Australians for Constitutional Monarchy

This is a report in the section on the Diamond Jubilee on the ACM site.

New South Wales  MP David Elliott has taken action to allow constituents to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.  

A newspaper circulating in Mr Elliott's electorate of Baulkham Hills, the Hills Shire Times of 10 January, reported that if you wished  to pay tribute to the Queen on her 60 years on the throne, you could until Australia Day sign a card to her at Mr Elliott's office.  After Australia Day Mr Elliott would send the card to Buckingham Palace.  There was a similar report in another newspaper circulating in the electorate, the Hills News of 17 January.

Mr Elliott told the Hills Shire times "The Queen embodies all the best characteristics of our Commonwealth, devotion to country, devotion to the community and unity of all peoples under one banner.”

As the Diamond Jubilee celebrations will continue throughout the year, the British celebrations being in June around the Queen's Birthday, other Australian members of Parliament may wish to launch similar initiatives to Mr Elliott. 

...David Elliott, monarchist...

Mr Elliott rose to the rank of captain in the Australian Army and was awarded the Australian service medal for his service in the peacekeeping force in Bougainville Papua New Guinea.  He was appointed ACM's National Campaign Director for the referendum campaign in 1999, reporting to me through the Executive Director Mrs Kerry Jones .  

For that he organised an hierarchical structure which reached into every federal electorate through ACM's State and Territory divisions.  At the time of the referendum, there were 55,000 rank-and-file supporters working for the no case.  In addition he was the executive to what was the ACM national “high command” which during the heat of the campaign, met every morning.

I remember being told by a person very high in the Yes case how admirable, effective and disciplined the No case was.  There were in fact two divisions of the No case. 

In this interview Jai Martinkovits, explains as a young Australian why Australia Day is important. He points out that above all, it is the birthday of the nation. It is therefore a day on which Australians should be united and not divided.

Professor Flint agrees and laments the fact that at times the official Australia Day Councils (not the community Australia Day Council in Victoria) seem too often to take action which is divisive.

In 2011 the official speaker in NSW was an Englishman, Sir Michael Parkinson. He demanded Australia do what the Australian people had rejected by a landslide in 1999 - become a republic. This certainly made the headlines and divided the country.

This year there has been a release about the excellent Australia Day speech by Dr.Charles Teo. The advance reports of the speech have been about one thing in his speech - racism in Australia. It was certainly not the major theme of his speech.

Dr Teo understandably asked that Australians wait to hear his full speech. So why was one aspect promoted and in retrospect exaggerated ? Australia Day is not the day for a divisive debate, but for unity.

Last year many people were asking whether we are approaching the time when it will be a desirable or even an essential requirement for consideration as  an Australian of the Year that a candidate be committed to a politicians' republic and to flag change.

We sincerely  hope that this is not so. 

The widespread reports that gifts presented by The Queen on her recent visit were  paid for by the Australian government has been challenged by Buckingham Palace, according to a report in the London Daily Telegraph (24/1) by Jonathan Pearlman in Sydney.

  

"The Royal Household pays for gifts given by The Queen – not Australian taxpayers," a Palace spokesperson said.

Apparently the Prime Minister's office  had not checked with the Palace before releasing the story. Even after the correction, the office continued to insist that the cost was borne by the Australian taxpayers. Then Jonathon Pearlman was able to report that the Prime Minister’s office had backed down (“Julia Gillard backs down in Queen gift row”)

So why did the Prime Minister’s office say the Palace had  charged  Australian taxpayers  when this was not true? Why did the Prime Minister’s office tell a reporter this was so? 

Whatever the situation, we should not forget that The Queen has not been  paid for her magnificent services. She receives no superannuation or golden handshake. The same applies to members of the Royal Family

The republican movement’s leaders rushed in to try to use this as a basis for fundamental constitutional change and no doubt to shred our flag. Without bothering to check the facts they went to the media across the nation accusing the Palace of all sorts of things, including a lack of transparency.

Readers of this column will be aware of how the republican movement has been careless with the truth.  Once again, they have egg on their faces.

The truly extraordinary thing is that the movement has for 13 years declined to indicate what changes it is proposing. The whole affair seems to have been concocted in a desperate attempt to negative the great success that the royal tour was at somehow diminish the great esteem in which The Queen is held by most Australians.

So was all this just another republican stunt timed for Australia Day?

