Dr. Neil James, Executive Director of the Plain English foundation in Sydney, will be addressing the 2010 conference of ANFESU at the Sir Stamford Hotel, in Sydney, on Friday 13th August at 6.30pm for 7.30pm.
The ESU has extended an invitation to supporters of ACM to join them. A booking form can be downloaded here.
The monarchy not only subsidises the British taxpayer through the massive profit the government reaps from the Crown Estate – this year about $A350 million, the British economy benefits enormously through the generation of close to $A900 million a year in tourism. The monarchy also significantly benefits Australia and the other realms.
[ More benefits from one visit than the annual tourism budget ]
According to a report from VisitBritain, 60% of tourists say they are likely to seek out places associated with the Royal Family or the monarchy.
In The Sydney Morning Herald of 29 July, 2010 Peter Woodman reports that The Tower of London was the top royal attraction for international visitors in 2009 with just under 2.4 million visitors - up 11 per cent on 2008.
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, south London, was second on 2.37 million, with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London third with 2.27 million visitors.
Buckingham Palace welcomed 402,000 visitors last year - a two per cent rise on the 2008 figure, while Windsor Castle visits rose 6.3 per cent to 987,000.
..Australia benfits too
In the meantime, all of the other fifteen realms, including Australia and New Zealand have the benefit of the many services of The Queen and members of the Royal Family without any subsidy to the Civil List. Indeed, as Professor Noel Cox indicated, Prince William’s opening of the new Supreme Court building in New Zealand generated a degree of international interest in the country that tourist officials would have pay a fortune to emulate.
The same is true of his visit to Australia. The advertising budget of the tourist office would have been more than exhausted to equal the attention given to his visit in the international media .
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s homecoming to Canada created similar attention around the world.
(You can see the videos on the visit by clicking on the icon “ACM videos” on the left of the front page of the ACM site).
We pay them not a penny, the Prince fitting this in on recreation leave from the armed forces.
...politicians short changing Australia...
Australia governments and organizations unwisely do not seek to draw on the many international advantages which can clearly flow from Royal patronage, including the involvement of members of the Royal Family in functions overseas.
This is because our republican politicians and media take too much notice of the failed republican movement who can’t even tell the people what sort of politicians’ republic they want to foist on them.
This is an example of the obnoxious policy of creeping republicanism, which refuses to recognize the crucial fact that Australia can only become a politicians’ republic with the consent of the people.
The revelation, or some would say the confirmation, that some members of the Communist Party were also members of the Labor Party has surprisingly surprised Bob Carr, the former Premier of New South Wales.
He declared it a “bombshell”. He said this vindicated the decision of a large part of Catholic Australia to veto the election of federal Labor governments by voting for the breakaway Democratic Labor Party after the Labor split of 1955.
But surely this infiltration is well known?
... kind old Uncle Eric.....
[ Republicans followed his every word ]
The story about the Bolshevik incursion into the ALP is revealed in Mark Aarons’ book on his family, “The Family File.” This tells the story of Australia’s leading Bolshevik dynasty led by his father Laurie Aarons.
A few years ago the ABC broadcast a documentary on the Communist Party. They were portrayed as little different from a church group, slightly misguided, but such sweet people.
I haven’t seen Mr. Aarons book yet , but I wonder whether it mentions , as Gerard Henderson recalls, the admission by “kind old” Uncle Eric Aarons in his book What’s Left (Penguin, 1993).
This was that if the Aarons’ dynasty had ever come to power in Australia they would “have executed people.”
This of course was what would have happened if Australia ever had followed the well trod path of becoming a workers’ paradise, a People’s Republic.
...a communist Minister of the Crown?
Mark Aarons says “no leader of the Communist Party of Australia ever had more influence than his father, Laurie Aarons, in senior levels of the Labor Party. The Communist Party already influenced significant sections of the ALP Left through its mass work, especially in the unions. But Mr. Aarons gives details of direct influence into the federal parliamentary Labor Party and Labor governments.
He says his father’s main contact was Arthur Gietzelt, who had taken over the CPA's work among ex-service personnel in the mid-1940s. “After playing a key role in reviving the NSW ALP Left in the 1950s, Gietzelt, who became a Hawke government minister, was a major force in the 1960s and 1970s, as ALP national vice-president and then as a senator.”
....the history of republicanism ....
Now all of this is completely relevant to this column.
