It worries me that the former head of the Australian Republican Movement is now the leader of the opposition. He is now charged with the responsibility of providing an alternate viewpoint to our social engineer government. Given that his cause de jour prior to entering representative politics was the formation of an Australian Republic, and our current government’s enthusiasm to discard the inherently separated nature of our head of state and legislature, who now is the voice of the majority of Australians who rejected this very issue in referendum in 1999?
Update I
Turnbull claims that he will not support a new referendum until the reign of the current monarch is ended. Her Majesty is now the oldest reigning British monarch ever. How long do we have before an Australian public, gullible enough to elect Comrade Kev, will again have this issue forced upon them with all of the requisite emotive symbolism they seem so keen to embrace?
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2 comments:
Hi Richard, 'republicans' insist on dragging the Queen and her children into this, when first and foremost it is about whether to change Australia's system of government.
By branding conservatives 'monarchists' they even suceeded in killing real debate.
It just isn't about the popularity or otherwise of the monarch, and certainly not the red herring of 'foreign dependence'. It is simply about change - Why? How? To what?
And the old adage, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
Bruce,
I've argued for a long time that no other model gives us the separation of a head of state from the body politic like a foreign monarch with no real power anyway. Any move to have a popularly elected head of state woud only attract exactly the type of person we don't want in that job.
Besides, the Westminster System of Constitutional Monarchy has evolved over many hundreds of years. The main reason I think we ought to hang onto it is because it works.
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