Australians for Constitutional Monarchy

Having been raised in Irish politics, wrote Philip O'Carroll from , Fitzroy North, Victoria in a letter to The Australian (1/2), I was never indoctrinated to love the English.



 But knowing Australia was going to be claimed by some European power, I say we are lucky it was the British. We speak English, and from England inherited its superior legal system and centuries-deep democratic values.

The Union Jack says more about our way of life than anything else you could put in a corner of a flag.
 
I say let's proudly keep it.

A republican call has been made in an Australia Day piece in The Australian both for a new flag and a new anthem (“Let's use our national day to set national goals and make our country stronger,” 28/1).

It is proposed these be unveiled with the inauguration of a (politicians’) republic.

Pending the realisation of some vague undefined politicians’ republic  a “distant prospect” Australia Day should be “reshaped”.

 The proposer is Troy Bramston, a former adviser and speechwriter to Kevin Rudd , a former President of NSW Young Labor and Secretary and Vice President of the NSW Fabian Society. A frequent commentator he is a prominent republican.

He worked for years with the Australia Day Council and claims the Australia Day address was his idea, which explains a lot.

Was it his idea to invite and English knight, Sir Michael Parkinson, to tell us to become a republic?




...purge symbols...

He wants a purge of all of our national symbols, and cringes every time he sees the Australian Flag. 

He very carefully does not repeat the usual republican untruth that Australians did not fight under the National Flag during the world wars.

He says it was not the ”sole” flag, using the artifice that the blue ensign was not “official “until legislation in 1953.

This is not so. It was approved under the Royal Prerogative in 1903. This was announced in Commonwealth of Australia Gazette No 8 of 1903 which states that King Edward VII approved the essential designs for the flag of Australia, known as the Commonwealth blue ensign, and for the flag of the merchant navy, known as the Commonwealth red ensign.


...Presidential visit to the House..

Mr Bramston has another proposal – one which will make most Australians laugh at its naïveté - to bring to Australia the US President’s State of the Union address to “set national policy goals for the year ahead and articulate a unifying vision for the nation.”

A unifying vision? 

 It is typical of republicans that they have little appreciation of the differences between a politicians’ republic  like the US and our crowned republic.
 

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....