In the history of Australian republicanism, the Bolsheviks constituted our second republican movement. When I pointed to this unsavoury aspect of the history of Australian republicanism, I was challenged, but the evidence is quite clear. The Communists planned to establish a People’ Republic on the model found in Eastern Europe. There the monarchy, a check and balance on the government’s power was ended wherever one existed.
I came to discuss the history of Australian republicanism in response to a student request to explain why our Founders rejected calls to make Australia a republic when we federated. The answer was that there were none. By that time, any support for a republic – of the politicians’ kind – had faded away.
This was because Australia’s first significant republican movement had as its end the establishment of a white supremacist republic. I remember shocking an audience in Perth in 1999, when I told them this. None of my republican opponents, Democrat Senator Stott-Despoja, Professor Greg Craven and Liberal Attorney –General Daryl Williams challenged me. (The No team consisted of myself, former Governor-general and Leader of the ALP Bill Hayden and former Liberal Senator Reg Withers.)
Those in favour of a White Australia realised this could be achieved by the new federal entity, which the founders ensured had power to deal with immigration.A white republic outside of the Empire was not necessary. British opposition to a race based immigration policy could be disregarded at the federal level. In the hope of placating London, the policy was disguised by the administration of a dictation test. This transparent piece of hypocrisy was borrowed from South Africa. The strongest support for the policy came from the unions, who feared that their new won standards would be reduced by Asian immigration.
...treacherous but not racist...
By way of contrast with Australia’s first republican movement, the second republican movement, from the First World War until about the sixties, was at most times not racist. However its allegiance was certainly not to the Crown, but rather to a foreign government.
That allegiance was wholly and totally to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the pseudonym the Bolsheviks chose to disguise their brutal empire. The members and supporters of the Communist Party of Australia demonstrated their absolute loyalty to Moscow when they denounced and sought to undermine the Second World War while Stalin was in alliance with Hitler under the Molotov – Von Ribbentrop Treaty which included secret clauses to divide Poland between them.
When Hitler turned on Stalin, they then declared the war to be just. This did not stop them from actively sabotaging the war effort when they saw it advancing their aims and when such sabotage did not damage their beloved USSR. The USSR gave the Party not only its direction, but also substantial financial assistance.
The Party did not achieve any significant electoral support in Australia, never winning a seat in the federal parliament, even with their apparent support for the war and talk of a united front, the Stalinist tactic at the time.
...Frank McGrath liberates the Ironworkers...
But they managed to occupy commanding positions in the trade unions, particularly those of strategic importance to the defence of the Commonwealth. Although against the rules they sought to infiltrate the ALP, and to influence it. The damaging post war split in the ALP, and the formation of the Democratic Labor Party was a result.
Before the split, the ALP Industrial Groups in the union movement were the only significant opponent of communist control. Heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, but not exclusively Catholic, they gradually removed the communists from a large number of trade unions.
In fact it was a renowned constitutional monarchist, Dr Frank McGrath (formerly His Honour, Mr. Justice McGrath), who was instrumental in breaking the grip of the communists on the Federated Ironworkers Association. This seemed to contradict the story that the late Whitlam government minister, Jim McClelland had actually done this.
According to Frank Rooney, a prominent anti-communist trade union leader, Jim McLelland was never part of the team and came into the picture only after the battle had been won. Then a young articled clerk, Frank McGrath was working with a firm of solicitors in 1951 in a challenge to a recent union election.
During the hearing, he signalled to the junior barrister, later Governor-General Sir John Kerr, that he had discovered something. With the aid of the rays of the sun streaming into the court room, a number of impressions of “ticks” clearly came through on the disputed ballot papers tendered as evidence. Obviously stacks of blank ballot papers were being filled in by one person at a time.
Frank McGrath was to spend days in the witness box, and on the strength of his evidence and that of handwriting experts Mr Justice Dunphy found that Laurie Short had actually been elected as general secretary, and that new elections for the other offices must be held. (This story is told in Frank Rooney, Dictators within the Labor Party of Australia, edited by Dr. Amy McGrath, Towerhouse Publications, Sydney, 2005 )
...these republicans had a model...
Unlike today’s republican movement, the communist republicans did not pretend they had no model. They wanted to turn Australia into a workers’ paradise - a people’s republic on the east European model. They never explained why people were always trying to escape from, and not into, their peoples’ republics.
