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Many see Australians’ respect and affection for the late Queen Elizabeth II as the country’s biggest obstacle to becoming a republic with its own head of state.
Now, with a pro-Republican Labour government in power following her death, Australia’s constitutional relationship to the British monarchy will be openly debated again for the first time since the change was rejected in a 1999 referendum.
During her long reign, the Queen has been connected to Australia in unprecedented ways.
In 1954, she became the only reigning British monarch to visit Australia. Such is her star power, seen by an estimated 70 per cent of Australians during her gruelling two-month journey with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, which spanned 57 far-flung towns. She visited 16 times, the last time in 2011 when she was 85 years old.
Her face is the only monarch to appear on Australian currency since the introduction of decimal currency in 1966, when the Australian dollar and cents replaced the British pound, shilling and pence.
Her eldest son, King Charles III, was formally declared head of state of Australia in a ceremony at Parliament House on Sunday, which ended with a 21-gun salute.
Anthony Albanese, who describes himself as the first candidate with a “non-Anglo Celtic name” who ran for prime minister in the 121 years in office, started his campaign for the Australian Republic Lay the foundations of the Australian Republic. opposed for many years.
Mr Albanese created the new position of Assistant Minister of the Republic and appointed Matt Thistlethwaite to the position in June. Mr Thistlethwaite has said nothing will change in the Queen’s life.
The prime minister said the republic referendum was not a priority during his first three-year term in government.
He has already planned to hold a referendum during his current term to write Aboriginal voices into Australia’s constitution. While details have yet to be hammered out, Voice will provide a mechanism for Aboriginal representatives to speak to Parliament on laws affecting their lives.
Mr Albanese has turned a deaf ear about questions about the Australian Republic since news of the Queen’s death broke in Australia on Friday.
“This is not the time to talk about our system of government,” he told the ABC on Sunday. “It is time for us to pay tribute to the life of Queen Elizabeth, who lived a wonderful life, a life of devotion and loyalty, including to the people of Australia, for which we admire and mourn.”
Opposition leader and monarchist Peter Dutton has similarly sidestepped questions about why Australia needs a king.
The Australian Republican Movement, an organisation aimed at making Australia a republic and not affiliated with any political party, has been widely criticised for its political statements made shortly after news of the Queen’s death.
The statement referred to the Queen’s comments surrounding the 1999 referendum which voted to maintain the British monarch as Australia’s head of state.
“The Queen supported Australians’ right to be a fully independent nation during the referendum… She said she ‘has always been clear that the future of the Australian monarchy is an issue for the Australian people and them to decide alone, through democratic and constitutional means’,” the statement said. Say.
That referendum largely failed because Australians were divided on what kind of president they wanted. The monarch is represented in Australia by the Governor-General, who has been an Australian citizen for decades. Governors are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister.
The referendum recommends that the monarch and the monarch’s representatives be replaced by a president elected by at least two-thirds of the politicians in parliament. But many Republicans wanted voters to elect the president as they did in the United States, and so joined monarchists in opposing the republican model proposed at the time.
The small Green Party, an influential party in the Senate, where neither party holds a majority, has also been criticized for raising the issue within hours of the Queen’s death.
“Now Australia must move forward. We need a treaty with Aboriginal people, we need to be a republic,” Greens leader Adam Bant tweeted on Friday. Australia is rare among ex-British Empire countries without treaties with Aboriginal peoples.
Support for the Republican movement surged in 1975 when Governor John Kerr used the powers of Queen Elizabeth II to sack Labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to end the constitutional crisis. It is suspected that the British royal family had instructed Mr Kerr to overthrow the elected Australian government.
Historian and Whitlam biographer Jenny Hocking has fought a four-year legal battle to get the National Archives of Australia to release communications between Mr Kerr and Buckingham Palace in 2020. The lower court accepted letters between the monarch and governor-general, two central figures in Australia’s constitution, which are personal and may never be made public.
But the High Court ruled in a 6-1 majority in Ms Hocking’s favour allowing the letters to be released.
Mr. Kerr fired Mr. Whitlam to end a month-long deadlock in the Senate. Mr Kerr appointed Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister on the condition that he call an election immediately, which Labour lost.
Ms Hawking said that while the Queen was the monarch at the time, the then-Prince of Wales, King Charles III, also influenced Mr Kerr’s decision to sack Mr Whitlam.
Three months before Mr Kerr became the only governor-general to overthrow the Australian government, Charles had been discussing with Mr Kerr the possibility of sacking Mr Whitlam.
“It clearly influenced Kerr’s decision to dissolve the government – there’s no doubt about that,” Ms Hawking said. “It was a shocking engagement. It doesn’t help anyone to pretend that wasn’t the case. We need to admit it.”
Mr Albanese said the 1975 crisis reinforced the need for an Australian head of state rather than a British monarch.
John Howard, a monarchist who was prime minister when Australians voted against severing their constitutional ties to their former colonial masters, said those ties could survive the Queen’s death.
“The Queen’s personal prestige has greatly enhanced the strength of the Australian monarchy,” he said. “That’s not to say it won’t continue. It will continue in a different form.”
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