CHAPTER FOUR - PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

21 June 2025

CHAPTER FOUR -
OUR AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
(Written in April 2008)

INTRODUCTION:

The election of a Federal Labor government in November, 2007, established the opportunity for a new republican campaign. Whilst the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd³³³ has been somewhat ambivalent on this issue, it nevertheless remains Labor policy. In the terms of its objectives the party is committed to:

reform of the Australian Constitution and other political institutions to ensure that they reflect the will of the majority of Australian citizens and the existence of Australia as an independent republic.²⁶⁹

The Department of the Prime Minister has confirmed that: The Government may consider the possibility of constitutional change in this matter as part of its broader policy framework.⁷⁷⁶Indications are that the direction for constitutional change will focus more on the inadequacies of our federal system than on a republic, although removal of the Crown will be vital to the break up of the Federation.

Whether moves towards change occur sooner or later, or even at all, it is nevertheless important that those who seek to retain our ‘crowned democracy’ be watchful and prepare to face a possible campaign. The alternative is to do nothing and risk being caught unprepared and ill-equipped to defend our constitution.

The intention of this paper, together with others in the series, are to help monarchists understand the current situation and to be better able to face moves towards constitutional change.

In Part 1 of ‘Our Australian Constitution’, I explained how the original British ethnicity of our Australian Society has radically changed its composition due to immigration - particularly from non Commonwealth and non Christian nations.

I also mentioned how politicians firstly removed the pledge in schools I Honour My God, I Serve My Queen, I Salute the Flag and thereafter then removed oaths of allegiance for Members of the State Parliament and now for Federal Ministers of the Crown.

MODERN AUSTRALIA – THE BEGINNING:

The arrival of the First Fleet⁵³⁰ in 1788, 220 years ago, began the modern history of Australia. At that time, there were no buildings as such; no villages or towns for the aborigines, who for thousands of years had inhabited the area, were a nomadic tribe of hunter-gatherers surviving from what they could forage from the wild land.

Before Governor Phillip²³⁴ set sail from Portsmouth, he had been given instructions from King George III⁵⁹ who, as a staunch Christian, was very concerned that the aborigines should be treated well and protected - particularly from the convict settlers. In his Instructions to Governor Phillip, which were dated the 25th day of April 1787²⁷¹ ^{& Annexure 11}, the King insisted that Governor Phillip was:

to 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. And if any of Our Subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary Interruption in the exercise of their several occupations. It is our Will and Pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the Offence.

Whilst it was therefore always the intention of the British Administration to treat kindly with the aborigines, some officers and many settlers did not do so. It is true that the British came to these lands displacing those that were here before, but it is also true that, otherwise, it would have been the French and later, almost certainly the Germans. Australia would never have known British Law and the Westminster system of government, which in spite of any deficiencies are certainly far superior to any other system and there would be no Australia as we know it today.

It is as a result of the political and consequent economic stability - due in no small measure as the consequence of our Constitutional Monarchy - that we consistently number amongst the major developed nations of the World. Only recently the United Nations released its annual Human Development Index rankings²⁷³ for 2007/08, listing Australia as number three, surpassed by only Iceland and Norway. Six of the top ten on the list are Constitutional Monarchies.

The first settlers found life to be extremely hard, but because they came from harsh backgrounds, they had the stamina to be able to tame the land and to build the foundation of the great nation Australia is today.

MOVES TOWARDS FEDERATION:

Due to the enormous distances involved between the State Capitals¹⁷³, it was felt at the time that a central administration was not practicable and, in 1850, the British Parliament passed the ‘Australian Colonies Government Act’²⁴⁵ to enable parliaments in each of the colonies to be established based on, though not fully introducing, the doctrine of responsible government.

This meant that for the first time in Australia the Executive was subject to control by Parliament. It was this Act which instigated the pathway towards independence. By 1859, the Australian continent had been divided into the six colonies we now know as States.

At first these colonies had little to do with each other, but in 1872 they were linked by telegraph, and the idea of being 'Australian' began to be celebrated in songs and poems, and by the 1890s it was decided to unite the six States into one nation. A number of meetings of politicians and gatherings of prominent individuals were held. These led to several constitutional conventions²⁴⁷ and the drafting of our present constitution which was put to the Australian people to vote upon.²⁷²

The constitution was based on that of the United Kingdom with additions taken from the United States, the Canadian and the Swiss constitutions to suit the individual requirements of Australia as a federated nation. M J C Vile⁷⁴¹, professor of politics at the University of Kent has written:

The essence of the British Constitution, however, is the separation of the power to govern from the authority to govern. It is when the authority belonging to the people is united with the executive power of government that government is vested with the legitimate power to act on behalf of the people. ⁷⁴²

In this manner, the new constitution created a system of government for Australia which was different from the sort of monarchy which existed at the time in the United Kingdom.

There were a few republican sentiments at the time giving cause to Rudyard Kipling²⁷⁴ to write in 1926 about an Australian republic in one of his short stories in which an Englishman says to an Australian:

Have you started that Republic of yours down under yet? .

The Australian replies: No. But we're goin' to. Then you'll see. Carry on. No one's hindering, says the Englishman.

The Australian scowls. No. We know they ain't. And - and – that’s what makes us all so crazy angry with you ... What can you do with an Empire that - that don't care what you do?²⁷⁵

Whenever asked about a republic, or indeed about anything politically to do with Australia, Her Majesty will always respond that it is a matter for the Australian people.

It is this attitude that frustrated republicans a hundred years ago - and still does today.

In May of 1900, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900⁶⁹ was passed by the British parliament, and was signed by Queen Victoria on 9th July 1900, and so became law.

Republicans make a great deal of the fact that our constitution was established as an Act of the British parliament. They forget that the constitution was agreed upon by referendums of the Australian people. Until the first Australian parliament met, which could only be following the establishment of the constitution, the British parliament was the only legal authority with power to create a new constitution.

The Act declared that on 1st January 1901, the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania would be united and known as the 'Commonwealth of Australia'. Provision was made for Western Australia to join the Federation once the results of their delayed referendum was known. This occurred prior to the Federation of the colonies on the 1st of January 1901.

The Australian Constitution established a Constitutional Monarchy, not a monarchical constitution. It was and remains a living document. Whilst the actual wording cannot be changed without the consent of the Australian people at referendum, it has set the foundation for the development of a progressive and independent nation. Republicans would say that the next stage is to become a republic, but I believe that this would be a retrograde step and Australians deserve better than to place their faith in those politicians who would have no hesitation in betraying this trust in their voracious quest for power.

THE ROLE OF THE MONARCH

Another area in which our constitutional system has evolved is the changing perception of the Monarch as solely the sovereign of the United Kingdom, which embraced Australia, to the Monarch separately of Australia. Most point to the Royal Style and Titles Act of 1973²⁷⁶ as the defining Act creating the Queen of Australia but when King George VI was crowned in 1937, the Coronation Oath specifically named Australia as well as the other Realms (or Dominions as they were then termed)²⁷⁷. A Realm is a nation of which the Queen is sovereign.

Following the Queen’s coronation, each of the Realms enacted a Royal Style and Titles Act. Australia’s, dated 1953²⁷⁶, declared the Queen 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.

Sir Robert Garran²⁷⁹ was involved for all of his working life, firstly in the formulation of Australia’s constitution, and then as it evolved into the system of governance we enjoy today. He wrote on the occasion of the first visit of the Queen in 1954:

Our Queen comes to us, not as Queen of a far-off country, representing authority exercised over us from the other side of the world, but as one of ourselves: as our own Queen of Australia, who reigns here, not in accord with her despotic will, but by and with the advice of her Australian Ministers. ²⁸⁰

The 1973 Royal Style and Titles Act was clear in that the designation of the Queen in Australia 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.

As Queen of Australia, Her Majesty is not advised by her ministers in the United Kingdom but only by her Australian ministers. Indeed, there has been no constitutional direction by the British Government for some eighty years.

In January 2008 there was an orchestrated pretence of a designed outrage against the Queen because she was not attending the funeral in New Zealand of Sir Edmund Hillary.²⁸¹ The detractors conveniently did not mention that the Queen would be there in the person of the Governor-General and particularly that she had not been invited to attend by the New Zealand government. Other than in the United Kingdom, Her Majesty can only travel to those nations of which she is Queen by the invitation of the respective government.

We all talk about democracy, but in reality a pure democracy where the opinions of each and every individual are sacrosanct would result in total chaos. The Athenian democracy of the 6th century BC²⁸²was the first known experiment in a people’s democracy, but there was no franchise and only a small group of people chosen from various levels of society voted on legislation. This type of democracy was more similar to the Swiss than the Westminster system. It lasted for just under three hundred years.

The Westminster system is also called government by the rule of law. This means that laws should be imposed by the majority and not by the minority, but fairly and for the benefit of all. However, the party political system which now pervades our parliaments, often abuses the trusteeship of governance causing the enactment of legislation which may not be in the best interests of the nation as a whole, but only of the party or its financial backers. This is one of the reasons why the system facilitates a change of government at election times and does not hold the new parliament accountable for the actions of the past parliament. The convention is that ‘No one parliament can bind another’.

This often leads to confusion amongst people who tend to blame the Queen or the constitution rather than the Government they elected. Of course some rather obtusely retort that they did not vote for that particular party, but the fact is that, even taking into account the Australian preferential system, the majority of those who voted did so for better or for worse.

This reminds me of the preselection of a controversial candidate by the Liberal party. When I said to one protesting lady who was on the preselection committee, but the Liberal party preselected him she replied, it wasn’t the Liberal Party only people on the preselection committee!

We cannot have what we all want all of the time. Under our democratic system we do, however, get a chance to vote for most things we believe in and against those we do not.

The political party which obtains the most seats in the lower House of a newly elected parliament is called upon to form the Government. As long as it has the confidence of the majority of the parliament, it retains the authority to govern as it wishes within the confines of the constitution. Any individual who disputes the actions of a government has the right to seek redress from the High Court, the only impediment being the horrendous costs involved.

The reason why the alternative party of government is formally termed ‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’ is because, even though they may have lost the election, they, being the next largest party in the parliament have the responsibility of ensuring the Government acts in accordance with the Constitution and its conventions. It is termed ‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’ not because it is in opposition to the State or to the Crown as the embodiment of that state, but rather because they are, or should be, allegiant to the Crown which far surpasses party politics.

THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL

Our constitution requires that there shall be a Governor-General who will: be Her Majesty's representative.²⁸³

The system of Constitutional Monarchy with an absent monarch is not perfect by any means, but it provides a better protection of the freedoms of the people of the Commonwealth Realms outside the United Kingdom than any other system yet devised.

At the time of Federation, the British empire spread around a quarter of the world. Each country, or State was administered by a governor. Sometimes a governor was called an Administrator and, in the case of the supreme governor of India, a Viceroy. In 1901, each State in Australia had a parliament and a governor who was appointed by the British monarch. The Governors each reported back to the British Government as well as to the Monarch.

When the States federated into the one nation of Australia, a Governor-General was appointed by the Monarch but on the nomination of the British Government. This was normal practice and was accepted by the Australian Government and parliament of the time. It was never envisaged that Australia would sever all links as occurred with the American colonies just over a hundred years earlier.

There was only one clause in the new Australian Constitution which left a residual power outside the competence of the Australian parliament and that was Section 59 which states: the Queen may disallow any law within one year from the Governor-General’s assent...

This clause was inserted to ensure the protection of the States within the new Federation, It should not be forgotten that in 1901 the Australian States were still somewhat protective of their own interests in the new Federation. This provision never having been used and can be said to be dormant and most constitutionalists do not defend its continued inclusion. Most governments have felt that it is simply not worthwhile to hold a referendum to remove it.

The Australian Constitution provides for an appointed Governor-General and an elected parliament which, once elected, assumes the administration of the nation. In ensuring a fair election, the major proactive constitutional role of the Governor-General has been completed. Thereafter he must accept the advice of the Government, providing it accords with the terms of the constitution, although he has the right to be advised and to caution.