Australia’s second republican movement was for long subsidized by and under the instructions of the Soviet Union. Without the Soviet Union it would have been impoverished and directionless. It is unlikely that it would have been able to occupy the positions of significance it did in the trade union movement and in political life.
With the confirmation that Australian politics was infiltrated by the republican communists up to the eighties, the obvious question is did it magically stop there? To what extent is the current republican movement made up or supported by former proponents of a Marxist peoples’ republic?
This is particularly relevant when it is recalled that the leaders of the republican movement refuses to reveal anything about whatever politicians’ republic they have in mind for Australia. What are they hiding?
A call to install Julia Gillard in Melbourne’s beautiful Government House is surprising. Under a proposal being pushed by the prominent republican Eddie McGuire, the Governor, Professor David de Kretser, would be expelled from Government House. This would then be “spruced up” for Ms. Gilllard.
Mr. McGuire played a leading role in promoting republicanism and was a leading republican movement delegate at the Constitutional Convention. He presented the republicans' case on national television.
He apparently wants Victoria to follow the disastrous lead set by former NSW Premier Bob Carr, now a Macquarie Bank consultant. He had claimed this would result in cost savings, but in actual fact it proved more expensive. He also claimed the move would make both the building and the office of governor more accessible, and the governor would work part time.
But after leaving office Mr. Carr admitted that the reason for throwing out the Governor out of Sydney's Government House was the existence of the reserve powers.
The reserve powers are exercised as a check and balance on the politicians. In extreme cases they can be used to remove a politician acting illegally or unconstitutionally.
...republican movement targets Victorian Governor...
In the meantime a republican movement spokesman recently attacked Professor de Kretser over an advertisement for staff. The republican argument, reported in The Herald Sun (17/6), seemed to be that the Governor should himself cook and serve the meals for visiting Heads of State, Ambassadors and the like.
Most pollsters and bookmakers are predicting the government will be returned on 21 August. These are national predictions, and they may not take into sufficient account one factor which could make a crucial difference. Something long dormant in the Australian psyche may well have been revived this year, something which those from the Melbourne- Sydney- Canberra power triangle have long assumed was well and truly dead and buried.
Federalism, expressed in the code that the states are sovereign, has been given a new lease of life in the recent super profits and resource rent tax controversies.
ACM has of course no position on the worthiness or not of either. Nor is it in the habit of advising supporters on which parties they should prefer.
ACM seeks instead to inform voters as to candidates’ views on the constitutional system and the flag. And as defenders of our constitutional system, this column has been pointing out what seem to be serious constitutional flaws in processes and proposals, most recently in relation to the super profits tax.
...who owns the minerals...
The basis for the super profits tax was the claim that the minerals belong to the people of Australia. So is the basis for the successor tax, the minerals rent resource tax (MRRT).
But a perusal of just about any land grant will show that minerals have always been under the jurisdiction of the states, and not the Commonwealth. To many in the outlying states, the tax proposals are is being seen as an attempt by the federal government to commandeer their resources.
As a result, the federation genie is out of the bottle, challenging the current centralist fashion. The view that the federal government knows best is nevertheless widespread in political and media circles.
...committed federalists...
Committed federalists find intellectual sustenance and mutual support principally in the Samuel Griffith Society. (Incidentally, the Society will be holding its annual national conference in Perth on 27 to 29 August 2010. Details can be seen on the Society’s excellent site, www.samuelgriffith.org.au . A personal disclosure- I am on the Board)
Although the great majority of our Founding Fathers were federalists, there are not many left among our politicians and media commentators. Indeed, the more centralist among them, say Sir Isaac Isaacs would today been seen as more federalist than most.
There is an absence of not only a federalist philosphy among our elites. Lamentably there is an absence of an understanding of the raison d’être for federalism.
The 1999 referendum demonstrated that the rank and file better understand the virtues of our crowned republic. Similarly there is a latent but unformulated federalist tendency among Australians at large, especially those living away from the inner city electorates.
Not only media commentators but also governments, Labor and Coalition, should take more notice of federalists.
...Work Choices..
The Howard government made the mistake of not heeding the federalists’ counsel not to effect whatever work place reforms it proposed through the draconian Work Choices model. The objection was not against the principle of workplace reform which is another issue. It was against the “big bang” approach based on an extended meaning to the constitutional corporations’ power.
Federalists warned that the legislation would only have been supported under this power if the High Court were to agree to an even more centralist interpretation of that power. Such an interpretation would be bad in itself they said, and would constitute an undesirable precedent.
