Is it "inevitable" that Australia become a republic on the death of the present Queen?
Well, it is certainly inevitable that, if Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Commonwealth Realms in the West Indies do become republics, then the argument that the monarchy in Britain embodies ties shared by millions of families here will no longer apply.
What matters more, in any of our countries? Those ties? Or strictly elite preferences for Chianitishire or Cape Cod?
If any country might be on the brink of cutting those ties unless male primogeniture be abolished, or the Act of Settlement repealed, then that is a good enough reason for such abolition or repeal. But nothing else is.
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The Queen's "symbolic" relevance to Australian's is now pretty much over. This should not be surprising. As an Australian, in all my years, I have never heard any Australian refer to her as the Queen of Australia. How long can a symbolically irrelevant head of a nation remain? Not long. It is this reason why even monarchists will mutter that a republic is inevitable....
ReplyDeleteWhy shouldn't it be surprising?
ReplyDeleteYou need to ask yourselves what sort of country you are, and want to be. If you want to be an Islamic-cum-East Asian country, then abolish your constitutional link, on every conceivable level, to Christendom. If you don't, then don't.
The monarchy isn't just a link to Britain. It's a link to New Zealand, to Canada, to Jamaica, to the Solomon Islands... Actually, there is a particularly strong Pacific case to be made for the monarchy: you should have it precisely because you are a Pacific country.
They said that the republicans would win easily last time. But they lost by 10 - count them, ten - points.
Last time I checked David the USA - which ditched the crown over 200 years ago - is still a Christian country with a higher Church going ratio than the UK I guess.
ReplyDeleteBeing on the edge of the Muslim world hardly puts it under threat. Have the Islamic fundamentalists moved across Western China and into Japan, Taiwan and the Koreas?
It's not a matter of being on the edge. As in Britain (and the US), this is about who is already there.
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