A president, however, elected by the people could well assume a mandate on his or her own. We have had governors-general who have pursued their own social agendas which may have been somewhat contrary to the attitudes of the incumbent government. In a similar manner it could well be the case that a president faced with a moral dilemma, might openly oppose the political agenda of the elected government and thereby create a constitutional crisis. A Prime Minister has the authority to require the dismissal of a rogue Governor-General.

To rid the country of a rogue president elected by the people would not be such an easy task and the sheer difficulty of dismissal would undoubtedly embolden a recalcitrant holder of the Office.

Under our Constitution (section 61), The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative...

Our constitution does not mention a Prime Minister or cabinet because the Governor-General is advised by what is termed an Executive Council established by section 62 of the constitution. The Executive Council, which he formally chairs, is the equivalent of the Privy Council²⁸⁴ in the UK and comprises ministers and parliamentary secretaries but not (as is the case in the UK) the Leader of the Opposition.

As is the case with the Queen in the United Kingdom, the Governor-General is bound to accept the advice of the Government. Also, as with the Queen, he has the right as expressed by Bagehot¹²¹ to be informed, to be consulted and to caution. The Governor-General’s decisions are the Governor-General’s and the Queen has no part in them. There is no appeal to the Queen from any decision of a Governor-General.

Whilst there are reserve powers which come to the Governor-General through the Crown, these powers are difficult to define and their use is arguable. There is debate on whether our Governor-General can actually by himself refuse Assent to a Bill which has properly passed through the parliament. Of course, any contested legislation can be brought before the High Court for a determination on whether it is constitutional or not. Sir David Beattie²⁸⁵ , a former Governor-General of New Zealand, had, however, held that a Prime Minister without a majority in the House has lost the authority to insist that his advice to give Assent to a Bill should be accepted²⁸⁶.

In December, 1974 the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam²¹³, together with three of his ministers, Cairns²⁸⁷, Murphy²⁸⁸ and Connor²⁸⁹, 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.²⁹⁰

The holding of an Executive Council without the Governor-General or the cabinet minister (Frank Stewart²⁹¹) who was Vice President, broke convention and when the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr²⁹², was required to endorse the Executive Council Minute, he was faced with a dilemma. As Governor-General he had to be advised by his ministers, but he was being asked to sign what was arguably an illegal action to borrow funds decided upon by a possibly illegal meeting. However, he considered that the matter was justiciable, which meant that it was open to be corrected in the courts, and accepting the advice of his ministers, signed the Minute.

Australian Governors-General have returned Acts back to the parliament for amendment on no less than fourteen occasions, but at all times this has been done on the advice of the attorney-general, although due to defects most probably found by the vice regal representatives themselves.

The Governor-General also has numerous ceremonial duties, Bagehot describes them as the discharge of the dignified role of the Monarch. Those republics which have a politically elected President, such as France and the USA, often find that such ceremonial responsibilities interfere with the administration of the State.

As the Australian parliament found its feet and the Government became more competent in administering the nation, it, together with Canada started to negotiate for a greater independence from the British Government. Regular meetings of representatives from Australia, Canada and the other former British colonies which had their own constitutions, were held. These were called ‘Imperial Conferences²⁹³’. One very important aspect of the 1926 Imperial Conference was the deliberation that:

the Governor-General of a Dominion is the representative of the Crown, holding in all essential respects the same position in relation to the administration of public affairs in the Dominion as is held by His Majesty the King in Great Britain, and that he is not the representative or agent of His Majesty's Government or of any Department of that Government⁷²⁴_.

In other words, the Governor-General would thereafter adopt the role of the constitutional monarch within Australia, but would no longer have an imperial role.

Professor J.R. Mallory²⁹⁴ had written in his treatise: ‘Responsible Government, Autonomy, and the Royal Prerogative’:

Thus, the Imperial Conference of 1926 (leading to the Statute of Westminster), while providing for the new status of the Governor, felt it necessary to add that 'a Governor-General should ... be kept as fully informed as is His Majesty the King in Great Britain of Cabinet business and public affairs.²⁹⁵

In 1930, there was some dissent on the nomination by Prime Minister Scullin²⁹⁶ of the High Court judge and former state and federal politician, Sir Isaac lsaacs²⁹⁷. King George V⁹⁹was of the opinion that the Governor-General should not be a local personage as he would experience difficulty in remaining neutral. King George actually came up with a very novel suggestion, which unfortunately was not carried through, and that was for distinguished persons from one Realm to be appointed Governor-General of another. If this had occurred it would have brought together those nations under the Crown into a closer union.

One of the great mistakes of the past century has been the way in which those nations which were settled by the British and which now remain under the Crown, such as Canada, have not continued the close relationship which once existed. Canada, like us, has developed from a series of colonies to a great nation and we have much still to learn from each other.

It was at the Imperial Conference of 1930 that it was resolved that henceforth the Governor–General would be appointed by the Monarch acting on the advice of the ministers of the dominion concerned. Since that time, the Governors-General have been nominated by the Prime Minister of the Realm, with the appointment being formally made by the Monarch.

Whilst Federation gave us independence, it was as a result of the Imperial Conferences and the Statute of Westminster that saw that independence mature.

Many question the necessity of the Monarch appointing the Governor-General when it is now always on the advice of the Prime Minister. However, this process takes the power to do so from the actual hands of the Prime Minister, and whilst his recommendation will ultimately succeed, the formality ensures that the nomination becomes public prior to appointment making possible any public reaction which may give cause for reflection. For instance should a Prime Minister nominate his own son or wife (which is far from unknown in many republics) the resultant public outcry would bring the wisdom of such an appointment into question.

Prior to this, by consensus of both the British and the Australian Governments, the Governor-General was recognised as their link between each other, but now the Governor-General was to assume the constitutional and ceremonial role of the Monarch in Australia. The British Government was to have no jurisdiction over the Governor-General who was to accept the formal advice tendered to him now by the Australian Government. Thereafter a High Commissioner, another term for an ambassador serving within the Commonwealth, was appointed to represent the interests of the British Government and to liaise with the Australian authorities.

This agreement was put into an Act of the British parliament called the Statute of Westminster¹⁰⁸. This Statute was also later legislatively adopted by all Realms, including Australia in 1942.

Whilst Australia could well have opted to have its own king, it was thought that this was not necessary as, under the Westminster System, the administration of the nation is in the hands of the Prime Minister and his government. The Governor-General does not play an active role in administering the Nation but one similar to an umpire, ensuring that the rules, that collectively speaking is our Constitution, are kept. To have our own king, or as America does, our own president, was simply not worth the cost and could well lead to interference in the running of the country by its elected government. After all, under our system, it is the parliament which is elected to govern, not the Monarch or the Governor-General.

It is in this way that the Government can effectively manage the nation subject to the confidence of the elected parliament.

The state governments however, continued - in theory if not in practice - with the custom of state governors being appointed on the formal advice of the British and not the State governments. However, in 1986, the Australia Acts⁶⁸ ensured that this advice shall be tendered by the Premier of the State²⁹⁸.

As intimated, the Australian Constitution designates that the Governor-General is the representative of the Queen. This does not mean that he reports everything to Her Majesty, but that, as her representative he assumes the role of head of state. In fact the Governor-General does not report to the Queen on matters of State nor does the Queen give instructions or even unasked advice to the Governor-General.

The Governor-General, as representative of the Queen, also has powers vested directly in him by the Constitution, including the position of Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

The Queen can only visit Australia on the invitation of the Government, but there is no constitutional requirement for the Monarch to actually physically be in the country. This is because once the Monarch has appointed the person nominated by the Prime Minister as Governor-General, as well as receiving other powers specifically designated under the Constitution, as has already been described, he assumes the role of the Monarch, and effective head of state, in the country.

It was not until the Queen visited Australia in 1954 that it was found that once the Governor-General had been appointed by the Monarch, the powers vested in him under the Constitution became uniquely his and the Monarch had no authority to play any further part in the constitutional affairs of the Nation.

The 1954 visit was the first ever by a reigning Monarch – although George V and the Queen’s father George VI had each visited the country prior to their accessions²⁹⁹. The Prime Minister Mr Menzies³⁰⁰ (later Sir Robert), had to enact special legislation to enable Her Majesty to take on a constitutional role during her presence in the country³⁰¹.

As is the case with the Monarch in the United Kingdom, the Governor-General has the right to dissolve parliament. Whilst most dissolutions occur on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, the Governor-General can on his own dissolve a sitting parliament if he considers it necessary to resolve a deadlock by holding an election. The only public occasion on which this has occurred was in 1975³⁰², but, of course, we know not what private discussions behind closed doors may have occurred before, or since, that time.

The Governor-General also has the right to refuse a dissolution and whilst this is known to have occurred only three times, in (1904, 1905 and 1908³⁰³) it is most probable that there have been other occasions on which an indication has been given in private discussion that a formal request, if made, would be refused.

This process provides a Prime Minister with little opportunity of abusing the system for his own ends, for he must produce evidence of a legitimate need for a fresh election, other than that it would provide a better opportunity for his party to win.

On the 2nd May 1950, an authoritative letter was published in the Times under the pseudonym Serex stating that:

No wise sovereign ... will deny a dissolution to his Prime Minister unless he was satisfied that: (1) the existing parliament was still vital, viable and capable of doing its job; (2) a general election would be detrimental to the national economy; (3) he could rely on finding another Prime Minister who could carry out his government for a reasonable period, with a working majority in the House of Commons.

It was an open secret at the time that ‘Serex’ was Sir Alan Lascelles³⁰⁴, then private secretary to The King.

There are a number of ceremonial and social duties which are the responsibility of a Governor-General. A number of charities depend on the Governor-General’s patronage and support. However, there are also the constitutional duties which are the more important, because the constitutional role of the Governor-General is similar to that of a trustee, ensuring that all the parties participating in the governing of the nation play fair by the rules.

The website of the Governor-General⁷²³ specifies that he:

dissolves the parliament and issues writs for new elections;
commissions the Prime Minister and appoints other ministers after elections;
gives assent to laws when they have been passed by the two Houses of Parliament - the Senate and the House of Representatives;
acts on the advice of ministers through the Executive Council to issue regulations and proclamations under existing laws; appoint Federal judges; ambassadors and high commissioners to overseas countries and other senior government officials; issue Royal Commissions of enquiry; exercise the prerogative of mercy; and
authorises many other executive decisions by ministers such as raising government loans or approving treaties with foreign governments.
There are many other ceremonial duties performed by the Governor-General. For example, he or she:
receives and entertains visiting heads of state, heads of government and other prominent visitors to Australia;
opens new sessions of the Commonwealth Parliament;
receives the credentials of ambassadors and high commissioners appointed to represent their countries in Australia;
conducts investitures at which people receive awards under the Australian Honours system for notable service to the community, or for acts of bravery; and
receives and formally entertains many Australian citizens and representatives of organisations active in the life of the community.

As Commander-in-Chief, the Governor-General has an important ceremonial role to play. He attends military parades and special occasions such as Anzac Day³⁰⁶ at the Australian War Memorial³⁰⁷, and presents colours and other insignia to units of the Australian Defence Force.

In simple terms it can be said that the Governor-General presides over the nation whilst the Prime Minister is the one who actually runs it.

THE ISSUE OF A HEAD OF STATE

Dr. Eugene Forsey³⁰⁸, one of Canada's foremost constitutional experts, had written about the consequences of the sort of absolute independence we now constitutionally have:

It was clear from the very beginning that there was a danger that dominion autonomy might mean in practice that the King, like the Governor-General, would be speedily relegated to a remote eminence whose name was lent to decisions about which he was not even informed ... [The] constitutional evolution in the dominions has reduced the functions of the head of state to those of a rubber stamp...³⁰⁹

Since the debate on change to our Constitution commenced nearly twenty years ago, there has been a continuing confusion over who is our head of state. When we federated into one nation in 1901, the term ‘head of state’ was relatively unknown. However, over the past fifty years it has been commonly used to describe presidents in whom the sovereignty, or power, of their republics are vested. The reason why there is some confusion is because, in Australia, our system is different from republics; because ours is one of many checks and balances where those in authority and in power keep a watch each on the other to safeguard the interests of the people.