The subsequent constitutional challenge to Work Choices did not succeed, although two judges held that the legislation was unconstitutional. They were interestingly, Justices Kirby and Callinan. One is seen as small”l” liberal and progressive, the other is seen as conservative.
...did the States run dead in Work Choices?
Julian Leeser was an ACM elected delegate to the 1999 Constitutional Convention. He was also the youngest delegate. Now the Director of the Menzies Institute, he argued that the reason the Work Choices case failed was because the States ran dead on the issue of the corporations power. This was because the politicians involved supported an extended interpretation of the corporations power . This would suit their ultimate political agenda.
Of course Mr. Leeser was right, although some of the barristers involved play this down. So why did not judges, apart from Justice Kirby and Justice Callinan agree.
Judges will not normally come to a conclusion without hearing argument on that point. Indeed when the court handed down the Mabo decision, it was much criticised on this very point. In my opinion, had the States argued against an expanded interpretation of the corporations power – as they should have – other judges would have been persuaded to join the dissenting judges. There may have been a majority.
Had the states challenged the constitutional basis of the legislation, it is likely that more judges would have ruled against it, perhaps a majority. Found to be valid, Work Choices was to become a key issue in the 2007 election.
...national standards...
There a widespread belief in political circles that the best solution to many issues is through uniform national policies. This assumes no centralist approach could ever be wrong. This is not something limited to the Australian intelligentsia. French education ministers were once want to boast that at say, 3:00 pm every child in the nation aged ten was studying Latin.
This centralism has gone a step further with the formation of the European Union, with its trade distorting standards. The story that Brussels had decreed the degree to which a banana might curve, if not true, illustrates the widespread perception of excessive EU interference in the market.
There is a simplistic attraction in the declaration of national standards. This has its limits. While wheelie bins look much the same, is there any advantage in declaring a national Australian wheelie bin standard? (For all I know such a standard may well exist or be on the drawing board.). But national standards in everything would be a mistake - the politicians and bureaucrats are not omniscient, they cannot foresee all of the problems.
If different states have different policies, there can be a competition among them to see what is best. This can be effective, doing what is impossible outside of a federation. We would still have that detested tax, death duties, were it not for the initiative of the Bjelke Petersen government in abolishing them.
...the MRRT...
A crucial question in the coming election will be whether the Gillard government has sufficiently neutralised federalism through the son of the super profits tax, the MRRT.
Once again the process of introducing it offended if not the letter then the spirit of the constitution with no opportunity for Parliament to debate the issue. Instead the tax was formulated behind closed doors with the three biggest foreign miners.
The tax will apply only to iron ore and coal, but these are state assets. While some sort of credit for state royalties will be allowed, are they to be frozen or are they at some later stage to be taken over as was originally proposed?
...reopen the Seas and Submerged Lands case?
The suspicion that other state owned resources might one day be taxed will be reinforced by the extension of the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) to onshore oil and gas, clearly the property of the States. Indeed, this extension may well encourage the States to try to reopen the 1975 ruling that offshore oil and gas are not theirs.
That decision was based on nineteenth century British legislation, which British and Australian legislation repealed in 1986. The jurisdiction of the states now extends beyond the old three mile limit; perhaps the offshore resources are theirs.
...federalism revived....
Federalism has been revived in a way undreamed of.
Benefits can flow from this. At the time of Work Choices many leading Coalition politicians argued it was too late to go back to federalism as the Founders planned it.
At Federation it was assumed that the States would continue to rely on taxes they raised and to face the electors and account to them how they had spent their money. Our Founders were well aware of the fundamental point made by the American Founders, that:
"In a federation, the individual States should possess an independent and uncontrollable authority to raise their own revenues for the supply of their own wants." (The Federalist Papers)
If our Federation is to work well, this principle that the States have their own income and answer to the electorate as to how they spend it is fundamental.
Buckingham Palace has denied a British National Party politician entry to a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. The Garden Party was to be attended by The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of York, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent. This decision is in keeping with the constitutional role of the Crown which is above politics.
The politician is Mr. Nick Griffin, who is the Leader of the British National Party in the European Parliament. He was accused of using his personal invitation for Party political purposes through the media.
