style and Titles Act, 1953’²⁷⁸ declaring the Royal Style and Title in Australia to be:

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Australia and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

These Acts have been incorporated into this book as Annexures 4 and 8.

In 1973, the Australian Fabian patriarch, Gough Whitlam sought to nationalise that part of ‘the Crown of the United Kingdom’ which related to Australia and caused to be enacted a new style under the ‘Royal Style and Titles Act, 1973’ declaring that in Australia the style was thereafter to be:

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God Queen of Australia and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.

However, the first declared Monarch of Australia as a separate entity was not the Queen but her grandfather George V⁹⁹ who, under the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927²⁵⁶ of the United Kingdom became King of, instead of King in, Australia thereby creating what was termed ‘multiple crowns’ albeit worn by the same person. This was a further acknowledgement by the Imperial Parliament of the independent status of the dominions, but other than the Irish, no other dominion took advantage at the time of this concession!

Kipling’s²⁷⁴ words, written at the time of Federation in 1901 Daughter no more but Sister, and doubly Daughter so ⁵⁸⁷ is itself indicative of the fact that Australia was perceived – by Kipling at least - to be no longer a colony but equal in status of sovereignty to the United Kingdom itself. However, even following Federation, the Imperial Government gave no proper consideration as to how its sovereignty would be administered under the Crown for in their arrogance they expected dealings to continue in much the same way as they had with the colonies.

It was only following 1926 that the Imperial Government appreciated that the Crown had evolved into separate entities to accord with the independent sovereignties of the then dominions. The Statute of Westminster of 1931, which was enacted to ‘give effect to certain resolutions passed by Imperial Conferences held in the years 1926 and 1930’, commenced with the words:

 And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of Preamble to this Act that, inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown.¹⁰⁸

Whilst this is a recognition of the divisibility of the Crown, it is a totally unsatisfactory situation that there has never been any legislative statement on how the Constitutions of the Commonwealth Realms are interconnected through the Crown. Prior to the Federation of Australia, when documents were being drafted and voted upon at the six referendums of the 1890’s, the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain at Westminster was the ultimate governing authority of the six Australian colonies and it was thus that the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK) was passed by the British parliament and received Assent on the 9th of July 1900 and became the instrument by which the Federation of the Commonwealth of Australia became a legal entity.

I am not a lawyer and consequently do not view matters in a legal sense, but rather from an historical and political perspective. It is parliament which creates law, and it is the practitioners of law which interpret, often in a number of ways, that which parliament enacts.

They will tell you that even following Federation in 1901 the Australian Government lacked power to enter into treaties in its own right and could only request permission to do so from the British Government. That permission was rarely given as the British did not want their former colonies entering into any arrangement which might be contrary to its own interests. It was thus that the Australian Constitution contains no specific provision regarding entering into treaties, although Section 51 does state:

The (Australian) Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: - (xxix.) External Affairs.

Whilst admittedly, in the words of the late Sir Garfield Barwick⁴⁰⁹: The Constitution was not devised for the immediate independence of a nation. It was conceived as the Constitution of an autonomous Dominion within the then British Empire⁶²⁶, it is my view that, in a political sense, the Federation Parliament, once elected, and ensuing parliaments thereafter, were supreme regardless of the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865²⁴⁶, or indeed whatever other Colonial Acts may have once pertained to the former Australian colonies. The Australian parliament exercises authority on behalf of the Australian people to legislate and to govern. As Prime Minister James Scullin²⁹⁶ proved a quarter of a century following Federation, it did not have to accede to any dictate of the Imperial Parliament or of the British Government.

Put simply, the fault lay not in the fact of independent sovereignty, but in the understanding that that independence existed.

It was at the Imperial Conference of 1923²⁹³ that it was first conceded that the British Dominions had actual competence in their own right to conclude treaties with foreign powers, although it took another eight years and many debates for Britain to put this into writing with the Statute of Westminster of 1931.

At midnight on 4th August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. It was considered that since Britain was at war, so was the British Empire which Australians considered themselves to be a part of. The fact is that Australia was no longer a colony of the United Kingdom. In fact, Britain, in 1911 had legislated within its own parliament to change Australia’s name from the ‘Colony’ of the Commonwealth of Australia to the ‘Dominion’ of the Commonwealth of Australia. Furthermore, Britain had no right whatsoever to declare war on behalf of Australia nor did it have any right to require Australia to join in the war. However, one could not blame Britain, for the perception in Australia was that Australians were British. On July 31 1914, five days before Britain’s declaration of War, in a speech at Colac, Victoria: the then Opposition Leader, Andrew Fisher⁶²⁸, said Australians will stand beside her own to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling. The Prime Minister, Joseph Cook, said at the same time in Horsham, Victoria All of our resources in Australia are ... for the preservation and the security of the empire. ⁶²⁹

It was perhaps a silent recognition of this that Britain invited Australia and other White Dominions to participate in the Councils of World War I, and to be represented at the Peace Conference, which is why Australia became a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles⁵⁸⁶.