The first or prime head of state is the Queen, but once she has appointed a Governor-General he (or she) assumes the position of the Monarch in the country and the Queen thereafter plays no further part in administrative affairs. The Prime Minister advises the Queen of the person he is nominating for Governor-General and it is convention that the Queen always accepts the nomination.

Why, you may ask, do we need the Queen; and why cannot the Prime Minister just nominate the Governor-General himself? The reason is that should the Prime Minister be able to do this he would be virtually all-powerful.

Whilst it is practice for the Monarch to accept the nomination of the Prime Minister, this does not mean that if a totally unsuitable nomination is made, it cannot be questioned. The procedure is a part of the checks and balances which make up our constitutional arrangements for the protection of the democracy of the people.

Constitutional experts say that we therefore have two heads of state, a de jure head in the Monarch and a de facto head in the Governor-General. However, few people can understand these terms and I prefer to say that the Queen is the ‘prime’ head of state and the Governor-General the ‘effective’ head (for a more detailed explanation see Chapter 18).

THE SYSTEM OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

The Westminster system is continually evolving to meet the exigencies of changing times. The first Federation Parliament did not want full independence from Britain, even though that was actually what they had.

The former colonies on becoming the States, retained separate links to the British Government. This was why the new Federal Government accepted that the Governor-General was to be the formal channel of communication between the British and Australian Governments. The procedure was for the British Colonial Secretary to nominate a person (or persons) of his choosing and for the formal appointment to be made by the King.

It took over twenty years for the Australian Government to start to cut loose from these ties and to make an ultimatum to Britain that it must be acknowledged as an independent, sovereign nation in its own right.

This evolvement resulted from the part that Australia played in the First World War; it was because of this realisation that led to Australia expressing its desire for a greater independence at the Imperial Conference of 1926 leading to the right for it to choose its own Governor-General

Republicans may argue that since we elect politicians, surely they are more deserving to act as the repository of power than an absent monarch? However, what they fail to appreciate is that, constitutionally, the ‘monarch’ is not absent, but present in the form of the Governor-General. Under our system politicians are elected by a majority of votes cast in an electorate, but our system is far from perfect. In the first instance preferential and preferential proportional voting will see a vote directed to a candidate the voter never intended to vote for. For instance, those who voted in the last Senate election for the Christian Democrats³¹⁰ found that, unless they specifically numbered squares separately, their votes were passed on to the Coalition, thus ensuring the election of the third candidate on that ticket, something many never intended to happen. Furthermore, the evolvement of the political party system has meant that strong control is exercised over the individual decisions of members of that party in the Parliament most certainly at times resulting in a member being required to vote against the interests of his electorate. Whilst a member of parliament cannot be forced to vote against his or her conscience, the power of a party machine is enormous, and can ensure that a recalcitrant member is not promoted to a front bench position and may even lose his or her preselection.

It was astutely written by a Professor Parker that:

Too many politicians, and particularly officials, hypocritically profess to live by the Westminster syndrome while making decisions in ways that pay no respect to it at all. ³¹¹

The fault, of course, ultimately lies with the elector who will vote for a political party regardless of the worthiness – or unworthiness - of the individual candidate, let alone of the party itself.

There are many areas in which the political system is corrupt. The quest for power will, in many cases, override one’s principles. Similarly those who provide campaign funding will require a quid pro quo, which ethically means a corrupting of the process, even if a substantial donation only results in ready access to a minister.

Very few politicians can actually withstand the pressures placed on them by the current political system without a diminution of principles in one way or another. However, neither the Queen nor the Governor-General can be bought. In fact, no one would bother even to try because under our Westminster system, the administrative power resides in the Prime Minister and not in the Governor-General who is, in effect, a benign Trustee of the Constitution.

It is a system which works and works well, however difficult it may be to understand, but surely no more incomprehensible than the United States system of voting for a President?

The Hon. Beryl Evans³¹², now sadly deceased, was a Member of the NSW Legislative Council and a Patron of the Australian Monarchist League.

She had said, in a debate on a republic in the NSW Parliament:

Why demolish a system that is working perfectly and replace it with an unknown quantity? It is because I love this country that I believe democracy, justice, equality and liberty need to be safeguarded by an institution that is trusted by the people and is above the sordid level of daily politics. That is why I support the Crown and say proudly that I am a monarchist. ⁷⁴³

In the century since Federation, there has only been one major crisis and that was in 1975 when the then Prime Minister refused to resolve a deadlock by going to the people in a double dissolution of the Parliament. There is a tremendous confusion over what actually occurred and this is not the place to debate the rights and wrongs of the deadlock. However, it resulted in Sir John Kerr, a Labor appointee, using the powers vested in him, as Governor-General under Section 64 of the Constitution withdrawing the Commission of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. The Parliament was then prorogued on November 11th and elections were held on December 13th 1975. Had Gough Whitlam agreed to a double dissolution, he would never have been dismissed and the festering lesion of 1975 would never have occurred. However, ultimately the matter was sent to the people to decide at a fair election. That is our system. To be otherwise would not be a democracy.

Whilst our Monarchy reaches back for over a thousand years, our system of Constitutional Monarchy is far more modern and relevant today than the concept of a republic. Most former British colonies, including the United States of America, have adopted the British Westminster system, but have corrupted it by removing the Crown, thus removing the sort of freedoms we continue to enjoy in Australia.

Whilst it may be said that, over the years, the machinations of politicians have led to a diminishing of the constitutional role of the Crown, the Crown continues to remain constitutionally important because, apart from every other aspect, it still keeps total power and authority from being exercised in an absolute sense by politicians. Dr Eugene Forsey wrote in his ‘Essays on the Canadian Constitution’:

But if a Prime Minister tries to turn parliamentary responsible government into unparliamentarily irresponsible government, then only the Crown can keep Government responsible to Parliament and Parliament to the people; only the Crown can prevent parliament from degenerating into a rubber stamp for the Prime Minister... - only the Crown can prevent the Prime Minister, prime servant, from degenerating into a prime despot, the whole process into an elaborate farce, swindling the public at the public expense, with the people helpless to protect itself. The Crown is the embodiment of the interests of the whole people, the indispensable centre of the whole parliamentary democratic order, the guardian of the constitution, ultimately the sole protection of the people... ³⁰⁹

THE REPUBLICAN DEBATE:

Insurrection against the Crown in Australia really began with the Irish rebels transported by Britain³¹³ following the Irish Rebellions of 1798 and 1803³¹⁴. A resentment of the King and all symbols of authority followed by a hatred of the English from the times of the potato famine^E670, when Irish small-holdings were bought out and consolidated into larger more viable estates, thus depriving many poor Irish of their dwellings and livelihood. That it was the Famine³¹⁵ that was originally responsible is forgotten.

This hatred was nurtured for decades and honed into a republican attitude predominately by the American republicans who migrated to Australia, in the 1850s to seek gold at Ballarat³¹⁶. New migrants from non-Commonwealth nations have joined their ranks which have now expanded to incorporate people from all communities, regardless of their heritage. When the first organised republicans were agitating for self-government in the 1850s, it was always assumed that the eventual form of government would be based on the British pattern with the Governor replacing the Monarch and an elected Assembly the House of Commons.

The Bulletin magazine³¹⁷, established in 1880 by two journalists, John F. Archibald and John Haynes, became the flagship of anti-monarchist sentiment in Australia. In 1887 it carried the first published poem of Henry Lawson³¹⁸ entitled ‘A Song of the Republic’ in which Lawson, inspired by the American Republic, expressed the view that the ‘signs of the times’ foretold that the day of the republic was near. Lawson was also influenced by his mother, who was one of Australia’s first suffragettes. Lawson eventually came to appreciate the values inherent within the Westminster system and its capacity to incorporate a nationalistic fervour within a loyalty to the Crown and, in spite of his family connection to Labor stalwart Jack Lang³¹⁹, he eventually shook off his republican upbringing and became a strong proponent of the British Empire.

The Bulletin magazine has since ceased publication after 128 years due to a continued lack of circulation.

In 1958, at a dinner organised by Geoffrey Dutton³²⁰, Malcolm Muggeridge³²¹, then visiting Australia, raised the issue of a republic to which a young Rupert Murdoch²¹⁶ is rumoured to have responded: Well I think its ridiculous there’s not a republican movement here.⁷⁹⁴ The Murdoch newspapers have since been passionate about a republic.

In September 1989, Neville Wran³²², former Premier of New South Wales, held a Sunday brunch at his Woollahra mansion in Sydney at which, according to the writer Thomas Keneally³²³, his host leaned over the table and said The other thing I want to see happen before I bloody well die is an Australian Republic⁷²⁵. It was as a consequence of this meeting that the Australian Republican Movement was launched on the 7th July 1991.

There are two main reasons motivating those who promote a republic, The first is a fanatical hatred of the English and the Queen and the other is that of those who genuinely felt the need for a ‘national identity’ together with a mistaken belief that a republic will result in a greater democracy - being ‘free from ties to the UK’ .

The rationale of the latter often lead them to make statements that are essentially in support of the Constitution, such as the caution by the Republican Professor Greg Craven³²⁴ then of Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia: the world has many more wrecks of constitutions than it has constitutions.⁷⁴⁴

Professor Craven has also written:

Australia has a Constitution that is not perfect, but which is very good indeed. The only rational basis upon which to make such a judgment is a comparative one. Australia’s Constitution has presided over one of the oldest continuous constitutional democracies in the world, a performance in stark contrast to that of the constitutions of many other nations. Specifically in terms of executive arrangements, the Constitution has produced only one major crisis. that of 1975, which was in any event largely attributable to factors other than its executive provisions, and was peacefully resolved. In a world where constitutions typically fail, this one, including its executive arrangements, works well. ⁷⁴⁴

Former Hawke and Keating Cabinet Minister, Gareth Evans³²⁵, said in 1982 that the egalitarian strand in Labor's democratic socialist ideology was one of the underlying considerations behind the labour movement's broadly republican sympathies. There are serious points that can be made about the role of elites and social hierarchies in reinforcing stereotypes about class and status in our society.

The lack of civics education in schools and in the community have, unfortunately, produced an almost total ignorance amongst people of how the system of Constitutional Monarchy can guard our democracy far more than any model of republic.

I therefore see our job, in preparing for a plebiscite and/or referendum, as, firstly, in advising and educating our supporters - and indeed any who are interested on the ways in which our system best protects the freedom of the individual.

Even as I write, I am accused of promoting a minimal Monarchy and that I should proselytize on the emotive mysticism of Monarchy, but all I am doing is to seek to explain what our system of governance is all about, without frills, and in language simple for all to understand.

What we must all accept is that, over the past two decades, there has been no education of young and ‘new’ Australians on the role of the Queen and the Governor-General which means that there are several million voters who will eventually decide on whether or not we will become a republic who know nothing about our system of Governance. We cannot relate to the generations of this modern age by talking about the poignant times of past years, but on how the system of Constitutional Monarchy is as germane to today’s Orwellian environment as it was to those generations of a hundred years ago. George Orwell⁷² was, of course, the author of the prophetic ‘Nineteen Eighty Four³²⁶’, written just one year prior to his death.

There are those - not all of them republicans who would have us deny and avoid all mention of our British past and heritage. Indeed, some supposed monarchists would even have us not mention the Queen at all. We must never be ashamed of what we are.

If, in this nationalistic age, there are factors which may be deemed by the media to be disadvantages, then we should turn them into advantages.

In the first instance we have to rid ourselves of the contention that because the Queen lives on the other side of the World, she is a foreigner and should have no connection with us. The fact is, she is present in the person of the Governor-General who, once appointed, assumes the constitutional role and person of the King in Australia as well as separate powers vested in him by the Constitution. It might seem unwieldy, but no more than most institutions in a global world. If republicans are so insular, why do so many go to the United Kingdom for work? Do republican bankers and businessmen do business only within Australia? Why then, do republican politicians spend so much time overseas if they are so much against our Sovereign residing in the United Kingdom, which after all is the source of our basic culture, our language, our laws and our prime heritage?

