The King's handling of US President Donald Trump during the recent state visit has received a lot of appreciation from our media. His reference to AUKUS has been praised as a momentous occasion for Australia.
However, the King's visit only served to highlight our peculiar governmental arrangements, which are effectively a Clayton's monarchy—or, as the commercials put it, "the drink you have when you are not having a drink."
It could hardly have been better expressed than Queen Victoria. The King called Australia "a country of which I am also enormously honored to serve as sovereign" in a speech to the US Congress.
I doubt that the residents of Canada, Papua New Guinea, or Jamaica are particularly concerned by the fact that none of the other 14 nations that, together with Britain, still have the King as head of state were brought up.
As a representative of the British government, the King was in Washington, and his visit was eagerly anticipated as an attempt to reestablish the "special relationship" between the two nations.
It emphasized to me that, despite the Governor-General exercising the King's powers when he is away from the nation, we lack a functional head of state.
The fact that billionaire Anthony Pratt was the sole Australian present at the King and Queen's state supper was startling. No official delegate from any of his other realms and territories was there, as far as I can determine.
It was obvious that the White House had little interest in the strange circumstance of entertaining a head of state from many sovereign nations.
The visit was widely and favorably covered, in the typical sycophantic manner of our media when presented with the royals.
Subtle criticisms of the Trump administration's policies on climate change, Ukraine, and democratic principles were contained in the King's two significant remarks to Congress and at the state supper.
The King's views would be shared by the majority of Australians. However, without consulting the Australian government, he was expressing them in his capacity as the ruler of the United Kingdom.
After the Indigenous Voice was defeated, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has now ruled out any more attempts to change the Constitution. His first government established the post of assistant minister for the republic, which has been quietly abandoned.
Senator Lidia Thorpe outburst in 2024 was reasonable given that our legislators are required to swear allegiance to our absent sovereign, who has only been in Australia for five days.
He is practically represented by the governor-general, Sam Mostyn, who is a kind, intelligent, and involved individual.
However, the governor-general is the prime minister's personal appointee, in contrast to the British prime minister, who has no say over his sovereign.
This adds to the noticeable trend in recent decades of prime leaders taking on more ceremonial responsibilities typically performed by heads of state.
Nobody questioned Scott Morrison's whereabouts when he was criticized for leaving the nation during the 2022 bushfires. However, a nonpartisan head of state is supposed to take the initiative during times of national emergency.
The majority of Australians do not really care about the confusion surrounding our head of state. We also have state governors who directly represent the British sovereign, which is an ongoing anachronism that we accept and perhaps even enjoy as a vestige of the empire of the 19th century.
Albanese's prediction that a republican referendum would fail is most likely accurate: Any plan would be thwarted by politicians' intense mistrust and a reluctance to alter something that hardly affects our day-to-day existence.
Any proposal that featured the idea of a president, no matter how limited their powers, would fail as long as Trump is in office.
Albanese may, however, implement a nonpartisan mechanism for selecting a governor general, either with backing from state legislatures or a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the federal legislature.
Such a procedure should have helped Mostyn, who is a breath of fresh air in Yarralumla. However, it would imply that Australians might have a stronger bond with the individual who serves as our head of state.
0 Comments