Now as many of you know I was born in West Yorkshire and while I can never forget my birthplace I am a proud Australian and parochial Queenslander… I came upon this little gem yesterday…and it got me thinking again…
Always concerned about staying in touch with her subjects, Queen Elizabeth II has invited Britain’s royal family to follow her example and tighten the purse strings during the financial downturn.
The 82-year-old monarch has warned her grandsons Princes William, 26, and Harry, 24 – third and fourth in line to the throne – that all ostentatious signs of living it up would be inappropriate, according to newspapers.
British subjects are apparently in no mood to see the young royals partying in exclusive London nightclubs while the kingdom sinks into recession, the cost of living rockets and jobs are lost.
“Whatever is the mood of the nation, she (Queen Elizabeth) tries to go along with that mood,” Nicholas Davies, an author of several books on the monarchy, told AFP.
The sovereign has a personal fortune of STG320 million ($A713.97 million), according to The Sunday Times newspaper’s 2008 Rich List, but is not a spendthrift.
“She’s not a flamboyant character and never has been,” Davies said.
“She is not someone who has gone and spoiled her children, because she doesn’t believe in spoiling them. She would expect them all (the other royals) to follow her example this Christmas.
“Children or grand-children, they will all behave in the same way. It is unlikely that this coming season we will see William and Harry going out to nightclubs, getting blind drunk and fooling around with attractive girls.”
Now, I have never hidden the fact that I find it rather silly that Australia has its Head of State situated in a castle (oops! CastleS) in England, Scotland and Wales, half a world away.
Members of the Royal Family rarely visit the Colony these days unless they leech the public purse for seats to the Rugby Union or Commonwealth Games or some such “special occasion”
Kevin Rudd’s “Talkfest” did come up with one suggestion that sparked some intererest – that Australia revisit the question of a Republic…
The article above explains the “silliness” (to me anyway) of the concept of a royal family in the 21st Century (or any other Century for that matter) – especially someone elses royal family – after the Republic Referendum was lost, even the Pommies I spoke to (I was in the UK in 2005) couldn’t understand what had happened…
….I often refer to Malcolm Turnbull as Mr Turncoat…as the leader of the Republican Movement and a supposedly outstanding barrister I could never understand why such a strong public following for a Republic could suddenly go so pear-shaped…
…strange that Malcolm is now Leader of the Opposition? But then I was taught early in my career that “…nothing in business happens by coincidence…” and I’m sure that applies equally or more in politics…
Anyway a couple of “starter” questions:
Do Australians still want a Republic?
What voting model would be best (this was the stumbling block before)?
Are there any advantages in staying with The Firm (royal family)?
Could the States cope without a Governor?
Is this an opportunity to rewrite the Constitution, or would we simply do word replacement (eg remove Queen’s Representative and replace with President or simply Head of State)?
There’s a lot more questions to ask I know – it’s far more than, “…yesterday I couldn’t spell Republican – today I are one…”
Over to you…
TB QUEENSLAND
Filed under: Uncategorized
For people such as yourself and myself TB it matters not. I think those whose ancestors were brought out here as convicts it may matter. (wink)
TB Just a thought and comparison. Could Blogocracts survive without its two resident poms (both Yorkshire men as well). Honestly TB, I think not (LOL)
Now, now JMc…
reb, might need some editing re heading and post links? Ta
TB
Yep – we should be come a republic.
The first referendum Q should simply be “should australia have an Australian Head of State rather than the British Monarch as the head of State?” (or something similar). The model can then be debate at a Constitutional Convention. The problem with the last referrendum was that the question required a vote on the actual model which many republicans thought was flawed. Accordingly, Republicans voted no for somehting thay actually thought should have been a yes if presented correctly.
My preferred view is to abolish states and move to larger regional councils (based on bioregions). The lower house would remain and roughly based on existing electoral boundaries. The Upper House would be scullted and instead replaced by a Council of Elders type arrangement consisting of 9 persons representing Upper Nth East (Gympie Nth, Kimberley (down to just Nth of Perth), NT, Sth West (WA and SA nullabor). Murray Darling, Eastern Coast (Gympie to Taree), Lower East Coast (Hunter to Wollongong), Sth East (Nowra & Vic (excluding Murray Darling) and Tas. These Councillors would be elected from people within those regions. The Council would elect the ‘President’ from the 9 or alternatively, the role of president could alternate eveery 12 months around the Councillors.
