They had compulsory voting in Australia when they had First Past The Post. The claim that it had to be introduced because of the unpopularity of AV is entirely false. As is something else, to which we shall return. But why compel people to vote? Based on a post yesterday, I suspect that it was part of an effort to force people to feel part of a single nation, as is certainly its purpose in Belgium, where, at least arguably, it has been only marginally less successful. Being Australian, as a primary identity, was not a popular concept until well into the fairly recent past, and it is still not desperately so.
Not until 1986, and then at the request of the Federal Parliament and Government as well as on the orders of the Thatcher Government's Australian-born but fiercely anti-monarchist and basically anti-Australian proprietor, did the British Parliament renounce its right to legislate for the individual Australian states as if they were still Crown Colonies, end the right of the British Government to be consulted as to the appointment of State Governors, and remove the right of appeal from State Supreme Courts to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The pressure from this had not come from the states, which had not been averse, in the Gough Whitlam years, to passing legislation reiterating the status of the Queen as Head of the State in question even if Australia abolished the monarchy at federal level. That remains the case, and the fact that no state (the federal territories are pointedly a different matter) has adopted a flag other than its historic variation on the Blue Ensign more than indicates that it would remain the case even in the event of the monarchy's abolition at federal level. More than suggesting, in turn, that most Australians really do not care all that much what happens at federal level; it is with their own states that they identify. No wonder that they have to be compelled to vote in elections to the Federal Parliament.
But could individual Australian states change their laws of succession? I don't know. But I do know that individual Commonwealth Realms can. I am the first to say that they should not. But they certainly have it within their power. Britain certainly should consult the rest. But she doesn't have to. And having very publicly decided to, what if they said no? The ones in the Pacific are perhaps economically too dependent on Australia to do anything other than they were told, but there is still more than a touch of "Britain in the Fifties" and "an island halfway between the England that they left and the Ireland that they left" just below the surface in Australia. And then there are the West Indies.
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The newly sworn in Governor of Victoria is an ethnic Russian from Lithuania whose parents were White Russian refugees and grandparents were White Russian martyrs. I think you are right, the monarchy would be retained by several states, maybe all of them, even if federal Australia became a republic. But republicanism is now polling well below 1999 levels, and that year we beat them by 55 points to 45. So don't believe London-based expat journalists. Nothing to worry about, really.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason that the official republican cause (advocated by ex-Prime-Minister Paul Keating and others) went down to defeat in 1999 was because of the de facto alliance between monarchists and direct-presidential-election republicans. There were not nearly enough outright monarchists in Australia in 1999 to have ensured a monarchist victory without the direct-election brigade's help, and I don't believe for a moment that there are any more monarchists in Australia 12 years later.
ReplyDeleteThen you'll belive absolutely anything.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, as pointed out in the main post, how many Australians would even care all that much? The Queen would remain Head of their State without reference to the federal institutions, she would continue to be represented by a Governor appointed without reference to those institutions and in no sense subordinate either to the Governor-General or to any President, and the flag that matters would remain a varitaion on the Blue Ensign. The Canberra bodies could do as they liked, they are so unloved that people have to be compelled to vote for them.
In any case, as in Britain, anti-monarchism now has a period feel to it. It belongs to a generation which is on the way out. And if the Australians or anyone else were ever going to do it, then they would have done it by now. The age of decolonisation was a long time ago.
I cannot speak for the situation in Britain, although my few dealings there with my fellow Catholics indicate a certain - how shall we put it? - discreet embarrassment when the topic of the Duchess of Cornwall's previous living spouse comes up. (Or is divorce now considered laudable by Mr Lindsay's - and my - co-religionists in the UK? More laudable, at least, than smoking and 'racism'?)
ReplyDeleteBut I can assure Mr Lindsay (whether he wishes to accept it or no) that in Australia the situation is exactly as I stated before. In other words, official republicanism going down for the count in 1999 purely because of a monarchist-direct-election alliance.
