Future Australian President

Congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the arrival of their new daughter.

A new baby is a joyful time in any family. In Australia, around 850 babies were born today. While the media might be preoccupied with the birth of one child in the UK, I'd like to congratulate those Australian parents and families who welcomed their new babies today.

The relentless celebrity already surrounding the new princess will continue to add to the royal stamp of approval.

Nevertheless this royal celebrity is an image dominated by an obsessive media and popular cultural landscape, which treat royalty as entertainment rather than as a political institution.

I hope one day that any Australian child will have the opportunity and honour to become an Australian Head of State, and not because he or she has had the privilege to have been born into Britain's royal family. I look forward to the day when Australia's Head of State is determined by merit, not birth right, and affirms Australia's values as a free, fair, democratic, multicultural nation.

Australian Republican Movement (Qld) Members and Supporters evening

It has been a very big and very exciting start to 2015 for our Republican cause. Events over the Australia Day weekend have provided the ARM with a precious opening to make and renew our case to the Australian people.

 

Right now, Australians are thinking and talking about our national leadership, and our national identity, in ways they haven't for a long time.

This is an opportunity we must capitalise on as a Movement.

To that end, the Queensland ARM invites you to our first gathering of members and supporters for 2015.

This will serve as an opportunity for activists new and old to come together and commit to giving our cause an almighty shove in the right direction over the weeks and months ahead.

ARM Queensland Members and Supporters evening
Thursday 30 April 2015, from 6pm.
Pineapple Hotel, Kangaroo Point
Free entry

For planning purposes, RSVPs appreciated by replying to qld@republic.org.au or at https://www.facebook.com/events/793752214013029/

 

PS - this is an event open to all Republicans, so please don't hesitate forwarding this invitation around widely.

Republicans pay tribute to ARM founding members Faith Bandler and Colin Lanceley

The Australian Republican Movement recently paid tribute to Faith Bandler AM and Colin Lanceley AO, two of the Movement’s 14 Foundational Members in 1991, who passed away in early 2015.

Ms Bandler, who was awarded an Honoured Life Membership of the Australian Republican Movement in 2002 for her lifetime support for an Australian Republic, was also instrumental in the success of the 1967 Referendum to remove constitutional discrimination against Aboriginal Australians.

Faith Bandler

A descendent of South Sea Islanders, brought as forced labour to work in the Queensland cane fields, Ms Bandler was instrumental in the success of the 1967 Referendum to remove constitutional discrimination against Aboriginal Australians before becoming one of 14 Foundational Members of the ARM in 1991.

In a 1993 interview for the Australian Biography project Ms Bandler explained her support for an Australian republic:

"I'm a republican because I feel that Australia is adult enough to make its own decisions without consulting someone 12 000 miles away. I'm a republican because I think we have a great need now to be an independent nation, mainly because we have a large population of people who have never known the monarchy, it's meaningless to them, absolutely meaningless. That they have to swear allegiance to something away over on the other side of the world to me, I think that it's unreal, completely unreal."

Ms Bandler was awarded an Honoured Life Membership of the ARM in 2002 for her lifetime support for an Australian Republic. ARM Chair Professor Geoff Gallop AC said

“Faith Bandler’s life and words remind us as to why Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution is an essential first step in a republican future. On behalf of the Australian Republican Movement I extend our sympathies to her family and friends,”

The Australian Republican Movement also acknowledges the contribution that artist Colin Lanceley AO has made to the republican cause in Australia, following his recent passing. ARM Chair, Professor Gallop also paid tribute to Colin Lanceley, who

Colin Lanceley

“was a tremendous contributor to the republican cause and a great believer in the importance of a republic to concepts of Australian identity and culture. He was a passionate Australian and his vocal advocacy and support of great Australian institutions for artists such as the National Gallery of Australia's council and National Art School will be long remembered.”

An iconic Australian painter, printmaker and sculptor, Lanceley was a dedicated advocate of an Australian Republic and became one of 14 Foundational Members of the ARM in 1991.

Vale Faith and Colin. Elders of the republic.

