KEATING SHOULD STOP SNIPING FROM SIDELINES

PAUL Keating is wrong. He is wrong when he says that Prince Charles wants Australia to become a republic. He is wrong when he says Australia cannot be great when it “borrows the monarch of Great Britain.” ( The Aus

tralian, 2/4)

Australia became a ‘great’ nation, one to which people from throughout the world have lined up to become a part of, because of our Constitution under the Crown which has ensured that this country has had an unparalleled stability and security and thereby economic prosperity for well over 100 years.

Paul Keating was the one who kickstarted the republic when he was prime minister in the 1990s but he never had the guts to take the issue to the people. He only sniped from the sidelines just as he has today sniped from the sidelines.

A fundamental reason why our Australian Constitution has the Queen — and eventually Prince Charles — as our sovereign head is to block politicians like Paul Keating from assuming total power. Likewise our Constitution requires a vote of the people before one word of it can be changed.

Republicans claim that the Prince of Wales is remote from the people. We will see, during this visit, how popular he is with and how interested he is in our people. The only reason many Australians do not know much about him personally is because the media rarely talks about the good works he does, how he raises more money for charitable causes than anyone else in the world and how the work of his Prince’s Trust benefits so many in Australia.

The proof is in the pudding. The crowds will come out to greet the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall as opposed to the crowd that never come out to welcome politicians, Paul Keating included. Philip Benwell, Australian Monarchist League national chair