Through the Queen, as Head of the Commonwealth, we have the potential for close relations with a quarter of the World! There are so many advantages in our monarchical association, not the least of which is that we get all of this without paying anything to the Queen as Queen of Australia.

The Constitutional Preamble established Australia as a ‘Nation 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:

Whilst the legal competence of a Preamble is arguable, its inclusion in a constitution such as ours provides a clear intent and should not be ignored If we ever become a republic however, the Preamble will be removed. Should that occur, Australia would no longer be identified as a Christian Nation. It is also probable that a new Preamble might ensure that the federal aspects of indissolubility would be imprecise to facilitate the increasing centralisation of government and the lessening of sovereignty of the States.

The Crown is simply described as ‘government under a Constitutional Monarchy’, but this simplistic explanation does not accurately illustrate its real meaning.

All nations have an immense power which is made up of its land and the people who inhabit it. It incorporates the law and those who uphold it. An individual controlling this power is called a dictator. The World has seen many dictatorships, such as the ancient Kingdoms - or the current Republic of Zimbabwe.

Over the past few hundred years, a system was developed to better control this ‘power’ with various checks and balances. This system is called a Constitutional Monarchy where the Monarch, or Governor-General is checked by the Parliament and the Parliament is checked by the Monarch/Governor-General and the Courts and where all are checked by the people. It is a system that has been refined over the centuries and, whilst there are many inadequacies, it does work as has been proven in Australia, which has had no civil wars or major constitutional crises in its hundred years of existence as a Constitutional Monarchy.

Under our system, neither the Prime Minister nor the Parliament can seize control of the nation, simply because the power is permanently vested in the Crown which is subject only to the will of the people. Some people, who agree that this arrangement works, say: Why can’t we keep the system but do away with the Queen? The problem is that a Constitutional Monarchy cannot work without the monarch, who is, remember, above politics; whereas where participants are elected, the election process lends itself to the possibility of corrupting the participants.

In the United States of America, the President is elected by the populace. To achieve an election he has to raise millions of dollars for his campaign³²⁷ This means that he is indebted to major campaign contributors, both corporate and individuals, who may well expect to be rewarded with favourable treatment or even ambassadorships. In Australia, the Prime Minister or ministers may act in this corrupt manner but the Governor-General is hardly worth bribing because he exercises no government authority and the Prime Minister can request his dismissal if he is found to act beyond his ceremonial and constitutional duties, whereas if we had a President elected by the people, he, or she, would be a far more politically powerful individual, at risk of possible corruption, and we could well experience constitutional crisis after crisis.

If our constitutional system was not working, then that would be the time to risk a republic, but is it really worth throwing away what we have, just because many people do not understand our system, or worse because some hate the Queen or carry some age-old grudge against the British?

PLEBISCITES

On the 28th April 1993, the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, announced the establishment of a Republic Advisory Committee²⁵³ which was to be chaired by merchant banker and lawyer, Malcolm Turnbull³²⁸. On the 16th August 1993, the Australian Republican Movement³²⁹, in its submission to the Committee stated that The president should be elected by a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament.

On the 11^th of March 1996, the election was won by the Coalition and John Winston Howard became Australia’s 25^th Prime Minister. Howard continued on with the moves towards constitutional change and organised a Constitutional Convention³³⁰ which comprised 76 delegates elected in a non-compulsory postal vote held in November 1997 (in which less than 50 percent of eligible voters actually bothered to vote) together with a further 76 appointed personally by the Prime Minister himself. The Convention met in Old Parliament House, Canberra and adopting the model put forward by the Australian Republican Movement; and this was put to the people, in November 1999 in a referendum¹⁷⁷. However, despite having undergone eight years of debate and having the active support of the Australian Labor Party and its affiliated unions, in addition to the Greens and the Democrats, big business and in particular the entirety of the print and visual media, the referendum failed to gain a majority both nationwide and in all six states.

On the 7th October 2000, the then Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley³³¹, outlined proposals for a new referendum, should he become Prime Minister, in a paper delivered at the Notre Dame University.

In this paper, he outlined the Labor plans for a three-step consultative process:

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.⁸¹⁶

At the 44th National Conference of the Australian Labor Party, held in April 2007, support for a republic was reaffirmed: prompted, we understand, by the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd. Entrenched in its objectives is the paragraph:

It was as far back as 1981, that the national conference of the Australian Labor Party included republicanism in its party platform

In the lead-up to the 2007 election campaign there were several comments made by the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, ranging from: ‘his government will hold a series of consultations leading to a referendum’, to ‘there will be a referendum in 2010’, to ‘there will not be a referendum during the first term of his government’.

In a similar manner, prior to the election, the impression was given to the electorate that the Rudd government would follow very similar lines to the Howard administration.

However, in the few weeks it has been in government, there have been some fundamental modifications to policy, such as Kyoto³³², and pundits predict that within the next six months, and particularly when the coalition loses control of the senate in July 2008, there will be far reaching, radical and even revolutionary changes which will sweep out the old and bring in the new.

When Prime Minister Rudd was sworn into office, he arranged that the Oath or Affirmation for cabinet ministers would not be to the Queen but to the Commonwealth as follows:

I, Kevin Michael Rudd, do swear that I will well and truly serve the Commonwealth of Australia, her land and her people, in the office of the Prime Minister, so help me God.³³³

He is able to do this because there is no specific requirement set down in the Constitution which only provides for Members of the Federal Parliament to take the Oath under Part 1-42:

Every senator and every member of the House of Representatives shall before taking his seat make and subscribe before the Governor-General, or some person authorised by him, an oath or affirmation of allegiance in the form set forth in the schedule to this Constitution which is: OATH. I, A.B., do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Her heirs and successors according to law. SO HELP ME GOD! AFFIRMATION. I, A.B., do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Her heirs and successors according to law.

Kevin Rudd and all Members of the Parliament have sworn and will swear this commitment whether in the form of an oath or an Affirmation.

Questions, however, have been raised on whether, in a Federation with sovereign States, a commitment simply to the Commonwealth and not to the Crown is sufficient? Some will say yes, and others no and, whilst it can be said to be splitting hairs, if Kevin Rudd had sworn allegiance to the Queen, there would be no hairs to split.

This is because a commitment to the Queen is not simply to Her Majesty as a person, but to the Queen as an Institution and the embodiment of everything that makes up the nation, including its people and their aspirations, its laws, its parliaments and its culture and heritage. No oath to the State can compare because the nation is far more than the state.

Under our system of Constitutional Monarchy, a commitment to the Queen is to an office which is totally above politics as the Monarch is representative of no political party, only of the people themselves. A commitment to a president, however, will be one to a politician requiring the support of a political party, particularly if the office is an elected one.

Indeed, it can be said that politicians want to replace the Queen with a republic, but whereas the Monarch and Governor-General have only the national interest in mind, a president could, and inevitably would, pursue a biased political agenda.

I would suppose that the Founding Fathers presumed that all members would be men of honour and that therefore the provision for the Constitutional Oath was sufficient and would be the basis of the Ministerial Oath.

The first time allegiance to the Queen (or King) was not taken was on 28 April 1993, when Michael Lavarch³³⁴ was sworn in as Attorney-General. He 'promised' to 'well and truly serve the Commonwealth of Australia'

It is therefore clear that the Prime Minister and his cabinet are committed to constitutional change and to make us into a republic.

They will move when they consider the time to be right and in the interim period, there will be constant sniping and misinformation about our system of government.

It is unfortunate that the coalition government, when in office, did not see fit to provide material to the general public on how our current system works, thus keeping generations of Australians in ignorance and, regrettably, open to republican biased media propaganda.

Over the next year - and more - we will hear much about plebiscites; the current method by which republicans propose, under the guise of community consultation, to influence the public into accepting constitutional change.

Confusing statements over the legality and validity of the use of a plebiscite in this instance will be advanced by republican and monarchist alike, mainly due to a lack of understanding and, in the case of some monarchists, a fear of the consequences.

Plebiscites, like referendums, are fairly alien to the Westminster system, where the procedure of governance rests with the constitutionally-elected parliaments and not through a continuous participation of the people, as is the case in Switzerland. Australia is an exception to the rule, as our Constitution can only be changed by a vote of the people at referendum.

In fact, when the Constitution Act of 1900 was passing through the British parliament, the inclusion of Section 128, the referendum process, was questioned as not being true to the spirit of Westminster. However, nearly fifty years earlier, in 1852, the then Prime Minister of Britain, W. G. Gladstone³³⁵, had said that the British character of the colonies did not depend on a close imitation of British institutions.

Obviously those republicans who falsely protest that Australia lacks an identity, fail to understand anything of Australia’s colonial history, nor the spirit of the writings of famous Australians of the 19th century. Banjo Paterson³³⁶ spoke vividly of the Australian character in his many works. In his ‘The Man from Snowy River³³⁷’ he waxed:

The narrow ways of English Folk
Are not for such as we
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
of staid conservancy;
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns

Plebiscites have their origin in early Roman times, before the establishment of the empire when Rome was ruled by two groups, the Patricians, or nobles, and the Plebeians, or commoners, whose Council was called the ‘Concilium Plebis’ or ‘plebiscita’.

The first plebiscite held in Australia was in 1916, during World War 1, on the subject of conscription³³⁸ for service overseas. Since this was a matter of amending the Defence Act, which only allowed for conscription within Australia, there was no need to amend the Constitution and thus no requirement for a formal referendum. All that was actually necessary was simply the passage of an amending Act through the House of Representatives and the Senate. However, the then Prime Minister, Billy Hughes⁶³⁶, lacked control of the upper house and intended using what was termed an ‘Advisory Referendum’, or plebiscite, win to force the Senate into accepting his legislation.

However, the vote was lost by around 2% (49% for and 51% against).

In 1917, Hughes had the numbers in the Senate but felt obliged to put the matter again by plebiscite to the people, but on this occasion the numbers were even higher against and it was thus that Australia had no conscription for overseas service in the Great War.³³⁸

There was thereafter only one more plebiscite put to the people, although, in 1974, the Whitlam government conducted a public opinion poll and, following the results, changed the National Anthem from ‘God Save the Queen’ to ‘Advance Australia Fair’.

The poll was not a plebiscite as it was voluntary with no formalities of voting. However, in 1977, at the same time as four referendum proposals, the Fraser Government conducted a formal plebiscite, termed a ‘National Song Poll’, which resulted in a clear majority for ‘Advance Australia Fair’, which was then adopted as the National Anthem³³⁹or song.

Although there have been plebiscites held by state and local governments, only the three polls mentioned herein have been held on a federal basis.

Whilst plebiscites are in themselves a legal method by which a government can test the mood of the electorate; since they are not governed by any provision in the Constitution, the process is open to abuse, as we fully expect will undoubtedly occur in a plebiscite on a republic.

A republican plebiscite will be held on a national, not state, basis (as are referendums), and may or may not be compulsory. It will therefore be overwhelmingly biased towards the voters of the major populated cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

We are fortunate in that we still have members in the parliament who are against a republic. However, many may turn away from us if, due to a manipulative and undetailed question answered without real thought and influenced by an intensive government-funded campaign, the plebiscite is won on a convincing basis.

The Monarchist position is that it would be wrong for the republican politicians to ignore the interests of the smaller states in this question and, instead of trying to massage the electorate into accepting a republic - or not - through a costly series of plebiscites, it is far preferable to go straight to a referendum where the detail of any change is put to the people.

THE MATTER OF A HEAD OF STATE:

When the people rejected the referendum on a republic in 1999, republicans immediately blamed the loss on the model that was presented, conveniently forgetting that it was, essentially, the very same model developed by the Australian Republican Movement and proposed by them at the 1998 Constitutional Convention as THE model to be put to the people.