“This in turn has increased the security threat and the potential discomfort to the many other guests also attending,” a Palace spokesman said. “Mr Griffin's personal invitation was issued to him as an elected Member of the European Parliament. The decision to deny him entry is not intended to show any disrespect to the democratic process by which the invitation was issued. “However, we would apply the same rules to anyone who tried to blatantly politicise their attendance in this way.”
...Griffin objects....
Mr Griffin condemned the decision as an “outrage” and "anti-British" and accused the Government of orchestrating the move. “This is quite amazing news,” he said .” At no time was I informed that I wasn't allowed to talk to the media about this. Other people have talked about attending. Why a double standard here?
“To say that one person in the country cannot speak to the media is an outrage. The move has obviously been made under pressure from the ConDem regime who are desperate for any reason to bar the BNP. I am held to a different standard to everyone else in the country – that is thoroughly anti-British.”
...why did he want to go?...
Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He is the winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism. In a comment in the London Daily Telegraph he says that the Palace was perfectly within its rights to withdraw Nick Griffin’s invitation.
“He had behaved thoroughly boorishly by turning a private invitation into a publicity stunt,” he added. ”More interesting, surely, is the question of why Griffin wanted to meet his sovereign. The BNP, being a far Left party, has never much cared for the Crown. Although it is just about savvy enough to keep overt republicanism out of its manifesto, several of its papers and articles call for the abolition of the monarchy.”
Mr Griffin, was invited last year as a guest of a party colleague who is an elected politician. He pulled out after a public outcry. A Unite Against Fascism spokesman said they were delighted by the Palace's decision to bar Mr Griffin.
He told the Telegraph’s Martin Evans : "I think this is a fantastic decision that's been taken. the invitation in the first place was a blow for those who suffered in the Holocaust and more recently those who have suffered at the hands of racists and homophobes.
"The fact he was invited anyway is a little bit concerning. The Palace needs to understand and the establishment in general, who are giving these privileges, that the whole point of him being so excited about going is because it gives him the chance to legitimise himself."
...reasons for the decision....
Mr. Evans says that the decision was taken by the most senior members of the Royal household, including Mr. Christopher Geidt, the Queen's private secretary, who took advice from the Metropolitan Police about the possibility of Mr Griffin's attendance causing public disorder outside the Palace.
Mr. Evans also reported that a Royal source denied the decision - which gave Mr Griffin blanket coverage on TV news channels - had backfired, saying: "He got an awful lot of publicity before we said he wouldn't be allowed in, and we've got to look at the bigger picture. He was turning it into a party political statement.
"We had a lot of information about marches and people protesting outside the railings, and also we have to think about how it's going to affect the other people at the garden party.
"We couldn't make this decision any earlier because we had to wait and see how much mileage he was getting out of it. It wasn't a decision which was against the BNP, because we had Andrew Brons inside the garden, who didn't try to use it for publicity. If Nick Griffin had done the same he might have been enjoying tea with the family.
"A lot of people at the party said they were glad he wasn't there because they wanted their visit to be about them, not Mr Griffin."
When she declared to the nation that the Rudd government had “lost its way” and its leader had to be deposed, Ms. Gillard was surely not referring to its substantive decisions or even the way they were delivered, however incompetent and however profligate.
After all she was a party to each and every one of them. She must have been referring to his authoritarian style. So if the Gillard government were expected to do anything, it was to stop treating the Parliament and the nation with contempt and to observe the proper constitutional processes.
It was expected to table proposals, to allow debate, to consult with those most interested, to allow discussion in the electorate, to involve the media and to allow the Australian people to be involved in the formulation of policy.
Almost everyone now agrees that the process adopted by the Rudd government was undemocratic and dismissive of our parliamentary democracy, and this process had led to a series of botched decisions culminating in the impossible super profits tax.
...surreptitious measure....
How surprising then that in the middle of the East Timor debacle the Gillard government surreptitiously furthered its agenda for fundamental constitutional change. The East Timor announcement itself indicated that little had changed. It was unfortunately yet another example of ill thought out policy suddenly announced without the opportunity of Parliament debating it and the potential for wiser minds there and in the country to give advice and counsel caution.
The surreptitious measure adopted was to advance the agenda to remove one of the fundamental pillars of our nation, described in the preamble to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act as an indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown and under the Constitution.
The Crown, fully Australianised and according to the High Court separate from the British, New Zealand, Canadian and other Crowns, is our oldest institution. It is central to our system, straddling the Federal-State divide, and providing leadership above politics. This is not only as a constitutional guardian, but also as leader, through allegiance and example, to the other institutions which are also beyond politics, including the armed forces, the public service and the courts.
