The first question we lawyers asked ourselves when Queen Elizabeth II died was whether our QCs had suddenly become KCs. The answer was a de facto yes; they all jumped on their websites to make the change and the Australian Bar Association rushed out a press release confirming the seamlessness of the transition.
The legal truth is murkier. You see, when Queen Victoria died, her successor Kind Edward VII issued letters patent to all the then Queen’s Counsels, converting them by royal decree to King’s Counsels. That was because, it was understood, the title’s conferral was personal to the monarch — not something that succeeded with the crown.
However, when Elizabeth II’s father, George VI, died, no letters patent emerged and everyone just quietly changed from KC to QC without a fuss. Thus, waffled the Bar, had the convention evolved.
Sound like lawyerish rubbish? Well, it is, but ponder this, citizens of Australia: when you woke up on Friday morning, your allegiance had been changed for you, automatically, from Elizabeth II to King Charles III.
Nonsense? No. Citizenship conveys rights, but their price is allegiance to the body that guarantees those rights. In the modern world of the nation-state, we assume that means our country as an entity in itself. This was reflected in 1994 when the Keating government changed the wording of the Oath of Allegiance, compulsorily taken by new Australian citizens, from one pledged to the Crown to a pledge of loyalty “to Australia and its people”.
That’s all good, but what is “Australia”? Our constitution, the document that created this colonial nation and provides its legal foundation, is explicit about it. Australia, it states, is “one indissoluble federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”. It goes on: the Queen (Victoria) was to declare by proclamation the establishment of “the Commonwealth of Australia”. So she did, and so Australia as we know it came to exist.
The constitutional structure leaves no room for doubt. Federal Parliament is described as comprising the House of Representatives, the Senate and the queen. All members of Parliament are obliged to make an oath of allegiance to the monarch, personally. The executive power of the Commonwealth is also “vested in the queen”.
What all that adds up to is that whether you were born a citizen or naturalised, you owed your allegiance to Elizabeth II. Now you owe it to Charles III, a man who acquired it by birthright when his mum died.
Republicans have been squirming since Her Majesty’s death, caught on the horns of a dilemma they allowed to exist: the desire to push for the end of our subjection to a hereditary monarchy, but the non-desire to upset everyone who loved the queen.
No worries, they had thought, when she finally dies the problem of personal devotion will cease, and public interest in republicanism will be automatically revived. After all, nobody’s particularly enthusiastic about Prince Charles.
Except that Prince Charles is now King Charles, and QCs have morphed into KCs, and the mint is madly dusting off its plans to start making Charles-headed coins. Fifteen days of compulsory mourning have descended, Parliament is postponed, everyone’s wearing black and the monarchy is doing what it does best: smothering the discourse with ceremony and pomp. Charles will look magnificent in scarlet and ermine; like a king.
If you’re really a republican, then you will have felt instinctive discomfort when you realised that your ruler, your overlord, the person to whom you literally owe a duty of fealty, is a man who picked all that up purely by inheritance.
You will have felt something almost none of us have felt before, because Elizabeth II was on the throne before we were born or became citizens: how utterly anachronistic and insultingly demeaning is the concept of hereditary monarchy.
I mean, come on. Unless you literally believe in the divine right of kings, it’s obviously ridiculous. And yet, here we are.
How ridiculous? Consider the crime of treason. In Australia, that offence now lives in the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act. You’ll be guilty of treason if you kill or kidnap the sovereign, the heir apparent of the sovereign or the sovereign’s consort.
No change so far as Charles is concerned. But if you had tried to assassinate Prince William or Camilla last Thursday you would not have committed treason, yet on Friday you would. What was the difference? Their proximity to the man who inherited the throne had moved them overnight one chess piece to the right, taking our legal relationship to them to a different level. Weird, right?
Look, I’m sad the queen died; she did a top job in an impossible role. I’ll watch the funeral too. But her death forces us to confront the stupidity of our sovereignty, passed into the hands of a foreigner by virtue of his status as a child.
Embarrassment, if nothing else, should motivate us to want something a bit more grown-up than this.
Do you find our forced fealty to the Crown patronising? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Not sad she’s dead. Just sad because we are still tied to a ridiculous, anachronistic system because Turnbull was too pathetic to call for a boycott from Howard’s patently rigged discussion years ago.
Can’t stand the fawning over a non-representative and unaccountable family who couldn’t give a toss about Australia or it’s people. All of this noise because we are supposed to be surprised that a 96 year old woman died.
Time to kill off all ties to the monarchy. We don’t need it, and as soon as I was old enough to understand what it meant, I have despised it completely. Our head of state should be one of us. We are not the UK – which is likely to just be “England” soon the way things are going.
hear, hear!
When England is playing against Australia in any sport, which side do they hope will win?