This has nothing to do with the "period feel" considerations apparently so important to Mr Lindsay. This is a fact which was attested to on all sides at the time of the 1999 poll.
Anyone who is prepared to believe that, for example, the French monarchy in the late 18th century would have benefited from a Bourbon-Hébertist alliance against Robespierre will, in Mr Lindsay's own words, believe anything. Because that, and that alone, was what doomed the latter-day Robespierres in Australia 12 years back.
I was in Australia at the time (and am still). Mr Lindsay was not, and I should be interested to know if Mr Lindsay has ever visited Australia at all.
The Duchess or Cornwall's first marriage (to a Catholic, in a Catholic church) has been annulled by Holy Mother Church.
ReplyDelete1999 was about the last time that such a referendum could ever realistically have been held. The monarchy was massively unpopular, not least in Australia, in the middle of Queen Victoria's reign. But it certainly wasn't, including in Australia, very soon after that.
That Gillard can come up with nothing better than a lame "when the Queen dies" more than illustrates the point. Such a position, also the only one that British anti-monarchists ever articulate these days, is wholly incompatible with any principled opposition to the monarchy.
Although it is notable that the rise in anti-monarchist sentiment accompanied the rise of neoliberal economic policy and neoconservative foreign policy among those who thus found the logical conclusion of their Sixties selves, the fact is that people whose era was from the Sixties through to the end of the Eighties are simply no longer in the ascendancy. Here, in Australia, or anywhere else.
The wedding of a twentysomething prince will do much to endear him, his ageing father and his aged mother to his contemporaries, and next year's Diamond Jubilee will secure the monarchy for another hundred years everywhere where it still exists. They have been here before, and they have survived. Since you are alive now, do not expect to live to see another referendum on the monarchy.
And when I say "everywhere where it still exists", I do not only mean at federal level where Australia is concerned. The same indifference or outright hostility towards federal institutions which has led to compulsory voting more than suggests that the real battle would be to remove the Queen as Head of each of the States severally, and to change each of their flags to anything other than a variation on the Blue Ensign. That is why no one is attempting to do so.
It is quite a thought: the neocon dream of vast federal "republics" in Europe, Australasia and North America, but with the same person still as Head of the State of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (or each of the entities into which it might have carved up), Head of the each of the States in Australia (and of the State of New Zealand), and (since something similar applies) Head of each of the States that were previously the provinces of Canada, with the possible exception of Quebec, but by no means necessarily or even probably so.
Is Leonard a London-based expat journalist? Katthy Lette's latest intervention, re: the Royal Wedding, has been too laughable for words.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, annulment. I was wondering when that would crop up. That particular procedure is bitterly known, to anyone old enough to have the slightest awareness of preconciliar Catholicism, as "Catholic divorce." (In 1965 the Church granted 338 annulments to Americans; in 2002 she granted 50,000 [Kenneth Jones, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators]. Very useful to assorted Kennedy adulterers and other such fearless avatars of Catholic standards.) Is that really the best that defenders of the House of Windsor's current, uh, marital arrangements can do?
ReplyDeleteAnd no, Anonymous, I am not London-based (I'm Melbourne-based), I'm not an expat, and I'm not a journalist. Nor am I even remotely interested in what pagans like Lette have to say about anything.
Glad to hear it.
ReplyDeleteIf the Church annuls a marriage, then She annuls a marriage. There is nothing post-Conciliar about it, except that since the Sixties far more people have manifestly contracted nullifiable marriages.
Prince Charles's first marriage could perfectly easily have been annuled in Catholic canonical terms. At least one party never had the slightest intention of being faithful, and at least one party (the other one) was not sufficently mature to be able to understand properly what was going on.
The Church can, of course, nevertheless recognise the children of such a marriage as legitimate if they were conceived and born in their parents' good faith. She has, for example, so recognised the children of the first marriage of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Who, as it happens, is now remarried to the Head of the House of Hanover.
Plus the Union Jacks on several Canadian provincial flags. The Queen is also head of each of them separately just as she is of each of the Australian states.
ReplyDelete