The History Man – Manning Clark centenary, 1915-2015

This year sees the centenary of the birth of Charles Manning Hope Clark (born 3 March 1915), Professor of History at Canberra University College and later the Australian National University, from 1949 to 1974. Manning Clark was one of the ANU’s most distinguished academics: a gifted teacher, brilliant historian and deeply influential public figure up to the time of his death 0n 23 May 1991. His legacy is that his A History of Australia continues to be one of the most passionately debated visions of Australian history.

Australian historian Professor Charles Manning Hope Clark AC was one of the most significant 20th century Australian figures. Clark was the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume A History of Australia, published between 1962 and 1987. He has been described as "Australia's most famous historian”. However, Clark was a controversial figure, a staunch defender of Australia's right to be a nation independent of Great Britain, and the target of much criticism, particularly from conservative academics and philosophers.

Born in Sydney in 1915, son of an Anglican clergyman, Manning Clark won scholarships to Melbourne Grammar School and the University of Melbourne. He later attended Balliol College, Oxford. There he married Dymphna Lodewyckx from Melbourne and visited Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II. In the early 1940s taught history at schools in England and Australia. Ineligible for wartime service, he returned to teach at Geelong Grammar School, earned a great reputation as a teacher, and was poached by the University of Melbourne to teach the first course in Australian history. He was then senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and later Professor of History in the School of General Studies, Australian National University.

In Canberra he lived with Dymphna and their six children in a house designed by Robin Boyd. He became one of the local identities, conspicuous in broad-brimmed hat, spade beard and capacity for disconcerting comment. In 1972 he became the first Professor of Australian History. He held honorary doctorates awarded by the Universities of Melbourne, Newcastle and Sydney. In June 1975 Clark was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in recognition of his monumental A History of Australia. He was named Australian of the Year for 1980. Manning Clark died in May 1991.

Manning Clark was one of the most influential Australian intellectuals of the last half century. His

Manning Clark's desk in his Canberra home, where he
wrote the six volumes of A History of Australia

most enduring legacy, however, was his magisterial six-volume A History of Australia. In 1962, the first volume of A History of Australia appeared. For the next two-and-a-half decades Clark unfolded his tragic celebration of white Australian history. Today, the six-volume history is one of the masterpieces of Australian literature. It is also one of the most passionately debated visions of Australian history.

In it he reshaped the now familiar story of our nation's modern evolution; from the First Fleet's arrival, the convicts, the rum rebellion, gold, the sheep's back, Federation, and the glorious defeat at Gallipoli, up to the nation emerging from the Great Depression and on the threshold of a new world war. Within the dramatic narrative, which he envisaged as an epic, are highly original and insightful portraits of its great men with their tragic flaws: Phillip, Macquarie, Burke and Wills, Bligh, Wentworth, and above all Henry Lawson. His heroes had flaws and often his villains had redeeming qualities. For Clark life – and indeed history – was not just about what we said and what we did bit also about our doubts and uncertainties on the one hand and our hopes and dreams on the other. His critics saw his approach as an unwarranted intrusion into the search for facts about winners and losers. History was for the historians and intruders like Clark were not welcome.

But behind this ambitious historical work - with its more than a million words and twenty-five, long slogging years of research and scholarship - was a man as flawed as the historical figures he was presenting, figures in whose personalities and life events he often saw himself dauntingly mirrored. He was wracked with self-doubt, and dogged by fears of failure and personal weakness, and wrestled with an elusive Christ in whom he longed to have a secure faith. Behind the signature broad hat and the stern unsmiling visage was a tortured man.

The theme running through his six-volume A History of Australia was religion. Clark would show how the settlers of Australia brought with them three great faiths, Catholicism, Protestantism and the secular traditions that he described as the Enlightenment, and would chart what happened to those faiths in the ancient and unresponsive Australian environment. However as the volumes progressed, the theme shifted away from religion to Australia’s failure, in Clark’s eyes, to generate an authentic nationalism.

Manning Clark seemed disappointed that Federation was achieved by middle-aged lawyers and politicians talking about constitutional details instead of through a republican war of independence. Australians rushed to fight Britain’s wars; Australian public men grovelled for British honours. This theme of an Australia divided between those who took up the call of freedom and those who wallowed in all things British seemed to really bother his critics. For Clark the call of freedom was a call to take Australian history – its creations and failures and its heroes and villains – seriously. In this endeavour Britain was part backdrop and part script but not the whole story. Aboriginal Australia, geographic location and the local environment had to be in the mix as well.