The Crown remains an obstacle to the agenda of the elites to march through all of the institutions, and to politicise them. The 1999 proposal for a politicians’ republic demonstrated precisely that, some of its supporters even openly admitting its flaws.But the 1999 proposal was the best model the republicans could devise. It had the overwhelming support of the republican delegates at the Constitutional Convention. It was supported by two thirds of the sitting politicians and most of the mainline media. But it was overwhelmingly rejected by the rank and file, nationally, in every state and 72% of electorates.
...the people must keep on voting until they get it right...
The elites remain committed not to just any republic- we are, after all, a crowned republic. What they crave for is a politicians’ republic, where all the state institutions are politicised. Had the Vote No campaign lost in 1999, any move to restore the Crown would have been treated at best as an amusing eccentricity.
Yet the republican politicians do not accept the landslide defeat of what was after all the best model their best minds could devise. Their reaction is the same as that adopted by rebuffed European Union politicians – “the people must keep on voting until they get it right.” (In Europe they are able to circumvent or dispense with a referendum in most countries.)But the politicians know another referendum here would face a bigger defeat than in 1999, and that polling trends show little support for a politicians’ republic among all ages including the young.
So, pending a reversal in public opinion, they hope to soften up the people by a campaign of creeping republicanism. An early practitioner, Bob Carr, claimed the reason for his expulsion of the NSW governors from Government House was cost, and making the office of governor more accessible and part time.
After he retired he admitted it had to do with the reserve powers.
Creeping republicanism is of course sometimes ludicrous. When Meredith Bergmann became President of the NSW Legislative Council, a photographer from The Sydney Morning Herald just happened to be passing her suite and photographed her taking down the portrait of The Queen.
She was also involved in the removal of The Queen’s portrait from the Strangers' Room, the Parliamentary dining room, for reasons claimed to be related to occupational health and safety. The portrait was also removed from the foyer where it was claimed it was being damaged by sunlight.
We should not allow the silliness of these antics to distract us from the underlying agenda of those involved. This is to persuade the people to accept the significant constitutional change they so overwhelmingly rejected ten years ago.
.... Constitution Day too....
So on the eve of Constitution Day, the government let slip the news that it had in its first fortnight also prosecuted the policy of creeping republicanism. The office of Queen’s Counsel had been abolished.
Now Constitution Day is the day when Queen Victoria assented to the legislation establishing the Commonwealth of Australia - a day surely when constitutional proprieties would be respected.
But no, in a move designed to undermine our oldest and central constitutional institution, the decision of the Prime Minister was announced surreptitiously in the very last line of a media release of the Attorney General. Where was Parliament? Where was the consultation with the judges and the legal profession and the opportunity for the public to discuss this?
Certainly, whatever radical lawyers may say, senior lawyers have voted with their feet. There is no example of a QC downgrading to the rank of Senior Counsel. And it is a downgrade in the eyes of the public, and also in foreign and international courts and arbitral tribunals.
...revenge, jealousy, political agenda...
This was all started as part of the “reform” of the legal profession by the NSW Coalition Fahey government, which seems to have mainly involved changing the names of solicitors , proctors, attorneys and barristers to lawyers. I happened to be at a meeting with a group of editors and senior journalists when the decision on QC's was announced. My recollection is that this too was done without consuting parliament or indeed anyone else.
The editors and journalists were beside themselves with glee – some no doubt recalling being subjected to rigorous cross examination by some hostile silk.
But neither revenge, nor jealousy nor a political agenda are enough for such change.
Once NSW did it, other politicians followed. After all they have to show they have done something while in office.
The New Zealanders initially copied this fashion, but realising it is counterproductive, they have reversed it. As they have done with titles. They gave the recipients the opportunity of upgrading. Those with international experience – including scientists and artists - pointed to the issue of recognition.
The overwhelming number of recipients of the highest NZ but universally unknown and unrecognizable order chose to be recognized internationally.
It is not only the decision of the Gillard government which is objectionable, indeed pointless and counterproductive. It is the surreptitious and arrogant way in which it was delivered.
The Rudd government may have lost its way; within two weeks Ms. Gillard demonstrated that she had absorbed nothing from the lecture she had so publicly delivered to her erstwhile colleague and leader Kevin Rudd.