Drivers who fly Australian flags on their cars to celebrate Australia Day are "more racist" than people who do not, concludes Univeristy of Western sociologist and anthropologist Professor Farida Fozdar. These conclusions were reported by Todd Cardy in PerthNow (24/1).

 This rather curious exercise involved Professor Fozdar and a team of assistants surveying 513 people at the Australia Day fireworks on Perth's Swan River foreshore last year to find out whether there was a link between flag flying and racist attitudes. 

There are three points to make about this survey.  

First it is not, nor does it claim to be, a scientific assessment.  It should not be treated as an accurate assessment of the opinion of those who fly flags from their cars and those who don't .

Second, rather than racism, this survey is more likely to be an indication of the difference between those who are extroverts and those who are not.  People who fly the national flag from their car are more likely to be willing to declare their opinion on important issues.  The act of flying the flag is a public declaration of patriotism.  People who do not should not be assumed to be unpatriotic, there are more likely to be less extroverted.  They will be less inclined to declare their opinions to perfect strangers, and perhaps be tempted to give an opinion which they think will please the interviewer.

Third, an affirmative answer to most if not all of the questions should not be interpreted as necessarily racist.  For example, many people believe that the nation's most important values are in danger.  To believe this is not to necessarily racist.  It is a view held by a number of people of non-Anglo-Saxon origin. 

....the survey....

In the 13th year after the referendum, the republican movement are still unable to reveal what form of republic  and what new flag they want.

 Instead, they spend a lot of time denying some well documented events.  For example, that the Irish Republican Army's Gerry Adams came to Australia and campaigned for the Yes case in 1999 or that Malcolm Turnbull tried to have the words “president” and “republic” removed from the referendum question.

Recently they claimed that a leading opinion pollster had been paid by ACM - the clear implication being that we got the result we wanted.  They should be taking legal advice before they make such a claim.

They're even claiming we buy our Facebook fans. Well, we didn't buy the over 55,000 supporters who worked in the referendum or the Australian people who delivered a landslide No vote in 1999.

[The Desperate Man - Gustave Courbet 1844-45 ]

Now, as their Australia Day stunt,  they are once again  trying to drag something out of the fact that nominal, small courtesy gifts or mementos to those who helped in the last Royal Visit are funded from the usual budgetary allocation. 

Well, of course they are. They have tried to make something out of this in the past.
 
When the Governor-General or  the Prime Minister presents such gifts they are of course funded similarly.  This would apply to the president if we were a republic. When the President  of France goes to, say, Dieppe and offers some token gift to the mayor, obviously this is funded similarly.


..not a "foreign" Queen...



The republicans are telling the media these are gifts from a "foreign Queen".   This is like the blatant untruths repeated over and over that John Howard rigged the Convention or fixed the referendum question.

The republicans full well know that The Queen is Queen of Australia. According to the High Court  this is a position separate and independent from The Queen of Canada, The Queen of New Zealand or indeed The Queen of United Kingdom.

They should be delighted that for this she is not paid and receives no superannuation.  Nor does any member of the Royal family when they generously perform services for Australia or the Commonwealth.

 The republican movement know this but they are clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to find some reason - some minuscule and silly reason - to justify overthrowing a fundamental pillar of our constitutional system and as they indicated in the nineties support for shredding our flag. 

All without telling the Australian people precisely what they want. 

Tha's the Australia Day stunt. Be ready for the ANZAC Day stunt, then The Queen's Birthday stunt.

The 47th anniversary of the great war time leader's passing  will be remembered on 24 January.

The 323 page report on Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution by an expert panel, released on 19 January 2012, admits that the proposal is unlikely to be put the people in the near future.

The panel counsels against their take-it-or-leave- it single question referendum being put to the people in a referendum unless there is bipartisan support and is supported by the majority state governments.  That may not be sufficient to ensure success. 



The problem is that the panel has overplayed its hand. The package contains elements which will be seen as unacceptable and going beyond their brief.  It is not be because most people wish anything but the best for aboriginal people. 

It is more likely to be a suspicion that these provisions will hand over substantial and increasing legislative and executive power to the courts which are not accountable directly to the people in the way that the Parliament is, if only at elections. It will  be seen to disturb the separation of powers where the courts exercise essentially judicial and not legislative powers.