Manning Clark in his study, circa 1988

Clark came to republicanism in search of an Australian identity that recognised a diversity of influences was receptive to criticism and more open to the wider world and its future. Deep in the soul of too many of their fellow Australians they saw an internalised colonialism that acted as a barrier to ethical judgement and creative endeavour. Such personality analysis was seen by many academics and politicians as an insult to many.

The National Dictionary of Biography obituary commented:

Thus he told our story with pride, while seeing our miserableness and failings, and excoriating them for what they were. To Manning, place was sacred, not only because the mighty dead had stepped there but because it was our native place from which we had drawn our being. He went on countless journeys through Australia, walked countless miles to see, to feel and to taste that place. He is the historian of the Australian place as well as its people.

In his biographer Professor Brian Matthews Manning Clark: a life (2008) is drawn a compelling portrait of the great historian, who attracted both critics and acolytes alike in equal number.

Manning Clark is renowned for his factual errors in his A History of Australia. It seems Clark disliked breaking the flow of composition in order to check facts, and his memory sometimes let him down. These errors were mercilessly denounced by Malcolm Ellis, an accomplished but cranky historian of colonial NSW but others also followed. Professor Ross Fitzgerald wrote that Clark:

was never an objectively inclined academic scholar. Thus his magnum opus, the six-volume A History of Australia, had more in common with the vision of 19th-century English writer Thomas Carlyle, whose three-volume History of the French Revolution was inspired by a distinctly personal vision spelled out in an epic narrative style.

Matthews argued in Manning Clark A Life that these factual errors in the end did not matter very much to the overall narrative endeavour.

Clark’s most recent biographer, Professor Mark McKenna also acknowledged in An Eye for Eternity (2011) that Clark was a historian who placed narrative ahead of facts. In “Being There. The strange history of Manning Clark”,  The Monthly, March 2007, McKenna  wrote:

Clark warned historians not to read what others had to say until they'd completed their early drafts, "and maybe not then". The duty of the historian was to create history anew from primary sources; he insisted that historians should never "start arguing with what others have to say". But Clark went much further than merely shying away from argument. In his histories, he could not even bring himself to discuss the research and work of others. To do so would only obscure the individuality of the historian's voice …that of the artist-hero who stands alone on the cliff and gazes out to sea, seeking sublime inspiration.

 McKenna reinforced this comment in Meanjin:

‘It is not the “facts” of history that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.’ … Clark understood that the true power of stories lay not in their fidelity to factual accuracy but in the impression—emotional, intellectual and spiritual—that they left behind. Stories that resonated, stories that demanded retelling and stories that carried allegorical power were indeed the stories that shaped us.

 The ANU Reporter, 12 June 1991 quoted from his friend and colleague from his teaching days at ANU, Professor John Moloney who said of Clark that:

In him coursed the blood that made Australia – an Australia “he so passionately wanted to get up and ‘have a go’ at being herself”.

Professor Manning Clark’s contribution and legacy continues in the ways that history figures in the public sphere. History is ultimately all about people, about individuals and how the great ideas instruct the narrative of their lives.

Time to reverse the conservative Restoration

Since the election of the LNP Newman Government in 2012, there had been a steady output of ideological revisionism aimed at bolstering the concept of monarchy in Queensland. Will the Palaszczuk Labor Government reverse the conservative Restoration?

ON 9 JULY 2012, I reflected in Independent Australia on the first 100 days since the Newman LNP Government was elected in Queensland.

At the time I wrote:

‘It’s worth remembering the ALP interregnum came to power in 1989 with the execution of the Bjelke-Petersen Government. Just over 22 years later, the conservative Restoration has begun moving the ideological clock back by changing Senior Counsel back to Queen’s Counsel and revisiting moving the Labour Day public holiday to late in the year rather than the Queen’s Birthday holiday.’

At the end of this article, I wondered what the next 100 days of the conservative Restoration would bring to Queensland:

‘Perhaps all state schools will be required to hang a picture of the Queen in their school hall (or principal’s office) or the playing of the royal national anthem will resume in cinemas before the feature. Goodness knows.’