You can’t blame Turnbull for being outmanoeuvred by sneaky ‘Honest’ John at the referendum. Turnbull did a great job as leader of the ARM – in fact, they could use him now! Or Michael Bradley could take the reins; in this piece he has summed up the case for a republic with such elegance and clarity that it would give even the staunchest monarchist cause for reflection. I suspect the early years of King Charles III’s reign (over us) will be a critical period for those of us wanting a republic, so we need to be ready. Problem is that right now the ARM is not ready. It’s going nowhere – the ARM needs new, more mature leadership, and it needs it now.
Totally agree. Peter Fitzsimons is not up to the task.
While I have sympathy with the republican statements about the absurdity of the situation, I find that I have moved on. While Chas is our nominal head and to bow and scrape to him is our duty, no matter how silly that is, I have come the opinion that while the republic debate is about our freedom from the past, I am far more concerned about our lack of freedom from the US. It is to them that we defer, Chas and his folk are but a remnant of the past but we are totally in thrall to the US and have surrendered any autonomy we may once have had to them and by so doing have painted a huge bullseye on ourselves should the US finally provoke Russia and China to the ultimate battle. Therefore, to my mind, the republican debate is meaningless, our safety comes a long way before that.
Well said, point made.
I am content to stick with CRlll as long as he doesn’t put the heavies on Australia to engage in some bloody war which is convenient to UK interests. We’ve previously done that on behalf of a couple kings, support has dwindled for an action replay in the 21st century.
CRIII … or as he is known to some of those antipodean republican brutes, “Chuck da T’ird”.
At least the UK has a Royal Head, albeit a bit ugly…but the USA is essentially a headless chook, running around squirting blood all over the place..!!
Our safety is vested in very dangerous hands indeed, and it will remain that way until the Murdoch empire collapses and another Aussie PM with the courage and vision of Whitlam turns up
Read you history of WWll and see just how willing the British were to let Australia be attacked by Japan. If it wasn’t for the USA things could have turned out very differently. To even imagine that Australia can stand on it’s own in a global conflict is ludicrous. To imagine the British are going to help is even more so.
There is so much to unpack in your comment. I will simply suggest that a good start would be to avoid getting ourselves involved in a global conflict purely as a result of ingratiating ourselves with a great power (currently the USA of course).
And if there’s a nutter heading that ‘great power’ the scenario is grim.
Remember the USA didn’t come to save Australia or Australians.
They had been chased out of the Philippines, and wanted an unsinkable aircraftcarrier and base as close to Japan as they could get.
Also if the events in Ukraine and other USA stuffups hasn’t dampened any belief that the USA would race to our rescue, it should have.
The ‘where-would-we-be-without-the-wonderful-US’ is one of the abiding myths of history.
The US did not enter WW2 to defend Australia or when Australia was threatened. They entered the war only when they were directly attacked on one of the islands in the Pacific they’d helped themselves to for a military base. And they used us a very useful staging post for their war on Japan. We just happened to be on the same side.
The US has a well-documented history of deserting its allies when they no longer serve a useful purpose for the US. But our politicians, media and general populace would rather comfort themselves with a fairy-tale.
Chas, as you call him has much more power over us than the USA. This was shown in the overthrow of Whitlam!
I think Chas and the US share the honours in that little coup.
Ancient Tradition demands that, like Eunuchs in the Imperial Court, the current batch of QC’s are interred with the Queen, and the King swears in a new cohort, loyal only to Himself. How could you trust men so fickle in their allegiance.
Michael, the first and last sentences of your excellent piece sum up my feelings to an absolute “tee”.
Like you, I am also sad that the Queen has died but lets keep things in perspective.
As far as I am concerned, Elizabeth was never “my Queen” and Charlie will never be “my King”. I stopped playing “Kings and Queens” before I finished primary school.
Never stood up as HER SONG was played at the cinema
Not only does hereditary rule feel like an anachronism, hereditary rule from half a world away feels even more so! The only comfort is the monarchy now is so bereft of real power that it’s hard to feel much for the nominal arrangement and the silly posturing that goes along with it.
It’s a hard pill to swallow that Australians prefer this arrangement to becoming a wholly self-governing one. I truly don’t get the fetishism of an anachronistic European institution. At least in the US, their comparable fetishistic worship of the constitution makes some sense. As someone born in Australia to parents born in Australia to parents born in Australia to parents born in Australia, what possible love could I possibly muster for the Crown?
No real love for the crown needed Kel.
Just a sort of idea that if something isn’t broken don’t mess with it. After all, (IMHO) , how does it affect any of us on a day to day basis?
We voted on this before and decided against change. This was mainly I believe because NOBODY could tell us how our “Head of State” would be determined, or with what powers.
The same arguments still apply,
Elected? If so with what powers ?
Selected? By whom and with what powers?
To my mind we sure as Hell don’t want an American Presidential system.
Nor do we want some drongo ex Politician given a sinecure, or some major donor to a party.
Until the process of appointment, length of appointment and power gets sorted out satisfactorily, I’m happy for some nice old lady to be head of state. I don’t even balk at her goofy looking offspring getting the gurnsey.
As long as they, or a local version, has NO direct power in or over the Nation’s or Citizens affairs what does it matter? They are only a symbol anyway, and of what I’m not sure.