Why can’t republicans tell us the truth?

2 December, 2019

In July 2017, Malcolm Turnbull, when Prime Minister and obviously playing to a wider audience stated “Even republicans like myself can be, and in my case are, very strong Elizabethans,” he paid tribute to the Queen as having embodied “selfless public service, dignity, wisdom and leadership for longer and more magnificently than anyone alive today”. AAP 12/7/17)

However, it didn’t take him long to change his tune. On this Tuesday, the 26th November, when speaking to a republican dinner in Canberra this so-called Elizabethan said, “it is an “absurdity” and “crazy” that the Queen is the nation’s head of state when she is “not a citizen of Australia”. (Australian 27/11/19) As a former prime minister he knows, or should know, that the Queen is above citizenship and that, as Queen of Australia, passports are issued in her name through her representative, the Governor-General.

CONT:

Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, speaking to an adoring audience of Labor, Green, Liberals and others, lived up to his nickname when he said that the controversy involving Prince Andrew and the deep divisions over Brexit was a reminder that Australia was “tethered to events in another country, beyond its control.” (Guardian 27/1/19)

And this is the man who seeks to be the alternative Prime Minister. A man who knows full well that the Duke of York has nothing constitutionally to do with this country and neither does Brexit. Furthermore, he is fully aware that Australia is not ‘tethered’ to the United Kingdom and that we are a free and independent nation choosing ourselves to be under the Crown.

All republicans seem to do is to condemn our current system of governance and raise spurious issues as reasons for becoming a republic. Their plan is not to tell us what sort of a republic we are to have before wanting us to vote for a republic nor have they ever told us how their republic would be able to duplicate the current checks and balances and all the safeguards Australians currently enjoy under the Crown.

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