At a reception held for Queen Elizabeth II in Parliament House in 1963, then prime minister Robert Menzies delivered a remarkable speech describing the queen as the “living and lovely centre of our enduring allegiance” and himself as “prime minister — your prime minister, ma’am”, before closing on the words, “I did see her but passing by, and yet I love her ’til I die”.
The obsequiousness radiating from that speech has powered a lot of monarchist thinking in the country ever since. Since Elizabeth passed away last week at the age of 96, that cohort has been coping as well as one might expect.
Tony Abbott lead with a piece in The Australian which argued: “Probably not a single death in human history will be as widely felt as that of Queen Elizabeth II.” Which is a pretty wild sentiment for someone who believes Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to atone for the sins of humanity. Nick Cater, Australian columnist and Menzies Research Centre executive director, marvelled at “the eternal miracle of the Crown” and closed with another Menzies quote:
The present Queen, who is the most remarkable monarch since the first Elizabeth, has done so much to strengthen the position of the Crown and to inspire general respect for it that I am constantly horrified to find that some alleged intellectuals in Australia want to have a republic. I hope they fail dismally. I am proud to name myself a loyal servant of the Queen.
State member for Kew Tim Smith’s response has been to flood his Twitter feed with royals content and has shifted his set-up thus:
Initially he shared a letter he’d written to the new king, swearing “by almighty God that I, and the people of Kew, will be faithful and bear true allegiance to you, our Sovereign, Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Australia”.
For whatever reason, the tweet sharing that letter has since been deleted.
Peter Malinauskas, the world’s most-shredded premier, asked his constituents to “turn on their porch lights” to honour the late queen, which is apparently a thing — and a particularly easy way to claim as a symbolic gesture something that for most people was going to be doing anyway.
We should note that, of course, some people are keeping a sense of perspective. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton put out a tribute saying there had never been a “more decent human being” than the queen, but kept an eye on what’s important — warning the incoming king that he ought to stay out of the politics of climate change now he’s on the throne.
News flash, Charles is informed that Scott Morrison had himself crowned as Charles III over the weekend, “just in case”.
Belly laugh!
The death of great monarchs in the past were often celebrated with the sacrifice of large numbers of their slaves, wives, concubines, horses, cattle, pigs, chooks, corgis, and so on. This was to ensure they would be well set up in the next life. Reading the orgiastic squeals of eternal loyalty above suggests we have some volunteers for those funereal support roles.
Perhaps we could sacrifice Tony Abbott.
He’d be an ideal candidate for a full on auto-de-fe.
Considering the damage he did to this country such an Act of penance is long overdue.
Here here. Abbott, Smith and that gutter rag Herald Sun are sickening. They delight in hierarchies and everyone knowing their place.
The late queen, personally charming, was the symbol of a royalist history, with much murder, theft, slavery, occupation. Hmm.
I vote we give the Queen a posthumourous Knight Hood. I am sure the Mad Monk will support it. She deserves it after being traipsed all over the UK in a grisly proof of death tour. Or is she foxing?
It’s a waxwork body. She Herself is alive and well. This was the only way she could hand over to the boy without it looking really bad, according to the royal PR team. Taking into account the fact that she is expected now to live to be 138, having started snacking on cord blood before either her Mum or husband. The son has been on it from a very early age, and could live, they now think, to be 310. While this is obviously a good thing, continuity-wise, the Palace thinks the hoi polloi might soon smell a rat, and take a dim view. Times not being what they were, it is even possible that “Like hell” might be added to each line of the national anthem.
Cor blimey! You wouldn’t Adam and Eve it. There was I the other day dahn the frog and toad, ‘appily queuing up in the rain for some nice kippers, and I sez to meself, bleedin heck, I sez, I’m only going to live to be 80, an’ most of that in a bleedin’ queue. An’ there ‘e is, ‘is royal bleedin’ ‘ighness, never been in a queue, an’ ‘e looks like livin’ for bleedin’ evvah! Still, mustn’t grumble. But it’s orright fer some, ain’t it? Yeh, ‘alf a mild, Harry, an’ not so bleedin’ cold this time. That last one fair give me the shivers, wot wiv me wet feet. Don’t want chillblains like my old missus, she don’t ‘arf go on…
Sullen Dutton with his gratuitous advice to the King “keep away from talking about climate change”. Dutts is totally unfit for high office. Why does he ignore all the current evidence?
Surely, you know by now that the Liberals don’t “do” evidence.