As the Newman LNP Government came close to the end of their first year in office, it seemed the ideological clock had continued to spin backwards. On 14 January 2013, I looked back on how the high tea warriors of the LNP Newman Government had forced their love of monarchy and all its trappings on the people of Queensland after just under a year.



Queen's Birthday - A Good Day for the Australian Republic Movement - image courtesy Illustrated Shorts

In 2012, the Queen’s Birthday holiday in June was rebadged in Queensland as the ‘Queen’s Diamond Jubilee holiday’. The 2012 British bank holiday was held a week before the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee public holiday was held in Queensland. On 4 June 2012, a 1000 strong boat procession floated up the Thames River.

In July 2012, the newly-minted Queensland LNP Government changed the Queensland Government logo back to the Queensland Coat-of-Arms. The logo was introduced in April 2000 by the Beattie Government and was designed by architect Michael Bryce, the husband of Australia's previous Governor General, Dame Quentin Bryce. It was commonly referred to by public servants as the "Beattie burger", because the relaxed style of the logo looked like a hamburger with several chips or french fries sitting beside it.

The official opening on 3 August 2012 of Brisbane’s new Supreme and District Courts by the Attorney-General, Premier, Governor and Chief Justice saw the new court complex named Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law.

The Newman LNP Queensland Government showed its monarchist colours again with the announcement by then Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie at the Supreme Court’s annual Christmas Greetings event in Brisbane on Wednesday, 12 December 2012 that Senior Counsel (SC) would replace Queen’s Counsel (QC). Senior barristers were offered a ‘choice’ to call themselves ‘Queen’s counsel’. All but three took up the offer. Terri Butler, a Queensland lawyer who would go on to become the Federal Member for Griffith asked if this demonstrated a surge of monarchist sentiment. Her response was:

‘No. Rather it was a pragmatic financial decision in recognition that the old order is back in power.’

At a time when we should be casting aside period costumes and using plain-speaking language in courts, it appeared senior lawyers in Queensland wanted to divorce themselves from the people they represent. Anachronistic titles do nothing but add to the mystery of the law that making it a stranger to the people and them a stranger to it. The abolishing of Senior Counsel and reintroduction of Queen’s Counsel seemed a retrograde step that had nothing to do with the administration of the law and everything to do with the aggrandisement of the practitioners.

As Queensland moved into 2013 and the end of its first year in power, it became clear that the hand behind the conservative Restoration of monarchical language was the Queensland LNP Attorney-General, and second-term Member for Kawana, Jarrod Bleijie who had turned 33 on 25 January 2013.

At COAG in December 2012, then Premier Campbell Newman drew on the ghost of Joh when he reserved Queensland’s right as a Sovereign State to amend its own laws regarding the change to the royal succession to allow a first-born daughter of Prince William to inherit the throne before any later-born sons. Rather than deferring to the Commonwealth to make this change, Newman and Bleijie insisted that, because the states boast their own viceroys in the form of governors, then Queensland should be allowed to pass its own legislation. Theirs is a lone stand in refusing to refer state powers to the Commonwealth in an effort to maintain an individual relationship with the monarchy.

The then Attorney-General, Jarrod Bleijie stated:

‘Given the longstanding ties and relationships between the Crown and States, it is appropriate the States should preserve this relationship through their own legislation.’

The decision had the potential to throw a spanner in Commonwealth member nations achieving a unanimous decision so that royal succession laws could be changed. The Commonwealth’s ‘very loud and very clear’ legal advice was that there was one crown in Australia, represented by the Governor-General and state governors, not many crowns.

On 14 January 2013, I wrote that with the anticipated birth of a royal heir in 2013 the Queensland Government went into forelock tugging hyper-drive. The culmination of all this monarchical fawning was when Brisbane icons such as the Story Bridge, King George Square and Reddacliff Place were bathed in blue light to celebrate at the time of Prince George’s birth.

In 2013, we were to see an ideological attack on Labour Day in Queensland. The 2012 Queen’s Birthday long weekend in June was to be the last after the Bligh Labor Government shifted the Queen’s Birthday holiday to the first weekend of October, while retaining a one-off Queen’s Jubilee public holiday in June 2012. At the time, Premier Anna Bligh said all holidays, except for the Queen’s Birthday, marked significant dates and was punctuated with official ceremonies or significance.