There is an adage that if you tell enough lies enough of the time, people will believe them and this is the case with the lies and misinformation expounded by republicans to explain away their defeat at the hands of the people at the 1999 Referendum. The tragedy is that some monarchists also believe some, if not all, of these lies.

Certain monarchists are also to blame for creating the impression that the rejections of a republic in 1999 was due to the model that was presented. They lacked confidence in the people’s reliance upon the Crown preferring to believe the media misinformation about the unpopularity of the Queen at the time of ‘Annus Horribilis’³⁴⁰. They demanded that all monarchists talk only about the Constitution - and not about the Queen, the Crown or the Monarchy openly stating on television that these were ‘no-no words’.

It was, of course, this denial of the role of the Queen and the Crown that led to what seemed to be a rather desperate comment on the NO Committee’s how to vote placard: This Republic: Don’t risk it’ ‘if you want to vote for the President Vote No to the Politician's Republic⁷¹⁶, which in turn opened the doorway for republicans to question the veracity of the referendum.

I can recall a discourse with one self-professed monarchist who was telling people We want our Constitution but we don’t want the Queen and when I pointed out that we could not have a Constitutional Monarchy without the Monarch, he replied Oh, yes, we want our Constitution but we don’t want the Queen! Not surprisingly, this person is one of the main proponents of describing our system of Constitutional Monarchy as a ‘crowned republic’ with the Governor-General as supreme head of state.

The position of the Australian Monarchist League was always that we should educate people on the relevance of the Crown in our Constitution, and that our Constitution would have no basis without the Crown.

Our views were somewhat different from other monarchist organisations, because the base membership of the League was essentially different. Many of our members were, and still are, traditional, or ‘old’ Labor who vote for Labor in the State and voted for Howard, until 2007, federally. Traditional Labor is staunchly monarchist and it was they who delivered the outer suburban ‘red ribbon’ seats for the Monarchy. The forty two electorates (25 Labor and 17 Liberal) which voted ‘YES’ were from inner metropolitan areas. The one hundred and six electorates which voted ‘NO’ were mainly from outer suburban and rural areas. Out of 67 Labor seats, 42 voted ‘NO’. All National Party electorates also voted ‘NO’. Most leading monarchists are also Liberal activists who find it difficult to understand that many Labor voters are indeed diehard monarchists.

The republican jingle ‘We want an Australian as head of state’ is muttered like a mantra whenever a republican is asked a serious question. Most monarchists could not effectively respond to this because it lacks a serious basis. When republicans first broadcast the refrain An Australian as head of state, many monarchists became completely flummoxed. They wrote pages and pages on how the Governor-General was head of state thus even further confusing the issue in the minds both of monarchists and of the general public.

In October 1996 Sir David Smith³⁴², former Official Secretary to several Governors-General, had written in the Australian National Review:

Had the former Prime Minister (Keating) been returned on 2 March, he was going to have us voting on the question Do You Want an Australian as head of state? Even I would have answered yes , though I would have added: And we have had one for the past 31 years. It would have been yet another classic case of asking a loaded and dishonest question to produce the answer you want.

Whilst this is obviously on the premise that the Governor-General is head of state, such a question would legally require a simple ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ - anything else would be invalid - and this sort of politicking could well see monarchists vote unwittingly for the republican side!

The reality is that 'do you want an Australian as head of state?' is really not a proper question. It is rather a loaded one which does not allow a proper answer, let alone a ‘no’ from monarchists.

However, the issue of a head of state is actually a diversion. The whole point of a Westminster style constitution does not revolve around how a head of state may be elected or appointed but is to facilitate the smooth process of administration by a head of government, or prime minister, with checks and balances exercised on the administration to ensure that absolute power is kept from any recalcitrant government. Nevertheless, it does suit us to have republicans argue incessantly about the election or appointment of a president.

Monarchists have no need to fear the argument ‘An Australian as head of state’. Indeed, we should never be afraid to counter any republican argument as most know less about the subject than we do. As the famous Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu³⁴¹, wrote: If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.⁷⁴⁵Below is a synopsis of one argument I had with a leader of the Republican Movement:

Republican: Our purpose is to have an Australian head of state.

Me: But what do you actually mean by that? Republican: We want an Australian head of state.

Me: Yes, you said that, but what do you actually mean? Republican: We want an Australian head of state. .. and so on..

Always ask questions of republicans, such as:

What sections of the Constitution to you propose changing?

What are you going to do with the Australian Flag? (never accept that they will leave it as it is. It belies all common sense that if Australia becomes a republic, the Union Jack will remain).

What are you going to do with the Governors of the States?

What are you going to do with the Preamble? Will you remove God from the Preamble?

..and so on..

You will find that most republicans will continue to parrot We want an Australian as head of state, and the absurdity of their argument will become apparent.

Our Constitution makes no mention of a ‘head of state’, simply because it was not a general expression used in constitutional terms a hundred years ago. Furthermore, our system of governance is different in that we have a monarch, represented by the Governor-General, and a Prime Minister who is ‘Head of Government’. The eminent constitutional lawyer, Dr. David Mitchell⁸¹⁸, a Patron of the League, had commented on this issue:

I adhere to my view that head of state is a republican term historically unknown in Australian and British law. If it is to be introduced in the Australian scene, the functions need to be defined. Then, perhaps head of state could have a clear meaning. USA is already a republic and ultimate power is vested in the President (perhaps a simplification but not much). The term ‘head of state’ seems to fit uncomfortably in any but a totalitarian regime.⁸¹⁶

Provided we can get our message across to the people - and this, of course, is totally dependent on adequate funding - they will never approve what will be massive amendments to a Constitution that has served us so very well. Professor Greg Craven, had written in 2004:

As a matter of process, a multi-option plebiscite inevitably will produce a direct election model, precisely for the reason that such a process favours models with shallow surface appeal and multiple flaws. Equally inevitably, such a model would be doomed at referendum. The only plausible means by which an Australian republic may be pursued is through an elected constitutional convention.⁷⁴⁴

These difficulties are, of course, well known to those Republicans astute enough to appreciate the difficulties of winning a referendum. After all, only eight out of forty four have ever succeeded.

It is therefore, possible that moves towards creating a republic may be camouflaged in a campaign to restructure our federal system on the basis that it is not working and that there is an enormous duplication of activities.

The false premise will be promoted that if health and education is centralised in Canberra billions of dollars will be saved. Of course, to eliminate the States and create local government regions, it will be necessary to remove the Constitutional Monarchy as it is the Crown which binds the indissoluble union of our Federation together.

NATIONALISM, AS OPPOSED TO PATRIOTISM

The resurgence of interest, particularly amongst the young, in the spirit of Anzac and the Anzac Day Parades in the late 1980s and early 1990s occurred around the time of diminishing enthusiasm for the Monarchy. It was at this time that people began to move away from an acceptance of our British heritage and to question the order of things and particularly the relevance of having a Monarch who was also the Monarch of the United Kingdom.

Undoubtedly, the lies and misinformation following the Whitlam dismissal, propagated by politicians and journalists who should have known better, did fracture confidence in our Constitutional arrangements. The Labor governments of the time - and since - took full advantage of this uncertainty by blocking the availability of information on the actual role of the Queen and the Governor-General, thereby leaving a void, particularly amongst younger generations, which the anti-British and anti-monarchists took full advantage of to promote republican propaganda.

It is such a shame that the Howard Government did little to remedy this situation. All that we ever asked of Howard was to produce information for dissemination on the role of the Queen and the Governor-General in our constitutional arrangements, but at all times his government pleaded a lack of funds. However, the cost of what we were asking would have been a mere fraction of the expenses of just one of his visits to see President Bush in the USA?

It is therefore no coincidence that the emotional vacuum created by a lack of knowledge of our Constitutional Monarchy exacerbated by the media frenzy over the problems surrounding the private lives of the Royal Family, so aptly termed by Her Majesty as ‘Annus Horribilis’, was replaced by a nationalistic fervour of the Australian Flag and the glorification of the 8,700 Australian soldiers killed at Gallipoli³⁴³.

Nationalism, as opposed to patriotism, is a dangerous emotion. Whereas patriotism is based on a love of one’s country, nationalism can be influenced by emotive idealism. The prime example is the Second World War. The Allies were patriots fighting for their freedom and their country whereas the diehard Nazi’s fought for National Socialism with all the evil connotations that those attitudes comprised.

However, whatever one may think of this new Australian nationalism, we must apply it to our best advantage. This means using the flag at every opportunity and explaining that, if Australia does become a republic, the first thing to go will be the Union Jack⁷⁷⁷. One need only look at the way in which the Labor Party has designed its own flag to remove the Union Jack - actually a desecration of the Flag, but they have got away with it!

The incorporation of the colours of the United Kingdom into our flag, does not signify control or influence by Great Britain, but rather that our heritage, our laws, our Constitution and our language came from the lands symbolised by each of the Saint’s crosses incorporated into the Union Jack.

Whilst some may say, Australia is now a changed nation through immigration, it is nevertheless due to the Christian philosophical democracy represented by the Saint’s crosses, that people were able to come here from lands, both oppressed and otherwise, and enjoy unparalleled freedoms in this country. That is why so many hold the flag, with the Union Jack in its corner so dear.

Was it not Sir Winston Churchill, who wrote, The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward⁷⁸⁹?

THE QUEEN & THE ROYAL FAMILY

When Australia was discovered by Captain James Cook³⁹⁴ in 1770, George III was King. It was under his granddaughter, Queen Victoria, just 131 years later, that the Australian colonies federated into one sovereign and independent Nation. Today Elizabeth II, the great-great granddaughter of Victoria is our present Queen.

Due to the difficulties and time taken in travelling from one side of the world to the other, it was impossible for earlier monarchs to visit Australia, although Queen Victoria did send her son, Prince Alfred, the (then) Duke of Edinburgh³⁴⁴, to Australia in 1867.

It was a near tragedy, as the prince was shot by an Irish rebel at Collaroy, a northern beachside suburb of Sydney. (Fortunately, Prince Alfred survived the fanatical attach, and went on to become the ancestor of several of today’s crowned heads and crowned heads in exile of Europe, including those of Spain, Romania, Serbia and Russia.) Despite this upset, the two sons of Alfred’s eldest brother, Albert, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), visited Australia in 1881; and in 1901, the younger surviving son, the Duke of York and Cornwall, accompanied by his wife, represented his grandmother, Queen Victoria, at the opening of the first Federal Parliament in Melbourne. The Duke and Duchess were later to become King George V and Queen Mary.

The next Royal Visit was in 1920 by their son, Edward, Prince of Wales, later to become king as Edward VIII⁶¹⁹.

In 1927, Prince Edward’s brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York and his duchess, visited Australia, later to be King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother⁶²⁷) to open the (now old) Parliament House in Canberra.

1934 saw a visit by Prince Albert’s next younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester³⁴⁶with his wife. They both returned after the War, the Duke as Governor-General from 1946-7. The next visit was by Queen Elizabeth II with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh¹²⁸, in 1954. This was the first ever visit by a reigning monarch and since that time there have been numerous visits by Her Majesty and other members of the Royal Family.

The Queen’s father became King on the abdication of her uncle, King Edward VIII in 1936. Attitudes were different at that time and people were against his proposed marriage to a twice divorced woman. The Prime Minister of Australia, Joseph Lyons³⁴⁷, was amongst those consulted and he was the first to respond with a vehement objection to the marriage.

Her Majesty was born on the 21st of April 1926., with no thought at the time that she would ever become Queen, as her uncle, the Prince of Wales was expected to become King and provide an heir to throne, She was named Elizabeth, not after Queen Elizabeth 1, but after her mother. When her father became King as George VI, Princess Elizabeth was only 9 years old and from that time onwards she was trained for her future role as Queen.

Ever since the commencement of the Second World War, Princess Elizabeth was determined to play her part and not sit idly by in spite of the onerous responsibilities which had been added to her educational studies, and which would clearly have crushed any of her peers. And so on reaching her 18th birthday, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service³⁴⁸, training in driving and vehicle maintenance.

