'We're tired of self-interested gesture politics': Protests show why Australia needs our constitutional monarchy

22 October 2024, 09:28

For a staunch supporter of constitutional monarchy, it has been a great pleasure for me to see the success of King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit to Australia.

The King’s seventeenth visit, to a country he dearly loves, is his first as the reigning monarch and first as our Head of State.

At this point I should perhaps explain for the British audience that the King is here, not as a foreign dignitary on an overseas state visit, but as our own Head of State: King Charles III of Australia.

The enthusiastic welcome they have enjoyed so far shows the King and Queen are popular in their own right.  But beyond this personal relationship, Australians welcome the King as the representative of a constitutional settlement which has brought unprecedented stability and prosperity to our nation.

Around the world constitutional monarchies consistently provide fair, accountable, and secure democratic government, while republics and Presidents frequently do the opposite.

Australians recognise that we are the fortunate inheritors of a legal system, democratic institutions and traditions of liberal thought which have safeguarded our rights and enabled our diverse, tolerant and successful society.

No Republican alternative has ever proved popular.  An elected president would introduce more politics, with candidates bribing us with our own taxes, and an election circus costing disastrously more than the existing system ever could.

Nor do we want more politicians: with local, state and Federal Government, we can justly claim to be the most over-governed nation on earth!

And we already have a Governor-General, an Australian appointed by the Australian Parliament, who exercises the executive functions of Head of State.  No level of the Australian system involves direction from outside our country.

Unsurprisingly, support for a Republic seems to be at an all time low. A recent poll shows only 33% agree now, with 45% preferring the status quo.  A separate study showed 51% of 18-34 year-olds reject a Republic.

These days, most opponents of our system are not anti-monarchists but self-styled activists, who believe all Western society is fundamentally unfair, corrupt and doomed.

Senator Lidia Thorpe’s outburst during the King’s visit to the Parliament in Canberra comes in this ‘revolutionary’ tradition, though in her case I am sorry to say it includes her own brand of cynical attention-seeking.

Personally I consider her ‘input’ the best advert for constitutional monarchy there is.

Australians are tired of self-interested gesture politics.  Senator Thorpe’s behaviour – and the petty decision of our state Premiers not to welcome the Royal Party – contrast starkly with the unfailing service and duty manifest by King Charles’s visit, undertaken despite his ongoing cancer treatment.  It is yet another reason why the monarchy is popular, and politicians are not.

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Bev Mcarthur is the Liberal MP for Western Victoria and Spokesperson for Australian Monarchist League.

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