All this was thrown out the window when legislation passed through the Queensland Parliament moving the Labour Day public holiday from the historically traditional 1 May to the first Monday in October and the Queen’s Birthday public holiday back to its previous June timing. The change in attitude towards the public holiday timetabling suggested the Newman Government was determined to take a conservative monarchical stand.

On 19 April 2014, we did but see them passing by when the royal travelling sideshow rolled into Brisbane. William, Catherine and George. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and their little prince. They came to Queensland – the state itself named in honour of George’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria – in a whirl of pomp, glamour, royal nappies and designer clothes and shoes.

The LNP teacup warriors hoped that by moving around the deckchairs and giving buildings and locations royal names it would help retain their grip on power. The renaming of the Brisbane North Bank precinct as Queen’s Wharf demonstrated their endeavours to raise the language of royalty in Queensland. Terri Butler, the new federal member for Griffith observed:

‘There’s a reason why conservatives like to stamp the monarchy onto our public institutions. It’s an assertion of the dominance of conservatism, and for that matter privilege and wealth, at the expense of labour.’

The architect of the monarchical revival in Queensland was Jarrod Bleijie who went missing in action in the last few months of the Newman Government during Operation Boring. But all of this effort by the Life Member of the Australian Monarchist League, Jarrod Bleijie, and his high tea warriors will not stop the rising demand for an Australian republic. Ultimately it simply made them look foolish. King Canute couldn’t hold back the tide nor could the Queensland LNP Government.

In the 1999 republican referendum, Queensland was by far the most pro-monarchy state in Australia, voting 37.44 per cent for a republic and 62.56 per cent against. The disbelief and public ridicule Prime Minister Abbott received after his own goal of awarding Prince Philip an Australian knighthood in the 2015 Australia Day honours lifted the veil from our collective eyes and exposed the fallacy of royalty. Even the Courier Mail became republican for a week or so.



But what will the new Palaszczuk Labor Government do in its first 100 days to swing the pendulum back towards an independent Australia? The Queensland ALP has a policy position on the commitment by the Australian people to the creation of an independent, free and enlightened Australia and there is certainly a great deal that can be rolled back including a re-look at Oaths of Allegiance.

There will no doubt be a kerfuffle in the media with the impending arrival of the spare to the heir Prince George but let’s not do lights on the Story Bridge. Although the good money is on James or Elizabeth, for the record, my prediction for the fourth-in-line in the order of succession to be Australia’s Head of State is Prince Richard or Princess Victoria.

It's all so ridiculous!

PM Abbott awards imperial bauble to Prince Philip: Time to end the farce

Just when you think Tony Abbott's decision in 2014 to restore imperial knighthoods couldn't become any more bizarre, the prime minister uses the Australia Day's honour list to award a knighthood to the Queen's consort Prince Philip.

THE MONARCHISTS have been asking themselves, with the Australia Day honours list announcement upon us and the Queen’s Birthday honours list in June, who should be nominated for an AK or AD award?

The real question is: would Prime Minister Tony Abbott dare name any knights ‘n dames in 2015 after the level of satire it inspired last year.

The answer is: "Yes".

In the lead up to Australia Day 2015. there had been no media about the awarding again of any Australian imperial honours. The Australian of the Year awards had been well publicised but not the possible "Knights and Dames" appointments.

On 27 March 2014, I wrote about how Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the former director of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, announced the return of imperial honours for Australians. On 19 March 2014, on the Prime Minister’s recommendation, Her Majesty The Queen approved amendments to the Letters Patent for the Order of Australia to reinstate appointment of Knights and Dames of the Order of Australia.

At the time, the PM said he believed this was:

"... an important grace note in our national life."

For the first time since 1986, “pre-eminent” Australians were to be honoured as Knights and Dames in the Order of Australia. 

David Morris, national director of the Australian Republican Movement described the return of knighthoods as

“... turning the clock back to a colonial frame of mind that we had outgrown as a nation.”

The three Australian "Knights and Dames" created last year were: The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, former Governor-General of Australia; His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd), Governor-General of Australia; and Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO, Governor of New South Wales.

Today it was announced the second and third AK’s to be awarded in the restored Knight of the Order of Australia division are His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston (retd).One is currently the Chair of the Council for the Order of Australia, and the other … well, the husband of the monarch.