This is a bit
“reb, might need some editing re heading and post links? ”
Nah, I like it the way it is..
And blogocrats wouldn’t be the same without you and John McP.
Despite the fact that you do both always seem to have a helluva lot to complain about!
Dave55:
“The first referendum Q should simply be “should australia have an Australian Head of State rather than the British Monarch as the head of State?”
Or a simple “yes” or “no” question…..
“Isn’t it about time we had our own queen?”
TB @4.
I see what you mean now…fixed…
reb @ 7
LOL – Are you putting up your hand?
BTW – mine actually is a yes or no question. When I wrote that it actually occured to me how difficult it is to frame a question as a simple yes or no that accurately reflects what is being asked. A simple – “Should Australia become a republic?” is not sufficient because the word ‘republic means different things to different people (ie the Star Wars model ended up being a dictatorship and we don’t wan’t the Sith ruling us).
Also – don’t know what the ‘this is a bit’ is at the end of my post is all about. I can’t even blame IE8 because I shifted to Firefox (my attenpts to install Chrome were thwarted again) – just my stuff up I guess.
Thanks! sreb!
It would be good if we could get the Republic and the Bill Of Rights happening ASAP.
The only problem that the people have is…getting any power away from the tightly gripped claws of the politicians – they want to have the say over everything that happens in this country and refuse to countenance anything that even looks like power to the people. The pollies keep saying that a Representative Democracy is enough, that they represent us and do our bidding…but that is not what happens in reality.
Of course most Australians wanted a republic with a directly elected president (or at least have the option on the table), which is what stymied the Turnbull led ARM, the pollies want to choose the head of state and not give the choice to the people.
I’d prefer to be a Republic. But I DO NOT want the circus we just witnessed in the US. Our system of Government works very well (at least compared to all other systems) which is why I voted for the Republic presented at the last referendum. Now maybe Dave55 has it right with his 2 questions but really that’s not much different to what Howard did. I think the vote is split roughly into thirds….Status Quo, Appointed Pres, Directly elected Pres. Now in Dave’s scenario, the Status Quo mob would probably vote for the Appointed Pres if Q1 gets up, but knowing that, will the Directly Elected mob vote yes to question 1? They didn’t last time, and the outcome’s the same.
kittylitter
Of course most Australians wanted a republic with a directly elected president (or at least have the option on the table), which is what stymied the Turnbull led ARM, the pollies want to choose the head of state and not give the choice to the people.
I’m still openminded on this. Either way we will still end up with a politician as HoS. For me, the question of whether or not they should be directly elected or elected from the parliament depends on what powers the president will have. I have a suspicion that the most tallented people wopuld come from politicians electing the person rather than us voting for them directly; our ever increasing obsession with the celebrity is more likely to result in us voting in an ex-Aus Cricket captain as a PM rather than someone with actual policy skills. Now this is fine if the position is figurehead only (similar to current GG and Queen) but not so good if they have their fingers on the purse strings and defence forces.
James,
I thing the yes-no plebicite is essential and then broad sacale discussion on the various options. Most people would probably be in favour of abolishing states (provided we could still have the Shefield shield and State of Origin Matches) as part of the shake-up but how this is done will need a lot of time for people to digest. I suspect that we have to go through two major constitutional changes – the first is the Australia HoS with minimalist changes (probably Politician appointed) and then a more comprehensive change which involves the States and method of appointing the HoS. The first can happen relatively quickly but the latter pobably needs around 10 years of open discussion before a popular model occurs.
My model above is just for discussion. It emerged from a constitutional convention I attended before the republican referendum and has some appealing aspects, not the least of which IMO is the alignment to bioregions and the implicit reflection of environmental considerations in the constitution.
Why stop there?
Draw a line through the middle of this continent and have a Northern Australia and a Southern Australia who have their own constitutions and governments and most importantly treasury!
