Australia calls it a knight on royal titles

Several centuries after anyone donned chain mail and wielded a lance, Australia has stopped bestowing the titles “knight” and “dame.”

The designations, granted to citizens for public service, have been deemed “anachronistic, out of date, ( and) not appropriate in 2015 in Australia,” the country’s prime minister said.

But the move isn’t just a belated snub to some medieval relic. It says a lot about Australia’s modern misgivings about the notion of the old British order.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull — who won the position this September after the dramatic ouster of Liberal rival Tony Abbott — is a noted anti- monarchist. He once helped spearhead a referendum that would have ended the country’s constitutional monarchy. ( The referendum failed by a 10- point margin.)

Australia is among the Commonwealth Realms, which have the Queen as their head of state.

The issue of knights and dames is fresh in Australians’ minds because of Abbott’s unpopular move to revive the titles, which had been discarded in the early 1980s. In January, Abbott decided to bestow an Australian knighthood on Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband and notably not Australian. Not only that, but he did it on Australia Day, the anniversary of the arrival of British settlers on the continent.

The decision Monday to do away with the “knight” and “dame” titles — again — was made by Turnbull’s cabinet and approved by the queen. The move was welcomed by many, particularly member of Parliament Chris Bowen, a member of the opposition Labor Party.

“It was a farce, a joke, a national disgrace that the Liberal National government, of which Mr . Turnbull was a cabinet minister, decided to set the rewind button on Australia’s national institutions and reinstate knights and dames,” Bowen said.

The decision to drop “knight” and “dame” won’t affect existing titles, including Philip’s.