As a palace spokeswoman said:

"Knights and dames in the Order of Australia are approved by the Queen on recommendation of the prime minister. We wouldn't comment further on the process."

Still, it’s rather glaring as to which has the greater conflict of interest.

The monarchists have been excited about turning the clock back and been suggesting names for knighthood such as tennis great Rod Laver MBE, the living Victoria Cross recipients, Australian Nobel Prize winners (even posthumous), previous GG’s, retired Generals and Chief Justices.

Interestingly, one of the only two pre-1985 AK’s living is Prince Charles and, with the provision that a knight can be a non-citizen, I’d suggested good money could be laid on Princes William or Harry receiving a knighthood in 2015 for having turned up in Australia a few times. On that logic, perhaps one should also be given to Prince George, who showed us exactly what he thinks of the ex-convicts with his instantly disdainful chuck of the toy bilby at Taronga Zoo. There’s even the depressing thought Rupert Murdoch (now a U.S. citizen) could be in line for a knighthood!

I was not far off though. Instead it was the Grandfather Royal, Prince Philip, who received an AK for his contribution to Australia throughout the Queen's 62-year reign and it was his his long life of service and dedication PM Abbott chose to be honoured by Australia. Special mention was also made of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards in Australia, which he said had positively influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Australians.

It was Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who axed knighthoods in 1975, only to watch Malcolm Fraser reinstate "Knights and Dames" a year later.

Then, in 1986, Prime Minister Bob Hawke abolished the category all over again. John Howard is understood to have rejected the idea of reinstating "Knights and Dames" on the grounds that the endless chopping and changing was undermining the dignity of the honour. Many of his advisers also believed the Liberal Party would be mocked and seen as out of touch with modern Australia. (Howard is reported today as saying he did not agree with the restoration of these titles and would be unlikely to accept one.)

In the Australian honours system, appointments to the Order of Australia confer recognition for outstanding achievement and service. The Knight/Dame of the Order of Australia is awarded for extraordinary and pre-eminent achievement and merit in service to Australia or humanity at large. It is now the nation’s highest award. Governors-General become a Knight or Dame of the Order of Australia by virtue of their appointment as Governor-General. In addition to Governors-General, there will be a maximum of four appointments a year, excluding honorary awards to non-Australian citizens.

However, when Prime Minister Abbott named outgoing Governor-General Quentin Bryce a dame and her successor General Peter Cosgrove a knight the satirists had a field day.

Australian historian James Curran wrote in the Canberra Times, 31 March 2014 that

'In the symbolic landscape of Australian civic culture, Tony Abbott’s restoration last week of Australian knights and dames perhaps stands as one of the most pompous, pretentious, nostalgic and self-indulgent prime ministerial decisions in a generation.'

The re-establishment of the Imperial honours was done quickly and without consultation by PM Abbott with his Federal front bench, let alone the first two recipients.

IA columnist Bob Ellis stated that Prime Minister Abbott wanted to distract and deflect, as well as punish and shame his Opposition counterpart and abruptly came up with his plan to ennoble Quentin Bryce.

Senior correspondent Barry Everingham wrote that former Governor-General Ms Quentin Bryce heard of her “elevation” on the ABC's 8.30am radio news and that the Queen heard from an aide who was contacted by a member of the Australian media. Everingham also observed that Prime Minister Abbott trashed vice-regal protocol in the last moments of the term of Quentin Bryce as Governor General, at the same time as causing grave offence to the monarch.

And as contributor Clint Howitt argued:

'Tony Abbott's abrupt decision to bring back imperial honours has driven a wedge through the body politic from the vice-regal office holders, through the rank and file members of all political parties and through the voting public.'

Imperial honours are divisive and are out of touch with modern, multicultural, egalitarian Australia.
Professor Geoff Gallop, the national chair of the Australian Republican Movement, said today:

“This decision to appoint more knighthoods is the end result of the politicization of the system under Tony Abbott. We had a perfectly good honours system run by Australians. Placing the Knights and Dames system over and above that is demeaning the worthiness and opinions of Australians."

On 27 March 2014, when PM Abbott introduced the archaic British aristocratic titles above the Australian national honours system, Australians flooded the Australian Republican Movement with such overwhelming numbers the Australian Republican Movement server was on the verge of crashing.