Following World War 1 Britain had little choice other than to accept that the dominions were actually independent, and that Britain had no jurisdiction over them, except at their own behest. Lawyers will tell you that the Statute of Westminster, passed by the British Parliament in 1931, was the defining moment for Australian independence, even though the Australian Parliament, not wanting to formally recognise its independence, postponed enacting this legislation until 1942 when for various reasons it became necessary to do so. This is even though the Australian Government had established independent diplomatic overseas missions two years before and for thirteen years had the results of the 1929 Royal Commission⁶³⁰ of the Australian Parliament on the Constitution which made it patently clear that Australia was a sovereign nation with total authority to conduct its own affairs and to enter into treaties without requiring approval from the Imperial Parliament!

However, even in 1939 the Australian Government of Robert Menzies accepted without question that simply because Britain declared War, Australia must do likewise⁶³¹. This situation rapidly changed and by 1942, the Curtin Government on its own declared war on Japan⁶³².

It was this earlier mindset of insecurity that was responsible for the ingratiating submission of the Australian parliament to the Imperial Government and not due to any constitutional requirement. It was only in 1982 that Canada’s constitution was repatriated⁶³³, removing from the British parliament power to amend the constitution, vesting that authority in the Canadian parliaments alone, but this lack of control over their own constitution did not stop Canada in 1939 from debating the Canadian Declaration of War in their own parliament, nor did it prevent the Canadian Privy Council in 1952, from separately proclaiming the Queen as Queen of Canada, prior even to the formal Proclamation in the United Kingdom itself!⁶³⁴

Attempts to test the validity of taxation laws by challenging the status of the Crown has led to a recent flurry of interest on when Australia attained sovereignty. It is claimed that since Australia became a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles and later to the establishment of the League of Nations, it no longer had any association with the Crown, but the Australian Parliament itself enacted the Treaty of Peace Act 1919⁶³⁵ that gave effect to Australia’s status in this regard.

My personal viewpoint is that immediately the first Federation Parliament met, it had authority to sever all ties with the British Government, even to the extent of itself legislating for a referendum to make us into a republic. The fact that they and successive governments did not do so was their choice alone. Whatever the Imperial Government may have believed at the time was of no constitutional relevance in this country.

When Britain invited the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes,⁶³⁶ to sit on the War Council⁶³⁷, it tacitly recognised Australia’s independent status, verified by Article IX of the 1917 Imperial War Conference which declared the ‘Dominion of the Commonwealth of Australia to be an autonomous nation’. This autonomy or sovereign independence has never been contrary to our status ‘Under the Crown’, for by our constitution, the Crown in Australia has always been subject to the will of the people. 

Because change to our constitution is vested in the people and not in the parliament, some foolishly claim that we are a kind of ‘Crowned Republic’, a term seemingly first brought to recognition by Tennyson¹¹⁶ in his ‘Ode To The Queen⁷⁸⁰’ when he eulogised:

Broad-based upon her people’s will
And compass ’d by the inviolate sea.
Our slowly-grown
And crown ’d Republic’s crowning common sense’

However, the fact is that Australia is not a republic of any sort. We are a Constitutional Monarchy, and inherit through the Crown of the United Kingdom, the many conventions and precedents which have ensured that our system of government has a century old stability virtually unparalleled in the world.

The inclusion in the 1859 poem of Alfred Lord Tennyson ‘Idylls of the King’- ‘Ode to the Queen’, of the phrase: Our slowly-grown And crown’d Republic’s crowning common sense has been assumed by monarchists to mean that he was talking about Queen Victoria and the manner in which the Westminster System of government in Britain had departed from, what was then accepted as Kingly rule, to a semi-republican rule. These monarchists have used this quote to bolster their misguided arguments that Australia is a ‘crowned republic’, However, according to some schools of thought, Tennyson was actually referring to the French Empire of Napoleon III and the manner in which Napoleon had sought to recreate the Arthurian legends of Camelot, which, of course, declined into a state of depravity. Tennyson was also appalled at the hidden depravity of Victorian England and did his best to highlight what he termed as The darkness of that battle in the West, Where all of high and holy dies away.

However, even if Tennyson was referring to the Westminster system being a quasi republican form of governance, the fact is, he was a poet and his wordage was the expression of his complex thinking, and should not in any way be taken as relating to anything factual. Tennyson also wrote in his poem ‘Rizpah’: For the lawyer is born but to murder. Similarly to accepting his ‘crowned republic’ does this mean that we must also accept that all lawyers are born to murder? Of course not. The full poem ‘Ode to the Queen’ is included in endnote 780.

Being ‘under the Crown’ in Australia does not oblige loyalty to the British Government or even to the parliament of the United Kingdom. Neither of these have any authority over Australia whatsoever. Her Majesty the Queen is answerable, as Queen of Australia, to the Australian people; and it is because our constitutional system is based on the will of the people that we can truly claim it as ‘respublica’ or the ‘public thing’ - but this does not make us into a republic, crowned or not. It makes us rather into the most modern and most successful system of government yet known to mankind. A system which is called a ‘Constitutional Monarchy’.