The most extraordinary provision is the proposal general anti-discrimination clause. This goes beyond anything which relates to aboriginal recognition. Only the expert panel can explain why it went so far beyond its brief.

A more detailed comment with the proposed provisions, including the constitutional clauses recommennded to be removed, as well as a note on the following telephone poll - follows.  Not that the telephone poll is not and does not purport to be an opinion poll. 
 
 

The 2011 Royal Visit to Australia of Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh was their 16th homecoming. On this occasion, the visit ended with a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Perth on 2002 and 29 October. The royal couple stayed in Canberra and visited Brisbane and Melbourne and Perth in scenes which recall the reception they received on their first visit in 1954.

The final event was a charity barbecue on the shores of the Swan River which was attended by over 120,000 people who came to say farewell to the Queen and the Duke.

The Royal visit was an enormous success, and was testimony to the strong affection Australians have for their Queen and her consort.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the event live across the nation. This was presented by Stephanie Brantz who in the this third segment talks with the BBC's Nicholas Witchell on the role and life of The Queen . 

Lloyd Waddy, a former federal judge, led the campaign to return the Governor to Government House after the 1996 expulsion of the Governors from their purpose-built home by the then Premier, Bob Carr. In this interview with his successor as National Convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, David Flint, he recalls the the unintended consequences of the expulsion. These demonstrate that Premier Carr had not thought through the results of the expulsion.

The interview is divided into five parts:

Part 1: The Expulsion
Part 2: Bob Carr's Reasons
Part 3: Unintended Consequences
Part 4: The Demonstration
Part 5: Success.

 Who wanted the words  ‘president ‘ and ‘republic’ taken out of the referendum question so the people would not notice them?  It was the republican movement's leaders, Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Barns.

Can you imagine what  their polling and focus groups been telling them? 

Now some leading republicans*  are saying ACM invented this story. 
  
This is typical of their  knee-jerk reaction these days.

The standard response in recent times has been to say that ACM is lying.  The latests example is about the large number of visitors to our sites and the number of fans or ”likes” following our Facebook.

So, without any evidence whatoever, they say we are going to a US site which they say sells them. We have never before heard of it. The offical ARM Facebook page repeats this.
 
More seriously, they have libelled some leading opinion pollsters, impugning their integrity.   They say we paid them for their polling results on the monarchy.

[ Truth by Olin Levi Warner - Library of Congress ]

...crescendo...



This behaviour reached a crescendo with their attack when we recalled the well established fact that the Irish Republican Army’s leader Gerry Adams came to Australia and campaigned in the republican referendum.

We had in 1999 unsuccessfully called on the ARM to distance itself from such support, particularly given the murder of two young Australians by the IRA in the Netherlands.

The ARM’s then media chief and deputy president David Donovan sent this email to me:

"When did Gerry Adams come to Australia in 1999 and when did he ask Australians to vote yes to the referendum? No one seems to be able to find any record of either event.

Are you quite mad, a habitual liar or just an idiot? "

This was despite the fact that while in Australia campaigning for the  republican Yes case, Adams had delivered a lecture at the University of New South Wales, attended a champagne reception offered by a republican Lord Mayor, was interviewed by the ABC and that his comments were reported in the Sun Herald and other newspapers.

The Australian newspaper then confirmed that they had had no difficulty at all in ascertaining that Gerry Adams was in fact in Australia in 1999.

Apparently Mr Donovan had relied on the research of the New Zealand republican leader, Mr  Lewis Holden.



...ARM official request that  the words ‘president’ and ‘republic’ be removed from the referendum question....




The NZ republican leader, Mr Holden, then claimed that ACM was lying when we recalled that  Malcolm Turnbull had wanted to remove two words from the 1999 referendum question.

The words were “president” and “republic”.   Mr. Holden says this could not have happened. Why? Because Malcolm Turnbull does not mention it in his book about the campaign.  If we were writing vaudeville, we could not have anything better than this.

 
 
...Hansard – and a video record...

A glance at the Hansard report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on 5 July 1999 shows that we are correct.

Now, here’s the coup de grâce. We have two videos which support this. 

In the first you can  hear Mr. Turnbull proposing an amended question in which the words “president” and “republic” are deleted.

 


In the second he is challenged about this by  leading republican and now Attorney General, Nicola Roxon.

...Why have you dropped those words asks republican Nicola Roxon...