David Morris, national director of the Australian Republican Movement, stated at the time:

"Since Mr Abbott’s announcement about 'knights and dames', our annualised membership growth rate has spiked to about 5000%. Many are re-joining, having previously been members. Many are people who say they voted for Mr Abbott’s Government but are dismayed by his personal decision, apparently made only in consultation with the Queen."

Perhaps another own goal by the Prime Minister may be good for the movement towards an Australian republic.

In an Australia Day eve book launch speech, Leader of the Federal Opposition, Bill Shorten urged Australians to support an Australian republic and head of state, arguing it would reflect the nation's "modern identity, our place in our region and our world". We now appear to have two federal political leaders divided clearly along monarchy and republic lines.

Bill Shorten: move to a republic would reflect a modern and inclusive Australia

If our identity today is Australian, then surely our national honours should be thoroughly Australian. It’s time to make the case for Australia to have a head of state that is one of our own — not someone from the other side of the world.

We should be advocating a fully and unambiguously independent Australia, no knights or dames required. How ridiculous!

No more serial imperial baubles

The monarchists have been asking themselves with Australia day honours list announcement upon us and the Queen's Birthday honours list in June, who should be nominated for an AK or AD award? The real question is would Prime Minister Tony Abbott dare name any knights ‘n dames in 2015 after the level of satire it inspired last year.

 

In the lead up to Australia Day 2015 there had been no media about the awarding again of any Australian imperial honours. The Australian of the Year awards had been well publicised but not the possible ‘sirs n dames’ appointments.
On 27 March 2014 I wrote about how Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the former director of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy announced the return of imperial honours for Australians. On 19 March 2014, on the Prime Minister’s recommendation, Her Majesty The Queen approved amendments to the Letters Patent for the Order of Australia to reinstate appointment of Knights and Dames of the Order of Australia. At the time, the PM said he believed this was:

"... an important grace note in our national life."

For the first time since 1986, “pre-eminent” Australians were to be honoured as Knights and Dames in the Order of Australia.  David Morris, national director of the Australian Republican Movement described the return of knighthoods as

“... turning the clock back to a colonial frame of mind that we had outgrown as a nation.”

The three Australian ‘sirs n dames’ created last year were: The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, former Governor-General of Australia; His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd), Governor-General of Australia; and Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO, Governor of New South Wales.

The monarchists have been excited about turning the clock back and been suggesting names for knighthood such as Rod Laver MBE, the living Victoria Cross recipients, Australian Nobel Prize winners (even posthumous), previous GG’s, retired Generals and Chief Justices. Interestingly, one of the only two pre-1985 AK’s living is Prince Charles and with the provision that a knight can be a non-citizen.

I reckon good money could be laid on Princes William or Harry receiving a knighthood in 2015 for having turned up in Australia a few times. On that logic perhaps one should also be given to Prince George who showed us exactly what he thinks of the ex-convicts with his instantly disdainful chuck of the toy bilby at Taronga Zoo. There’s even the depressing thought Rupert Murdoch (now a US citizen) could be in line for a knighthood!

We'll see how close to the money I am tomorrow with a Royal snagging an Australian Knighthood.

37 Hilarious Responses To Knighthoods Being Brought Back To Australia

Vale Wayne Goss: Restorer, Reformer and Republican

Queenslanders were deeply saddened to hear news of the recent death of Wayne Goss, a life member of the Australian Republican Movement. The loss of this incredible man and proud Queenslander has left a gap in the ranks of those working towards securing an independent Australia.

Wayne Goss claiming victory in 1989

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO on 2 December 1989, 32 years of conservative rule in Queensland was brought to an emphatic end when 38-year-old lawyer Wayne Goss claimed victory in a Labor won landslide. Goss and Labor scored a 24-seat swing, the worst defeat of a sitting government up until that time in Queensland. Voters had clearly grown tired of the Joh era and the stench of corruption uncovered by Tony Fitzgerald QC. With the election of Goss and Labor, Queensland was rescued from the deep chasm of corruption, self-indulgence and arrogance it had fallen into.

