Vice-Regal Saint: They only need be anti-republic
After years of defending the Crown in Australia my views have developed a great deal (especially in the last few months).
I have come to this understanding; The Australian people will never be enthusiastically monarchist as they once were so we must develop our strategies and explain to people the following:-
One only has to be anti-republic and accept the constitutional system we have.
A president would mean yet another level of government with a separate mandate to the government of the day.
The Queen’s only role in Australia is to appoint the Governor-General on the advice of our Prime Minister (and State Governors on the advice of the State Premiers).
The Australian Governor-General is Australia’s Head of State – This was stated by the Australian High Court as far back as 1907!
Because the Queen succeeds to the thrown by accident of birth she is above party politics, and because our Governor-General is also a representative of the Sovereign he/she is also above party politics.
To establish a republic would coast many millions of dollars, money that could be spent else where.
The Crown is an institution that we share with many countries, not just the United Kingdom
We have already had a vote on a republic in 1999
I could go on but these are the main points to make.
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8 comments:
I'm not sure I agree that Australian will never support the Monarchy. This latest poll shows 64% support in the youth of the country. Support, not merely indifference. I think in a few decades if this current trend continues Australia will mature and be at peace with its Monarchical heritage. Of course the opposite could happen, but I do believe that most republicanism is fuelled by a baby boomer hatred of Britain, rather than any real anti-Monarchist trait in the Australian psyche.
As to your points and strategies I agree entirely, and add one more:
A vote for a presidential republic is a vote for more politicians and more election campaigns all at vast expense.
Lord Best, remember I said people will not be "enthusiastically monarchist", I think that is true.
Ah, so you did, my apologies.
I am sure we can fight back the republican attacks on our Australian Monarchy. Since the republican gathering in April, when "a" republic was wished by a 99 percent vote, we have seen a remarkable Monarchist awakening. We all know, we have to win the next referendum, because should the republicans win, they will not give Monarchists a second chance. I am surprised that in the past couple of weeks, opinion polls show an increase in Monarchists.
If we see another referendum. The support just is not there, and no government is going to force a referendum on the public when it soomed to failure. Some of the polls in '99 were showing up to 80% support, apparently.
Here is an interesting thing. I have been looking through the various main players websites of the republican movement. I could not find any forums, comments section or mechanisms for feedback whatsoever. Not that I was going to use them, but what kind of movement does not have an online forum in this day and age?
David Byers is pretty well right. Australians will never be the enthusiastic royalists/monarchists that they were in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The 64% figure is not representative of most Australian 14-17 year olds and I very much doubt that this percentage will last into the adulthood of those adolescents polled. The best tactic for Australian monarchists is to try to maintain the status quo by stressing to the electorate that there is no real need for change and the expense involved if there was such change and that expanded government would result, etc. As David Byers has outlined here. As for Australian republicanism being fuelled by Australian baby boomers' hatred of Britain, this is arrant nonsense. Britain simply does not loom that large in the Australian national psyche for that to occur. And anyone who has lived in Australia over the last 30-40 years will know that what fuels Australian republicanism clearly and overwhelmingly is Australian nationalism, mixed with the hard left-wing or socialist beliefs of many Australian republicans. Antipathy towards Britain would account for only the tiniest fraction of republican sentiment in Australia.
I will not rest until the whole of the Anglosphere has been properly restored as part of the Realm.
I write this as a US Citizen, sitting in California.
Aim high.
As an American, sitting in Michigan, within sight of Canada across the river, with the Ontario Red Ensign flying, I say that to give up a stable Constitutional Monarchy for the power-abusing Presidential "Republic" we have become would be shameful.
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