[This opinion piece was first published in The Australian on 23 July, 2010]
Buckingham Palace has launched an account on the online photo management site Flickr, according to a Palace Press Release.The British Monarchy Website Flickr account streams both up-to-the-minute images of royal engagements and archive photographs from the Royal Photograph Collection.
The launch is timed to coincide with the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace, as the site highlights photographs specially commissioned for the Palace’s exhibition The Queen’s Year, which opens on 27 July.
In addition to contemporary images of The Queen and Members of the Royal Family at work, the Flickr Account features historic photographs from current Royal Collection exhibitions at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and on loan to museums and galleries around the UK. They include masterpieces of early British photography collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
The Flickr photo site is the latest way in which the Royal Household is engaging with technological innovation and follows the launch of the new Royal website (www.royal.gov.uk) and the British Monarchy Twitter account in 2009 and the Royal Channel on You Tube in 2007. The British Monarchy Website Flickr account is a collaboration between Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace and Clarence House.
....inclusions...
The account includes:
- A “Latest news and diary” gallery showing the latest photographs from royal engagements.
- Collections from The Queen’s recent visit to Canada and New York, and Holyrood Week.
- A “Queen and Commonwealth” section, which includes pictures of Royal visits to Commonwealth realms and related engagements.
- Specially commissioned photographs for the exhibition The Queen’s Year at Buckingham Palace Summer Opening taken during The Queen’s programme of engagements over the past twelve months (including a State Banquet, a military review, diplomatic credentials and a Garden Party).
- Photography by Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron and other pioneering practitioners of the medium. These were collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who lent their enthusiastic support to the new art form.
- Photographs of two generations of royal children, taken by Marcus Adams from 1926 to 1956, including images of The Queen and The Prince of Wales as babies.
In total at launch there are over 600 photographs, and this figure will increase as the Flickr account is continuously updated with photos from Royal engagements and events.
A special Royal exhibit opens at Buckingham Palace to show Her Majesty at work over each year. The exhibition includes photographs, artefacts, videos and clothing.
In a recent column I mentioned a prediction that Julia Gillard would replace Kevin Rudd. This prediction, a serious and considered one, was made by John Stone, former Secretary to the Treasury and Senator for Queensland.
Mr. Stone, a leading commentator on economic matters and a prominent federalist – and, I might add, a constitutional monarchist - was writing in Australia’s leading political journal, Quadrant.
The lawyer who instituted the 1999 High Court case which led to a majority ruling that the Australian Crown is separate from the British Crown also made a prediction.
He predicted over two years ago that Julia Gillard would replace Kevin Rudd. This was in the 14 April 2008 issue of Sing Tao, Australia’s leading Chinese language newspaper.
The lawyer is Dr Thomas Chiu, who specialises in advising on foreign investment in Australia and is a prominent media commentator in Chinese language circles.
Incidentally the 1999 decision, although about other constitutional issues, was a powerful one for the No case, demonstrating that we are totally independent and that the Crown is fully Australianised.
{ Dr. Chiu's latest book ]
...who will win?....
I have not asked either who will win the 2010 election. I notice the nation’s leading psephologist, Malcolm Mackerras, has made a prediction in The Australian. His analysis and the celebrated Mackerras Pendulum have long been essential tools in understanding Australian elections.
Although forthright in his predications, he concedes that he is not always correct. He tells the story that he once told the media that the Queensland Bjelke –Petersen government faced electoral defeat.
But the government was returned. Soon after he received a parcel from the Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke -Petersen. On opening it he found that it contained a scrubbing brush. On telephoning to congratulate Sir Joh, he asked why he had sent the brush.
“It’s to scrub the egg off your face,” Sir Joh replied.
In any event, if I have read Professor Mackerras correctly, he thinks the 2010 federal result will be clear, and that regional differences will be balanced by the overall trend. He thinks there will be a strong Labor victory.
My recollection is he thought the two by elections following Tony Abbott’s election as leader and the Liberal Party dropping support of the ETS would go badly for them.
The Sydney Morning Herald (a.k.a. “Granny” to old-timers) gave our incoming Prime Minister a serve in its leading article on Saturday, 17th July 2010.
Entitled “The hollow woman moves us forward — to where?” this leader in assessing her address to the National Press Club took her to task for evading questions “that are never going to go away” — which is “Grannyspeak” for issues that the Herald considers should not be kept waiting. Among these were, as you must by now have guessed, “a republic”. Not “the republic”?