Wayne Goss’s victory brought a breath of fresh air to government in Queensland. It brought light to the dark corners of government where corruption had taken root and led to a raft of reforms to rebuild the state and restore transparency to Queensland’s political system.

Once installed in office, he presided over the implementation of many of the reforms of the landmark Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption. He was absolutely driven to reform Queensland in terms of ridding the state of corruption and restoring the integrity of the electoral system. Establishing the Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission to abolish the electoral gerrymandering that had defined the state’s political environment throughout the Bjelke-Petersen years returned democracy to the people. His initiatives, in areas such as education, health, the environment and accountability, set new and higher standards for Queensland.

Like Gough Whitlam, Wayne Goss fought extremely hard to correct social injustices and bring about major progressive reforms such as decriminalising homosexuality, appointing Queensland's first female Governor, and abolishing the Queensland Police Special Branch.

Wayne Goss surrounded himself with people who would go on to have significant political careers. His chief of staff at this time was Kevin Rudd, later leader of the federal Labor Party and Prime Minister of Australia and his 1989 campaign director was Wayne Swan, subsequently treasurer and deputy prime minister of Australia. Also instrumental in his team in the early days of his premiership was Glyn Davis, who was appointed in the early 1990s to the Republic Advisory Committee.
Wayne Goss was a life member of the Australian Republican Movement.

The Queensland branch of the Australian Republican Movement was launched in 1993 during his Premiership. It was reported in 'Coalition sparks as Libs embrace republic', The Canberra Times, 30 March 1993, that Goss announced plans to remove references to the Queen and the Crown from all state oaths, affirmations and legislation. This was the beginning of an ongoing Queensland campaign.
On 28 April 1993, a new ministerial oath removing reference to the Queen was taken for the first time at the swearing in of the Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch. The Queensland federal politician Lavarch promised to

“... well and truly serve the Commonwealth of Australia', instead of 'well and truly serve Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors, according to law."

Michael Lavarch was later elected as a Queensland Constitutional Convention delegate for the ARM.
Goss stated in the ARM newsletter, 29 April 1993:

'There is no foreign power or benevolent monarch in some other part of the world watching over us. Australia’s on its own now and we must have a structure of government and a national identity that reflects that we are independent and we are Australians first and we are no longer attached to, or an appendage of, the British royal family.'

On 29 November 1995, Wayne Goss was guest speaker at a major ARM dinner at the Gateway Hotel, Brisbane. This marked his first major step in the republican debate. At this dinner Goss outlined

“... a plan to consolidate the Queensland Constitution and then to consult widely to prepare the constitution for a transition to a republic.”
~ (Armlet, Summer 1995/1996, p1)

ARM (Qld) supporter Gary Shadforth recalls how in May 2004 he

“... had the privilege of meeting Wayne at a Republic Upstairs function held many years ago in an old Brisbane pub held by the Queensland Branch of the Australian Republican Movement. Wayne was the keynote speaker. So many interesting and enlightening anecdotes with that deep rich voice. He certainly was a man who stood out in a crowd."

The last time Queensland republicans heard that “deep rich voice” was at the ARM (Qld) AGM held in the Red Chamber (old Upper House), Queensland Parliament on 24 November 2011. The guest speaker that evening was Courier Mail reporter Paul Syvret. Wayne Goss, as always, sat at the back of the chamber, however on this evening he was in full flight contributing his observations on the current political situation. His voice, as always, was a delight to hear.

Wayne Goss resigned as Premier and Leader of the Labor Party on 19 February 1996 and assumed something of an "elder statesman" role from the back benches.

He retired from politics at the 1998 Queensland state election. After his retirement from politics, Goss served in a variety of community and business roles.

Goss battled a series of brain tumours for 17 years, undergoing four operations to remove them. He died on 10 November 2014.

In a condolence speech to the House of Representatives on 26 November 2014, former Treasurer Wayne Swan said:

“With the passing of Wayne Goss, Queenslanders have lost one of their finest leaders. Wayne changed Queensland, the state we love, for the better. He dragged it into the sunlight after 32 years in the darkness. He was a leader of deep integrity. He was someone that we will all miss a lot. I remember Wayne as a role model for leadership and integrity and as a man who always held humble Queenslanders close to his heart.”

Wayne Goss was a premier worthy of celebration.

Vale, Wayne Goss.