Britain wouldn’t allow its head of state to live abroad. Nor should we

THE letter from R.D. Hall about the monarchy in Wednesday’s Gold Coast Bulletin was another typical piece of monarchist propaganda – it sought to divert attention from the real problem.

The writer denounced republics as strife-torn and bankrupt, as places where political and economic power lie in the hands of rapacious tyrants. Australia doesn’t want to be like that, the unspoken argument goes, so we therefore can’t be anything at all.

They have obviously never heard of monarchies like Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei, or the monarchies of the Arab world. For sheer rapacity, it’s hard to go past Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. And lest we forget, the only country ever to attack Australia was, and is, a monarchy (Japan).

Finger-pointing avoids the muddle and problems of our constitutional nonsense. Australia is a country which presents itself to the world as a colony. We have a secondhand monarch who works against us, not for us. To show how ridiculous and wrong this is, just turn our system around, so that the Queen of Britain lives in Australia, while Britain has a Governor-General.

Then Britain would have its head of state on the other side of the world, taking advice from the government of a foreign country and performing all her duties for a foreign country. She would make state visits to promote Australian interests alone, regardless of whether they conflict with British interests. She would make laws in Australia which would restrict British trade here, and also the movement of British people here. If Australia got into any sort of squabble with another country, she would refuse to help any British people who might get caught up in it.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that, is there? It’s how the Queen of Australia treats her people all the time. But British people would regard it as disgusting and intolerable. They would say that only childish, grovelling colonials would allow themselves to be kicked in the teeth by their monarch in such a fashion. Any monarch who tried to treat British people like that would have to choose between losing her throne or her head.

As if this were not enough, there are also two dirty little secrets in our monarchy. Australian monarchists shout and scream that politicians can’t change the system without the people being consulted, but they know that’s just a lie.

Firstly, British politicians can change Australia’s monarch, as happened in 1936. Australian politicians just passed laws to make Australia follow orders – the Australian people were never, ever consulted about it. In 2012, British politicians decided to change the rules of succession, and Australian politicians just went along with the whole thing yet again.

Secondly, the British can abolish Australia’s monarchy at any time, and it looks increasingly likely that they will do so. Britain is split over the question of Brexit – Scotland and Northern Ireland want to stay in the EU, England and Wales want to get out. Scotland at least could vote to give itself independence, which would break up the United Kingdom. The Queen of Australia has her position only because she is Queen of the UK (read the Australian Constitution and its preamble if you don’t believe me), so no UK means no Queen here.

It is utter madness for any country to have its whole Constitution hostage to the goings-on in another country.

Monarchists should consider their own behaviour. They act like introverted, overgrown, moaning children who trail around the old family home clinging to Mummy’s skirt, years after Mummy herself put on a pair of jeans and moved away to a new life elsewhere. G.T.W. AGNEW, COOPERS PLAINS