The southerners always whinge about the tax take that us northerners get, well then they will get all of what they contribute so then there will be no excuse for not fixing up the abortion that their states are in.
Ted Egan for the first president of the Republic of Northern Australia!
Question.
If you have a plebicite, does that mean that only plebs are allowed to vote?
I think we should have a publican as head of the republican.
Make mine a guiness thanks champ.
Maybe Sir Les Patterson? He’d make a good role model….
“And blogocrats wouldn’t be the same without you and John McP.
Despite the fact that you do both always seem to have a helluva lot to complain about!”
You know what they say about people who live in glass houses reb? We feel comfortable here simply because we are in the fine company of the biggest pack of whingers in the blogosphere.
100,000 HITS WELL DONE BLOGOCRATS!!!!
I am against a repuiblic. I like Australia the way it is now as a memeber of the commonwealth.
20. shaneinqld
Shane, we would still be members of the Commonwealth of Nations – royalty is not a pre-requisite…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Nations_by_name
Shane, in all honesty I don’t think that we as a nation are mature enough yet to become a republic.
My earlier post was an example of the can of worms that could be opened if we prematurely go down that road…I was quite bemused watching the talkfest all weekend on my computer especially when there was the republic group hug at the end.
Being a realist I want to know how a vision can be achieved instead of trotting out “we should do this or that!”
Experience dictates that nothing worth while is easy…in fact it is a struggle and longevity is needed to succeed.
I look at the history of republics being born…it is usually through revolution or because of some despot that this comes about.
I’m sure somewhere in history it has also come about due to great people…be it politicians or great statesmen but I don’t see any in this country that could elevate to such a great height due to the self intrinsically entrenched party machines that will use any method necessary to maintain the mediocre status quot.
The people have been reduced to feed off their teats instead of thinking or uniting for the greater benefit I’m afraid.
I liked the good old days when we had Mr Howard as our Prime Minister and Mr Bush as our President.
We need the Queen & the fanciful concepts of exclusivity embodied by royalty even less than we need the archaic, mythological & prohibitive concepts of religion & god.
I’d like to nominate the editors of this blog as our heads of state.
They could be joint queens. Being a “joint queen” would also lead to opportunities for a range of magazine photos.
Womans Day etc would be interested. Ralph magazine have a very recent history of paying for photos ops from this type. All the demographics in between would join the queue.
What sort of “joint” are you inferring here, Tom?
Nicely picked up TB.
You know, people with a sense of humour apparently call this a “pun”. Sometimes prefixed with the word “lame”.
27. Tom of Melbourne
…and duck rhymes with…? Deep, Tom, very deep..
I have been reading numerous insightful comments about the monarchy and the maintaining thereof. Yet when push comes to shove, sorry if this is shallow but I cannot imagine Australia’s Head of of State being Charlie and his tam*on Queen. With due apologies, but as Her current Maj knows..her offspring have stuffed up all Her dedication etc etc.
The current Royal’s interest in Australia is zilch.
Just a thought, but I believe that we can choof along quite nicely minus Governors General however given the nature of Australian politics viz party oriented that a replacement for a GG (called a President or whatever) needs to be non-party political. That is, not the leader of the party in power but elected via popular vote.
And now must close for the evening before hubby starts looking over my shoulder and saying..Aren’t you finished yet? Hint, hint.
“I’d like to nominate the editors of this blog as our heads of state.”
Why thank you Tom, and I accept your gracious nomination.
Keep this up, and your loyalty shall be well rewarded – perhaps with one of my highly sought after CDs.
Although in terms of being a “joint queen” with joni, I can anticipate a few, how shall I say, “differences of opinion” developing.
With me, being somewhat akin to the Bette Davis acerbic kind of queen, to joni’s more Joan Crawford like, sensitive humane approach.
At any rate anyone that disagrees would be taken away and executed.
“Guards, off with his head!”
Rather than Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, I was thinking that our very own Schapple or Mercedes are the models of “joint queens”.
…to joni’s more Joan Crawford like, sensitive humane approach…
Mommie Dearest?
Sensitive and humane wasn’t how her kids described her!