Horrors of horrors, the Prime Minister declined to welcome debate when a Herald journalist raised the issue and to “support the notion of an Australian head of state”. (In passing, Quentin Bryce, an Australian, is Australia’s Head of State, but we all know that that expression in “Grannyspeak” means writing the Queen and the Crown out of the Constitution.) Oh, no!
The Sydney Morning Herald rewrites history
To Granny’s profound distaste, the Prime Minister “threw a damp blanket over it” and “said the 1999 referendum failed because it centred too much on views of public figures like her”. This the Herald compared unfavourably with Kevin Rudd’s graceless Keatingesque gesture two years ago “when he publicly supported a republic in London shortly before he met the Queen”.
Surely the sensible interpretation of this “Gillardspeak” was that the issue so dear to Herald journalists was a distraction from which in the current climate of opinion she was keen at all costs to distance herself. To the Herald, however, “This was wrong”. And, not to be outdone, the leading article came up with an egregious porky all of its own. The referendum “failed mainly because Howard, then prime minister and a staunch monarchist, set it up with enough divisions to make it fail”. Poor little Johnny! That he should have had such a commanding influence over events. The truth is however that Howard gave the republicans their opportunity and they flubbed it.
How the republic fell in 1999
In conformity with an earlier electoral undertaking of his predecessor as Liberal leader, Alexander Downer, Howard in 1996 promised to establish a constitutional convention comprising delegates both elected and nominated to decide whether a republic should be put to referendum and, if so, what the particular model should be.
Immediately there was an outcry that he would fiendishly ensure that republicans would be outnumbered by monarchists in the nominated delegation. Those responsible for this accusation of bad faith were undeterred when republicans proved to be the dominant force among nominated delegates as they were among elected delegates.
Then it was suggested that the monarchist contingent would sabotage the whole process by using their numbers to ensure that the republic model which was most likely to be defeated in a referendum would emerge from the convention. Again those promoting this mischief were undeterred when the constitutional monarchists of all persuasions expressly undertook to do no such thing.
In fact it was the republicans in favour of direct election of a President who attempted unsuccessfully but dishonourably to exclude the constitutional monarchists from any further participation in the convention.
As it happened no republican model gained the support of an outright majority in the convention’s final vote, from which the constitutional monarchists abstained. The republicans who obtained the largest plurality — only slightly short of an outright majority — were those in favour of a model which as modified during the convention most closely resembled the model advocated by the Republic Advisory Committee appointed by Paul Keating.
This placed republicans who favoured the direct election of the President in a minority. Although an outright majority had been accepted as the sine qua non for a referendum, Howard announced that he was prepared to accept the model with the largest plurality as having qualified. The wording of the referendum proposal was settled by a Parliamentary committee which was dominated by declared republicans. Where was Howard’s malign influence in that?
The honour of John Howard
This proved to be the only time a Prime Minister who was openly opposed to a referendum proposal consented to having it put to a popular vote. Although he campaigned against it, John Howard made no attempt to rein in or silence coalitionist Ministers and backbenchers who as republicans favoured the model being put to the electorate. They were free to campaign in the model’s favour even more vigorously than Howard campaigned against it. It was no fault of Howard’s that the republic model put to referendum was poison to many declared republicans.
Massive advantage for republicans
Even so, those in favour of a No vote were up against a wall of opposition which included the whole of the Labor Party, many Liberals and Nationals, if not a majority, in all States and an opposition from the media so monolithic that the veteran journalist who had been writing since the early 1930s — W. F. (Lord) Deedes of the London Daily Telegraph — claimed that he had previously never encountered anything like it when reporting in any liberal democracy.
Yet the proposal was defeated nationally 55 per cent for the No case and 43 per cent for the Yes case with the remainder voting informally. It was defeated in all States and carried in only one Territory.
Julia Gillard is right
Where in all this was the pernicious influence of John Howard in setting it up “with enough divisions to make it fail”? Perhaps he only succeeded in “stirring up apathy”. But even that conclusion would be mistaken. The referendum failed because the constitutional monarchists were united against the proposal and the republicans could not bring themselves to unite behind it. And for as long as the republicans remain divided, a republic will continue to elude them. But even if they should attain some unity of purpose, they are unlikely to succeed if their numbers in favour of any kind of model should continue to fall. And the Prime Minister must surely be fully aware of this!