By simply claiming that by the time she was of age the end of the War was now in sight, the Princess could easily have avoided joining up . 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 1947, on her 21st birthday, during a tour of South Africa with her parents, Princess Elizabeth, outlined, in a broadcast³⁴⁹, the principles upon which she would reign with the extraordinary and inspiring vow:

1 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 Commonwealth to which we all belong. , But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do; I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God bless all of you who are willing to share it.

In July of that year, the Princess became engaged to her third cousin, Prince Philip of Greece¹²⁸, four months later. They married on the 20th November 1947.

On the 6th February 1952, King George VI¹²³died prematurely from cancer aged only 56, and his daughter, our present Queen, became the Monarch. Under the system of Constitutional Monarchy, there is no break between reigns. This means that immediately one monarch dies, his or her heir becomes monarch. There is a phrase which describes this as: ‘The King is dead. God Save The King’. Queen Elizabeth was crowned on the 2nd June 1953. At her Coronation, Her Majesty swore an oath to govern the peoples of Australia and her other realms: according to their respective laws and customs³⁵⁰. She had also said in a radio broadcast at the time: 1 want to show that the Crown is not merely an abstract symbol of our unity but a personal and living bond between you and me.

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 seven years of her reign, 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.

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 in 1936 and the awesome responsibility of not only the Throne but the worry of a World War fell upon her ailing father. This meant that, as heir presumptive, she had to forgo the sorts of things that other children and teenagers are wont to do to commence her training to become Queen.

During the many years of Her Majesty's reign, she has travelled more miles than all of Her Prime Minister's put together and has read more State documents and discussed more issues with Commonwealth and Foreign heads of State and Government than any elected official. Her average work-day is as long as that of any prime minister.

When at Buckingham Palace, she usually commences work on the red Dispatch boxes containing parliamentary and diplomatic papers immediately following breakfast. The boxes follow her wherever she travels, along with a contingent of secretaries who handle possibly the most voluminous amount of correspondence any person in the world receives.

It is a most amazing thing that a letter to the prime minister can take anything up to three months to be acknowledged, whereas a letter to the Queen will generally be replied to within a fortnight!

Added to this is a schedule of appointments which would daunt most people. Rarely a day will pass without some sort of official function, either in the Palace itself or somewhere in the country.

The position of 'Head of the Commonwealth' is one which the Queen greatly cherishes, but it also brings its own massive work-load. Her Majesty sees her position as a peacemaker and in this regard has achieved great success.

Visits to foreign and Commonwealth countries also consume a tremendous amount of time and are extremely onerous, particularly when one considers that both the Queen and the Duke are now in their eighties!

The Queen is the oldest person to occupy the Throne³⁵¹, having reigned, from the age of 26, for over fifty five years. She is tremendously popular and over the years that popularity has transposed into a virtual veneration of her - and not just by monarchists, but also by republicans!

This is possibly because Her Majesty represents ideals in a way politicians can never do. These ideals represent stability, continuity, security and the national good. Hundreds of charities and associations are helped through royal patronage. Thousands of the Queen’s subjects receive messages sent on the occasion of special birthdays and wedding anniversaries.

As Head of the Commonwealth³⁵², the Queen brings together 53 independent countries into one voluntary association³⁵². Her Majesty personally knows all of the Heads of State and Government.

As Sovereign, the Queen is the authority from which all official honours, decorations and medals emanate. The Queen is Sovereign of the Order of Australia³⁵³ together with all other Australian civic and military Orders.

When in Saskatoon³⁵⁴ in Canada in 1987, the Queen described our monarchical system of government as follows:

Parliamentary democracy has fostered tolerance and flexibility - a good balance between individual rights and collective responsibilities. And this is because the constitutional monarchy has always placed the emphasis on people in community - as it were, a national family with the Sovereign as its head. ³⁵⁵

I have talked many times about the diminished powers that the Queen can now exercise and how the pendulum of real authority has swung from the King to the Parliament.

Before the English civil wars of 1637 to 1651³⁵⁶, it was considered by royalists that the King could do no wrong because he governed by ‘divine right’. The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 did little to change this attitude and on the abdication of King James II³⁹ in 1688, the Parliament called upon William of Orange⁴⁰ and his wife Mary⁴¹, elder daughter of James, to become joint King and Queen of England on condition that they entered into a contract guaranteeing that the King’s ministers were thereafter to be chosen by Parliament.

In this manner, the power of rule was transferred from the King to the people to be exercised through the Parliament which they voted for. Change of government has always thereafter been by lawful means, not by rebellion or civil war. It can be said that nowadays the Monarch reigns and the Parliament rules. However, the continued transfer of power to the Parliament, on the basis that it speaks for the people has placed the Queen in a terrible position as she is now constricted by convention and the dictates of the Parliament. Her right to be consulted and to advise is clearly begrudged by modern day prime ministers and the convention that she must, in the end, always accept the advice (or rather demands) of her ministers is resented by those who may disagree with decisions of the Parliament.

Most, however, forget that it is due to the few powers remaining to the Queen that the Parliament continues to be elected by the people.

It is not up to the Queen to question what is constitutional and what is not and what is the law and what is not. That is why we have a formal Opposition and an upper house within the parliament, so that any matters of concern can be fully aired.

So many people, motivated by a misunderstanding of how the British Constitution has evolved, demand that the Queen obey Magna Carta, but as I have so often said before, the major purpose of that inspirational document was to limit the power of the King. In fact, if there had been no Magna Carta, King Charles I³⁷would not have had to summon the Parliament which eventually resulted in his own execution!

A great problem we face is that so many people, claiming to speak for the Monarchist cause, actually know very little about it, or about the role of the Queen in a modern democracy. Lawyers may know the legal wording of the Constitution, but that is mainly a document of Federation for, as with the United Kingdom, much of our constitutional practice is based on convention together with history and precedent.

Lawyers may argue about the exact meaning of wordage, but then that is what they are paid for. Most conveniently fail to accept that Parliament is supreme and can literally do as it wishes - other than change the Australian Constitution itself, for that prerogative was so wisely placed into the hands of the people by our Founding Fathers. A prerogative today’s politicians continue to bitterly resent for it has prevented them from making many changes to suit themselves.

Legislation enacted by a parliament can rarely be successfully challenged in the Courts, unless it is found to be unconstitutional, because, in a sense, the Parliament is above the law, as it is the creator of law.

The recent State funeral of Sir Edmund Hillary³⁵⁷ saw the sort of media incitement we are used to in Australia, but in New Zealand the people are not. Because it was the Governor-General and not a member of the Royal Family who was representing the Queen, the media made full use of the opportunity to disseminate misinformation and manipulate an outrage. One beneficial result was to see Prime Minister Clark³⁵⁸, an avowed republican, defending the Queen.

Comments from the public showed a clear misunderstanding of the system of Constitutional Monarchy. Most people were totally unaware that neither the Queen nor members of the Royal Family may visit a Realm, unless an invitation has been extended by the respective government. However, whilst I vigorously defended the Queen and the system, as I always do, this episode is a clear indication of the continued failure of the Palace to appreciate the need to counter republican sentiments in Her Majesty’s Realms, including the United Kingdom.

The days when people accepted a decision as a matter of course and without comment have long gone. They require a detailed explanation of why a decision was made. In the instance of Sir Edmund’s funeral, there was an official comment that the Queen at 81 could not just jump onto a plane and fly out to New Zealand. This, of course, led to comment that she (Her Majesty) doesn’t care about New Zealand and why could not Charles¹³³ attend? Those responsible have to think ahead and plan to counter any response that any statement might engender and appreciate that the way things are done in Britain are not always appreciated in our lands.

Even in the UK itself, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales ³⁵⁹ over a decade ago indicated that the people nowadays care nothing for convention or ‘the way things are done’.

They exist on a level where these things no longer matter. Their mood must be played to, just as the first Queen Elizabeth³⁶⁰ had to play to the mood of her people four hundred and fifty years ago. Sir Edmund was an icon in New Zealand. An attendance at his State funeral by a younger royal representing the Queen would have been a tremendous PR coup, instead of the reverse.

We, in Australia, could also have benefited enormously from a visit by the charismatic and popular Prince William³⁶¹. He is the future of our monarchy, and yet the Palace has so far denied a glimpse of that future to our people.

A senior member of the Royal Family has nicknamed me ‘the endangered species’. I respond: If I am an endangered species, Sir, then may I ask what are you? Having said this, I would emphasise that it is our system that is the most important, regardless of the errors in public relations that the advisers around Her Majesty may make, for it is our system which underwrites our freedom. In the end, we fight not for the Queen neither for Prince Charles as future King, but for our own democracy.

The constant harping that the Royal Family is German, is almost beyond belief. Since 1738, all British monarchs were born in the United Kingdom. In endnote 362 is a list of the Monarchs of Australia and their consorts from which one will note that of the Queen’s ancestors since George II (1683–1760)⁵⁸ all Monarchs were born in the United Kingdom and only four consorts were born outside the Kingdom. The last being the Queen Consort of Edward VII, Alexandra former princess of Denmark³⁶². Other than those of aboriginal parentage, few Australians can claim such an indigenous line of descent.

Until recent times, the marriages of Monarchs were traditionally arranged to suit the diplomatic exigencies of the Kingdom and, as after the Act of Settlement of 1701, they were required to marry Princesses from Protestant Royal Houses, they were essentially restricted to choosing brides from Germany or Scandinavia and had little personal choice in the matter.

Australia is comprised of many communities from all parts of the world³⁶³. There is no racial bar on any individual becoming prime minister or governor-general. Those who belligerently denigrate the ancestry of the Queen are similarly likely to denigrate the ancestry of aspiring politicians and civic leaders. They prove themselves to be racist and have no place in the Australia of today.

FOLLOWING HER MAJESTY’S EXAMPLE

During the many travels of the Queen, Her Majesty meets with many people who do not give her the courtesy of a short bow when introduced (unfortunately including some recent prime ministers of Australia), but Her Majesty does not pull them up, for to do so would appear pompously arrogant. Instead Her Majesty accepts that this is a sign of the times: she simply smiles and continues on. We must follow Her Majesty’s example and do likewise.

Any person speaking for the cause must at all times relate to the attitudes of people in current times. This means being careful not to appear to be ultra-passé and behind the times. Young people who can vote, which includes those born after 1990 (which is 50 years after most monarchist leaders) must be able to understand what we are saying.

Whilst incitement against the Queen was viewed as treason fifty years ago, it is today no longer the case. Both Parliament and the Courts now consider such acts to be irrelevant. Therefore, however much we may think it, we will not realistically achieve anything by using the word treason publicly, other than to make ourselves appear to be irrelevant.

Whatever one may consider to be right and proper, within the context of the 21^st century, it is so very important that we appear to be at all times credible, particularly to those who have been purposefully denied the opportunity of learning about our heritage.

Her Majesty is popular because she has accepted the changes that time engenders whether it is allowing the TV cameras to film the Coronation or having her Christmas Address on the internet.

A member of the League recently resigned because, as she said, she saw on a video the Queen opening a Hindu temple which, she believed, contravened the position of the Queen as Supreme Governor of the Church of England³⁶⁴.

It is true that the duty of the Queen, as Supreme Governor, is to protect the established Church of the United Kingdom, in the United Kingdom, but this does not mean that those of other denominations or faiths should be ignored, for a purpose of the establishment of the Church of England was to ensure freedom of worship for all. Furthermore, as Monarch, the Queen is Queen of all her subjects, whatever their race, their religion or their social or educational status³⁶⁵. The benefit of the Crown is that it is totally impartial and its protection extends to all. Many forget that the Queen’s grandfather, George V as Emperor of India, had more Muslim subjects than Christian, and yet many were fiercely loyal, without question, to The King.

The Queen’s father, George VI worked relentlessly to save the Jews in Europe from Nazi persecution, intervening on many occasions to offer a safe haven within the Commonwealth for these poor souls. Several of our members, now sadly deceased, were amongst those who were saved.

