Crikey’s royal correspondent Barry Everingham writes:

Any
parallel between the birth of Mary Donaldson’s little prince and
Australia’s constitutional arrangements is specious to say the least.
Denmark’s royal family is Danish; the family lives in Denmark and when
any of its members travel abroad they represent Denmark. We, on the
other hand, are lumbered with a foreign non-resident head of state who
makes sporadic expensive visits which hardly cause a ripple – and when
our cricketers lose to her home side she congratulates the winners and
ignores her Australian team.

Our Head of State in represented
here by eight viceroys, who cost a bomb and whose jobs in the main are
ribbon cutting and fete openings; the job of the main viceroy based in
Canberra has been usurped by the prime minister, who is everywhere the
viceroy should be. This weekend, John Howard was in Darwin scoring
political points when farewelling Australian troops before they were
sent off to do the bidding of George W Bush in Iraq. The viceroy would
have done it better and on behalf of all Australians.