One lady proudly kept the letter her parents received from Buckingham Palace all those years ago. Regrettably, her sons have, along with so many others, forgotten how their families had benefited from the personal, and in this case ‘life-saving’ intervention of the Crown.

At the time of the referendum, I was challenged at a meeting with the accusation that the Queen had: danced with Kaffirs. The individual was referring to the Queen meeting with Nelson Mandela⁷⁴⁴ and accused Her Majesty of betraying her Coronation Oath. What this racist individual forgot is that these so called ‘Kaffirs’ were subjects of the Queen as are currently the people of Papua New Guinea, Jamaica and other nations. It is the bigotry of these, so called, Christians which is more dangerous to our cause than the most ardent or bitterest of republicans.

Having said this, no one has written more strongly in this country than I on the majesty, the heritage and the spiritual aspects of monarchy. I have written about the ancient practices of the sacrificial king being carried on through the anointing of the monarch to serve God and the people.

My views on the biblical nature of the coronations of the British monarchs for over a thousand years are well known, but in an environment where the majority of Australians today do not go to Church and large numbers of the young, and it would seem some of the new clergy, have never been taught anything about the fact that the Coronation is a biblical one based on that of Solomon³⁶⁶, or even that, as is claimed, the Queen is a descendant of David³⁶⁷, has little or no relevance to most people, particularly since many young voters would not even know who King David was. On the other hand, so many Anglican, Uniting, Baptist and charismatic (such as Hillsong³⁶⁸) clergy are republicans exerting a great influence over their congregations. Christian monarchists should accordingly make use of every opportunity to make these people see the error of their ways.

THE MAJESTY OF MONARCHY

The monarchy can be termed a ‘broad church’ in that it means many things to many people in a similar manner to the way in which people can relate to the same religion in so many different ways. Indeed, there was a time, not so long ago, when the very name of the Queen was sufficient to remind people of their duty to the country. The name engendered emotions of discipline and honour that are so very difficult now to describe. It would cause people to straighten their shoulders and stand to attention. However, as is the case with the now casual attitude towards manners, these sentiments, along with those, more gentle, days, rarely exist except as a memory in the minds of a few.

The monarchy itself is not the same, in outward appearance, as that when the Queen was crowned in 1952.

A lot of the pomp and circumstance has gone along with the rigid correctness of Her Majesty’s grandmother and mentor, Queen Mary³⁶⁹ and rarely now does the Queen wear a crown, or even a tiara with evening dress on many an occasion, preferring a business-like suit in line with more modern attitudes of current times.

Supporters of the Monarchy can probably be divided into several categories, including those who see it in an emotional manner, those who honour the Queen in a spiritual manner and those who look on the Queen and the Monarchy as a sort of security blanket. The Victorian Walter Bagehot¹²¹ expressed the view that:

About all things our Royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.⁷⁴⁶

This was the attitude right up until the time of the Coronation. Whilst the Queen was used to radio, television was, at the time, in its very early days and the original decision by the Queen and the Government was that it, the Coronation, should not be filmed. However, when this was greeted with a public outcry, the Queen then decided that it should be filmed overriding the advice of Prime Minister Churchill.¹⁵⁵

The Queen was also against the televising of her Christmas message until 1957, only agreeing on the basis that it would be a formal delivery, as though she was speaking on radio. We may, today, be critical of this attitude, but as well as the obvious fear of the unknown, there was an understandable reluctance to let daylight in on the ‘magic of monarchy’.

In 1968, an Australian, William (later Sir William, Heseltine³⁷⁰) became the Queen’s Press Secretary. He was a former Private Secretary to the Australian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies³⁰⁰, and later Acting Official Secretary to the Governor-General following which he then became Assistant Federal Director of the Liberal Party, and then took a position with the Melbourne Age³⁷¹. In 1965, he was appointed an Assistant Press Secretary to the Queen.

Heseltine immediately saw that the refusal to accommodate media technology was creating a huge gap between the monarchy and the people. He was able to persuade the Queen to allow a BBC television crew unprecedented access and freedom to film the Queen and other members of the royal family for a documentary called ‘The Royal Family’. This was the first ever time that the people saw that Her Majesty and her family were normal individuals, not demigods living on an elevated, Mount Olympian style, plane.

If this open-door policy had been restricted to the Queen, I am certain that she would have carried it off well with her propriety, her humour and her tremendous sense of being able to ‘do the right thing’. However, in granting access, there could then be no proper privacy for the Royal family, resulting in the growing and adult problems of her children becoming grist for the media mill.

The engagement and marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer was a huge PR campaign, but unfortunately one which hideously backfired

The magic of Monarchy now lives only in the hearts of the few, and sad to say not in the minds of the many.

LACK OF CIVICS EDUCATION

A Telstra Bigpond advertisement has a father telling his son that the Great Wall of China was built to keep out the rabbits. It is supposed to be funny, but I wonder how many of those who laugh actually know that the 6,400 km long wall was built between the 5th century BC and the 16th century AD to defend China’s northern borders predominantly against the Mongols?

The ignorance of the father, however, is symptomatic of the almost total lack of knowledge of our constitutional system of governance under the Crown. Even past High Court judges have shown, by their pathetic comments, an absence of understanding.

Incredible though it may seem, many politicians, lawyers and even judges fail to comprehend how our Constitution has evolved into a complete and sovereign independence.

Certain Knights of the Realms, honoured by the Queen in years past, have said that they are republicans because we want to be free, but were we not free enough to determine by our own selves whether or not to retain the Crown in 1999?

Elizabeth Kirkby³⁷² was born in the United Kingdom, She became famous in Australia as an actress in the TV serial ‘No. 96’. She later became a Democrat member of the NSW Upper House and had said some years ago in the NSW State Parliament that an Australian Republic is the only way to achieve self-government and the only way in which democratic principles could triumph. She totally disregarded the fact that we do have self-government and that the only impediment to the absolute triumph of democratic principles happens to be the machinations of politicians themselves!

In 1995, however, when the newly elected Labor State Government of Robert Carr introduced legislation to amend the oath of allegiance to remove allegiance to The Queen and to replace the wording ‘Crown’ with ‘State’ in all State functionaries, Ms Kirkby was one of the non-Labor members approached by the League who agreed that the legislation was premature and should only be introduced following a decision of the people and on indicating that she would vote against the bill. As it happened, it was not presented and was allowed to lapse.

Republicans talk about ‘cutting the apron strings with England’, but they forget or refuse to acknowledge that Australia, from 1901, was a free and sovereign nation, choosing to be under the Crown, that it has ever since been able to itself determine, by referendum, when it wants to cut the strings.

Even Sir Anthony Mason³⁷³ 9th Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, former Royal Australian Air Force officer and Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire gave as his reason for being a republican, not any deficiencies in our existing Constitution, but Britain’s Bodyline tactic. Bodyline, or the ‘fast leg’ theory was a perfectly legitimate manoeuvre commonly used and accepted in Britain, honed by the English cricket team for the 1932–33 Ashes tour of Australia to counter the brilliance of Donald - later Sir Don - Bradman³⁷⁴. The tactic was to aim the ball at the body of the opposing batsman in the hope of creating legside deflections that could be caught by one of several fielders.

Whilst Sir Anthony had every right to criticise the Bodyline tactic, he lacks total credibility when he uses this as an excuse for his betrayal of his oath of allegiance and of his position. It is difficult to accept that a former Chief Justice would totally fail to comprehend that our system of governance is now totally independent of Britain, the only links being the fact that we inherited our laws and our culture from the United Kingdom, and that we share our Monarch with fifteen other Realms.

PREPARING FOR A FUTURE CAMPAIGN:

As is the case with so many organisations, our membership is largely reliant upon the active support of people now in their eighties. Whilst we do have a lot of younger members, as with so many of the young of today, they rarely attend meetings and ‘slot’ us in to their busy schedule. Structured meetings seem to be anathema. However, most of our younger members ranging from high school students to university post graduates, are sincere and ardent in their own way.

Communication with the young is largely via the internet, or even more advanced technology, and if we are to make any impact on those younger generations who, by design of the socialist education unions with the acquiescence of government, know little about our system of government and particularly nothing about the role of the Queen and the Governor-General, we must use modern technology.

Surveys by the Department of Statistics reveal that, in 2006-07, 64% of Australian households had home internet access and 73% had access to a home computer and, overall, 69% of people aged 15 years or over accessed the Internet from any location.

In January 2008, the Australian Monarchist League, retained for the first time, professional expertise to create a new website for the purpose of reaching the young. The new website includes a downloadable civics education programme for supportive teachers to encourage their students to access. Monarchists within the educational system have a difficult time and we must make matters easier for them

In 1994, the League established The Foundation for Constitutional Research and Studies which conducted essay competitions amongst all junior and senior high schools. We did this at little cost and were immensely successful. Our plans, however, were emulated by another group paying huge salaries whereas ours was a totally voluntary exercise costing less than a thousand dollars a year, other than the donated prizes.

The 2006 national census results have the Australian population at just over 21 million on June 29, 2007 with a medium age of 37 years. Only just over 2 per cent of the population identified themselves as being of indigenous (aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander) origin. 86% of the population were Australian citizens of which 22% were born overseas. The top five countries of birth were Australia (70.9 per cent), England (4.3 per cent), New Zealand (2 per cent), China (1 per cent), Italy (1 per cent), Vietnam (0.8 per cent).

24.3% of the Australian resident population in the 2006 Census were aged 55 years and older and 33.4% of the Australian resident population were aged under 25 years.

The top five languages spoken at home (other than English) in the 2006 Census were Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Arabic, and Mandarin with almost a third of people living in Sydney alone speaking a non-English language at home.

Our website will be the window by which the Australian public will judge us. It is therefore, I believe, necessary that we work towards having major sections of the website in the main languages used in the nation. This may cause resentment amongst those who are hostile to multiculturism, but our purpose is to obtain votes for retention of our Constitution and not to be critical however much we may personally disagree with what is.

It is the basics of our system of Government that must be taught to all those generations who, knowing nothing about our Constitution, would be more readily included to accept the lies and misinformation they have been told.

Any constitution is complicated, for it often is what it does not say rather than what is written down. The basic system under which we in Australia are governed is, in reality, a fairly simple one to understand, but is made complicated only by the misinformation of republicans and of some monarchists exacerbated by a long-term absence of any realistic civics education. In 1867, Walter Bagehot wrote:

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.⁷⁴⁶

There are many treatise and booklets written on the republic debate providing lengthy legal arguments, most of which are incomprehensible to the average person. Goodness knows how many trees have been sacrificed to accommodate all the writings on the proposals for constitutional change. A quick count shows that I alone have written over a million words, yet the benefits of our Constitution can be simply defined in just six words – ‘it is a system that works’.

What is needed is not convoluted legal argument, but rational uncomplicated comment put forward in a simple easy to understand manner.

Our arguments must therefore be based on logic rather than emotion, . Many people automatically accept the concept of the Monarchy as a sort of subliminal protection which they cannot put into words. It therefore makes sense that our watchwords should be around the words: Safety, Stability, Security.

In the 1999 Referendum, it became politically clever to refer to our democracy as a ‘Crowned Republic’. After much reflection, it must be said that it seems to me that the concept of a ‘Crowned Republic’ is flawed, however politically correct it may appear to be: particularly when it means that the Governor-General is elevated to the supreme position of sole head of state and properly honouring the Queen of Australia becomes subject to not offending republicans.

His Royal Highness Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia³⁷⁵ has recently used the phrase ‘Crowned Democracy’, which I think much better reflects our constitutional arrangements and is one which we should use rather than that of a republic, crowned or otherwise.

When the campaign proper commences, the eye of a hostile media will be upon us. We should never forget that we do not have a single news media organ in our favour. Whilst we do have some journalists and radio announcers who are supportive, their producers, editors and owners are, mostly, hostile.

It is therefore most important that we should be on our best behaviour and do not do anything which can be used to make us appear to be ridiculous buffoons. There are monarchists who publicly mourn the passing of Evelyn Waugh’s^376, Brideshead Revisited³⁷⁷ kind of world and dream of the titles of days past, but Waugh wrote fiction and the days past – are past, whereas our Australian Constitution is and will always be for the present and the future.

To talk of titles is to talk about something which will never happen, at least under current circumstances, and which can only give the impression of hankering after personal recognition, whereas our efforts should be only for the cause, not for personal aggrandisement. Egos must have no place in our campaign. When gathered in small groups, it is not really appropriate to sing ‘God Save the Queen’, particularly without music. When sung off-key it can be a terrible and often embarrassing rendering indeed! Singing the Royal Anthem should only be done effectively in an organised fashion, as the League does do on major occasions.

I was brought up on ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Men of Harlech’ etc., but if we sing these in public it can be made to appear that we are so fanatically pro-British and that we must be anti-Australian. How ridiculous! It is such a great shame that we have to take any notice of the pro-republican media, but the fact of the matter is that they have the power to portray us as Colonel Blimps or worse, hankering after the days of British Imperialism. We, ourselves, know that this is not correct, but unfortunately the public at large does not. The 1999 Referendum brought forward a number of individuals who so loved the limelight that they self-interestedly misused their positions to promote themselves as celebrities.

It is vitally important that those who are honoured to be spokespersons for the cause be careful about making public comments on matters not relating to the Constitution or the Crown. I, personally, have followed this restriction for fifteen years or more and am careful to ensure that the Australian Monarchist League is not aligned to any political or controversial views whatsoever, for we, as an organisation, can have no opinion other than those related to our cause To express contentious or critical personal views could well lose much needed support from those of alternative beliefs.

It is thus that I belong to no political party although I have, however, urged support in the past for the Coalition Government, but only because the Labor Party has a republican policy whereas the Coalition did not.

This did not, however, stop me from criticising the previous Prime Minister, John Howard, when he did not properly recognise the position of the Governor-General and the Government when it did not properly honour the Queen. However, the monarchists within the Coalition are now our first line of defence and we must nurture and support them whenever we can.

In days past, politicians were taken from the community, but now so many are bred into the job. I suppose a young person, totally dependent on a parliamentary wage is easier to control by the party machine than someone who has been successful in the outside world.

Whilst this sort of politician may suit the party, it leads to a mediocre parliament. The great majority of mankind seem today to be satisfied with appearances, and are often more influenced by political 'spin' and media 'hype' than by actual reality. This could well explain the popularity of the Labor Government with Kevin Rudd being the mild looking face of a Front Bench that comprises a greater percentage of Marxists than has any previous Labor government in the entire history of this country.

From before the 2007 Federal Election, I have been warning that we must be prepared to face another campaign for a republic. As Miguel De Cervantes³⁷⁸ had said: To be prepared is half the victory. However, many of our members criticise me for my disturbing their peace of mind. Rudd is the same as Whitlam, but without the filibustering. The Republican Movement is strangely quiet and it is obvious that they have been told not to make a fuss, as their time will come.

The seemingly tranquil Rudd announced that his first act in Parliament would be to say ‘sorry’ to the indigenous population. He manoeuvred his plans so that the Opposition was caught on the hop. Be assured, the republicans, in association with the Government, are preparing their plans for a plebiscite campaign and they will likewise spring it on us - and if we are not prepared we will lose!

In the 1930’s, Churchill's persistent warnings went unheeded as the Nazis took control and Germany re-armed. Churchill was vilified as a ‘warmonger’ and ostracized by all parties, until he was proven right - by which time it was almost too late. Now, nearly eighty years later, let this be a lesson to us. We must be prepared to face what is to come.

THE CONTINUING NEED FOR FUNDING

The Attorney-General at the time of the 1999 referendum was the Hon Daryl Williams MP³⁷⁹. The Attorney had recommended that public funding be based on the elected representation at the Constitutional Convention, but the Prime Minister, John Howard, arbitrarily decided otherwise and allocated the entirety of funding to an organisation in which he was deeply involved and which was led by a friend from his university days.

Furthermore, even though we were the third largest elected group at the Convention, our candidates, including (the now late) Brigadier Alf Garland³⁸⁰, former National President of the RSL, Kenneth Gifford QC⁸¹⁹ and Dr. David Mitchell⁸¹⁸, were specifically excluded from the Government ‘NO’ Committee due to, as we were told, our implacable views on the role of the Crown in our Constitution and our unwavering support of the Queen together with our refusal to have any truck with republicans.

Without any share of this public funding, we went into debt and printed enormous quantities of material which were widely disseminated throughout the country. We also produced TV commercials for regional broadcasts. Unfortunately, the nation-wide polling booth manning programme we established was sabotaged, resulting in many polling stations being unmanned on referendum day.

In spite of these difficulties and the crippling personal cost to a very few, it was heartening to receive the appreciation of so many throughout Australia for the support and material we provided during the referendum campaign.

The reprehensible manner in which the Government totally ignored our contribution before, during and after the referendum was more than made up for by the sincere gratitude of those on the frontline.

Since the referendum, we have sought to do much, but are hampered only by a lack of funds. However, we have reason to be proud in our achievements. Over past years we have achieved much success, amongst which we have:

Successfully lobbied for the continuation of the Queen’s Birthday Stamp. Our contribution has been formally acknowledged by Australia Post and in 2006, I was invited to launch that year’s Queen’s Birthday Stamp.
Without support from any other organisation, took the Australian Electoral Commission to the Federal Court to seek redress against guidelines to scrutineers which allowed such marks as a tick to be accepted as a 'YES' whilst rejecting a cross as informal.
When the Keating Government ordered Commonwealth Government Bookshops to stop selling prints of the Queen, we reproduced and distributed, at our own cost, and distributed Sir William Dargie’s ²⁶⁸ renowned portrait of Her Majesty in the Australian Wattle Dress³⁹³ and thereafter successfully lobbied the Government to freely distribute portraits of Her Majesty through Government bookshops. This facility later ceased under the Howard government. We have since provided several thousand prints to youth and community organisations at our own cost.
When many churches dropped prayers for the Queen, we led a nation-wide protest and have since continued to lobby churches to include prayers for Her Majesty and members of the Royal Family on special occasions.
We have constantly organised formal protests when State Governments have sought to remove allegiance to the Queen. Our only successful occasion was to defeat the Carr Government’s proposals in 1996 to remove the Queen from the State Oath of Allegiance and to abolish the name of the Crown from State functionaries.
In 1996, to counter the moves of Premier Carr to convert Government House from a vice-regal residence to function centre , the Australian Monarchist League established the ‘Friends of Government House’ and conducted an intensive campaign, including arranging and paying for buses to transport people from country areas to attend a public protest outside Parliament House.
We later met with Governor Samuels and established a mutual rapport which, although insufficient to overturn the Carr decision regarding Government House, did see the Governor performing his duties on a full-time basis instead of the casual arrangement which was originally determined by the Premier.
We have consistently organised successful campaigns against corporate attempts to vilify the Queen in their advertising, such as the Toyota Lexus v Landrover advertisement: 'don’t worry Your Majesty you're not the only British Export to have had its day'; the German multinational company Wella’s advertisement showing the Queen wearing an orange wig and many other similar attempts to denigrate Her Majesty’s image for commercial and other purposes.
When the Reserve Bank replaced the Queen’s image on the $5 note with that of Sir Henry Parkes, our protest was heeded and the Queen’s image was restored.
Whilst initially successful in opposing republican plans to remove allegiance to the Queen for scouting groups, the republicans were later able to persuade the Council of the Scouting Association to agree to a pledge either to the Queen or to Australia, at the discretion of the person involved.
Unfortunately our campaign for the restoration of Oaths of Allegiance to the Queen in Citizenship and other ceremonies was rejected by the Howard government.
The first visit of the Queen after the referendum was in 2000 and we were called upon to work closely with government protocol divisions to ensure that the visit was a success. A moving tribute was to have churches and universities ringing peals of bells as the Queen travelled through each City on the Royal Tour.
We also disseminated information to hundreds of organisations and schools to greet Her Majesty on subsequent visits. Similarly with the 2004 visit of The Prince of Wales, we played our part.
In 2003 Philip Benwell’s book ‘In Defence of Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy’ was published in a hard cover by a University Press in the United States of America. It can be found in many university libraries throughout the World. His next book is in the process of being edited for publication in late 2008. Benwell has written numerous papers on the Crown and the Constitution with relevance to Australia as well as to the United Kingdom. His advice and counsel is often sought by people in the UK, including Members of the British Parliament.
In 2000 and again in 2005, Members of the British Parliament sought to amend the Act of Settlement. Philip Benwell conducted an extensive campaign in the United Kingdom pointing out that the British Parliament was fettered by the Statute of Westminster from changing the Succession or the Royal Style and Titles except with the approval of the other fifteen Commonwealth Realms following which the two Bills were withdrawn.
In response to numerous complaints regarding the channelling of Australians through the ‘Others’ Gate at Heathrow and other airports, Philip Benwell arranged for a Ten Minute Rule Bill to be tabled in the House of Commons proposing that citizens from other countries that recognise the Queen as their Sovereign should be given their own channel or gate at Britain's principal airports. The matter received support from the Parliamentary Transport Committee.
In 2002 the League produced, at its own cost, the only Golden Jubilee commemorative products manufactured in Australia.
n 2003, immediately the Commonwealth Bank named its new marketing initiative as the ‘Republic Customer Relationship Marketing System’ or the ‘Republic CRM’, we mobilised a protest to the Bank which then renamed its review.
We have continued to organise Church services to commemorate special events in the life of the Queen, the last being for the Diamond Wedding Anniversary of Her Majesty and The Duke of Edinburgh.
In November 2006, Philip Benwell launched ‘The Association of the Commonwealth Realms’ at a meeting in the House of Lords. The Association brings together Subjects of the Queen from all Realms for the purpose of defending the Crown under which our constitutions are established.
For some years, Philip Benwell has spoken and written about concerns regarding the enforced European Union citizenship of the Queen. The Treaty of Lisbon⁵⁷⁶, which will create an executive presidency which may well assume supremacy over Her Majesty, is now being debated in the British Parliament. He has drafted an amendment which will be proposed in the House of Lords to incorporate a stipulation that this Treaty, together with all other European Treaties will not affect the status of the Queen’s in Her Majesty’s Realms other than the United Kingdom.

From the time of the last election in November, 2007, republicans have been pushing for a republic and we have had to respond continuously on radio and in the press, as well as preparing our own campaign so that we are ready to defend our institutions of democracy. Unfortunately we suffer from the sort of apathy that has permeated so many other voluntary organisations and whereas there are so many calls for action both here and in the United Kingdom, as The Monarchy faces its own problems over there, I personally, can only do so much.

All the comments contained in this short paper, can be capsulated into just a few words: ‘it is a system that works’. However, the century-long success of our Constitution has also induced a complacent belief that there is no need to bother to protect it meaning that only those few who actively care about the future democracy of this country are left to educate and defend our system of Constitutional Monarchy.

We do what we can and have many more plans, but we can only implement those few that we can afford. As we face potential moves towards a programme of plebiscites and a referendum, with the lack of positive funding our very survival is at risk. The League has incorporated as a non-profit association and has established a fund-raising Trust administered by senior bankers and businessmen under a Trust Deed. However, whereas republicans have millions at their disposal, the Australian Monarchist League still has to scrape around to pay even our postage and printing bills and unless we soon receive an influx of funds, our very survival – and consequently that of our democracy under the Crown - is at risk.

In closing, I quote, as I so often do, from the words of Winston Churchill. His words are so very relevant to our own situation because whilst his opponent was the armed might of the Nazi, his purpose was to save the democracy of the free world. Similarly ours is to save the democracy of Australia.

Victory at all costs,
victory in spite of all terror,
victory however long and hard the road may be;
for without victory there is no survival . ⁷⁴⁷

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Philip Benwell published this page in A very Public Affair 2025-06-21 13:58:40 +1000

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