Not a laughing matter

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This was published 12 years ago

Not a laughing matter

The palace has no authority on that precious Australian trait, a sense of humour.

By Peter Hartcher

When one taxpayer-funded organisation clashes with another on the principle of freedom of speech, you would imagine that the one favouring liberty over censorship would prevail.

Unless, as we learnt this week when the ABC clashed with the British crown over the plan for The Chaser to do its own commentary on the royal wedding, it involves the monarchy.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh travel to Westminster Abbey for the royal wedding.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh travel to Westminster Abbey for the royal wedding.Credit: AFP

Sure, it is William and Kate's wedding. But it is not a private event. It is a state event, funded by British taxpayers. And it is also an Australian event. On current settings, William one day will be Australia's head of state.

By telling Australians what we are not allowed to laugh at, the British monarchy has given us a rare reminder of the preconditions for the happy functioning of our constitutional relationship with the palace.

And London telling Australians what to say, or what not to say, is not one of them.

A poll early in the week showed that Australian support for a formal break with the monarchy - a republic - is at a low point. While most people favoured a republic in the 1990s, Monday's Newspoll put support at 41 per cent, its lowest in 17 years. We are content with the status quo, it seems.

Why?

For three reasons. First is the renewed appeal of the legitimacy of the monarchy and vice-regal office. It is the historical sense of legitimacy that remains the core strength and appeal of the monarchy. If you need contemporary evidence, it is on striking display in the Arab world at the moment.

In a region beset by uprisings and turmoil, the Arab countries can be put into two categories - republics and monarchies.

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The republics are roiled. The regimes in Tunisia and Egypt have been overturned, Libya is beset by civil war and the regimes in Yemen and Syria are under sustained challenge from protests that no amount of ruthless bloodshed seems able to quell.

Yet the monarchies are relatively calm. "You had the impression that monarchy was an outdated concept, but now it seems it has a legitimacy and has allowed a stability that the revolutionary regimes don't have," observes Professor Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University.

"They don't have to explain and justify themselves in the eyes of people. It's a legitimacy from God, and that the son inherits from the father. It's something that [Hosni] Mubarak didn't have in Egypt - he didn't have someone behind him. Jordan and Morocco and Saudi Arabia, all monarchies, are quite stable, and the Gulf states seem OK." While they are monarchies, "they also have so much money".

In Jordan, the king sacked his government, blame went with it, and a new government is in place. Whom can a republican president scapegoat?

In Australia, the unfamiliar experience of a minority federal government, our first since the 1940s, was a little unsettling, especially for the opposition, which initially raged against it as "illegitimate". The authority of a settled head of state meant that, once Quentin Bryce swore in Julia Gillard as prime minister, there was no point in further argument. In that moment of political uncertainty, the country still had constitutional stability. The system proved itself anew.

Second, over time, the face of that constitutional stability has become increasingly Australian. The representatives of the monarchy, the Governor-General and the state governors, have become less British and more Australian. Originally a foreign graft, the vice-regal office has become increasingly indigenised.

It's not just Australians who thought there was a problem with the Brits London used to dispatch. As early as 1920 Edward, Prince of Wales, then 26, visited Australia and New Zealand and was appalled to discover the quality of the royal representatives in the antipodes.

In a wonderfully frank letter to his married mistress, Freda Ward, the future king wrote from Government House in Sydney: "I can hardly bring myself even to talk to these - Davidsons!! [Governor of NSW] However they are tamer than when we arrived not that that is saying very much; they really are the most impossible couple & no wonder the dominions get fed up with the Old Country & want to abolish all Imperial Governors if the Colonial Office will insist on sending out such hopeless boobs!! … what a lot of harm is done throughout the Empire by the rotten Governors they appoint who are nearly always pompous duds who they don't want in London!!"

In tandem with the evolving constitutional arrangements, as Australia grew gradually more independent, its vice-regal office also grew more local and less alien.

On one side there were the big constitutional moments of Federation in 1901, when we became a united nation with a constitution, the Statute of Westminster of 1942, when we won formal legal independence, and the Australia Act of 1986, which deprived Britain of the power to amend the Australian constitution.

On the other there were the more cosmetic moments of the Australianisation of vice-regal office. The first Australian-born governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, was appointed in 1931, and since 1965 all of them have been. The system of British imperial honours was dumped in favour of Australian honours in 1975. The Governor-General's symbol, the crown, was subtly rebadged, with a sprig of wattle appearing above it.

And Bryce is subtly continuing the Australianisation of the office. She decided she would break with two centuries of vice-regal precedent and stopped writing traditional semi-annual letters to the monarch. The customary reports on developments in the imperial dominions were a pointless anachronism, she decided. A governor-general has no responsibility to brief the Queen on Australian affairs.

At the same time, Bryce ended another vice-regal practice dating back to Arthur Phillip. She became the first governor-general to sign letters to the Queen with the egalitarian, "Yours sincerely" rather than the forelock-tugging "Your most humble and obedient servant".

In another small but significant step, Bryce will be present in her own right when the Queen visits Perth in October for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.

It is understood that the Prime Minister's office has agreed with the Governor-General's office that Bryce will attend part of the proceedings and host some sort of event in her own right. This may seem unremarkable, but in light of precedent, it is actually a minor breakthrough.

It has been customary that, when the Queen turns up, the governor-general, as her representative, no longer has any role and is "extinguished''.

This oddity came to light when the then governor-general, Sir Zelman Cowen, wanted to attend the Queen's opening of the new High Court building in Canberra in 1980. He was bounced and not happy about it.

It turned out that Malcolm Fraser bumped him so that Fraser himself would move up a notch in precedence. But it put into uncomfortable highlight the customary "non-person" status of the vice-regal person in the presence of the regal. It turns out to have no legal basis, and Bryce is going to put it to rest in October. It is another step in establishing that the Governor-General has her own identity and purpose, independent of a truant monarch.

Bryce is emerging as an active, warm, dignified and popular governor-general. She has hosted or attended an extraordinary 1800 functions in her 2½ years in office and her website gets some 1.5 million hits a month.

"She's very good because she's played at being an Australian queen," says Professor Wayne Hudson of the University of Tasmania, an expert on Australian republicanism. "She wears beautiful clothes, she gives very well-written speeches, she's very regal."

Third, Australians accept the status quo because, as Hudson puts it, "tension doesn't erupt much because the monarchy doesn't interfere in Australian affairs".

There is potentially a lot of tension between Britain and Australia, two very different societies. And that tension is potentially present in the person of the Queen because, technically, she embodies both.

Consider the weird moment of the bells. In 1970 the Queen presented the National Carillon to Australia as a gift from the British government. The 55-bell tower sits proudly on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. Very good so far.

But then the prime minister of the day, John Gorton, thought it would be nice for her to accept the same carillon on behalf of Australia. So Elizabeth presented the gift as Queen of England, than accepted it as Queen of Australia. She gave a belltower to herself.

The constitutional basis for Australia's monarchy is a paradox. It is legally and historically robust, but it is a nonsense in the bright light of modern reality. It's a fragile construct.

Buckingham Palace knows this. The Queen has always been careful to avoid putting any strain on it. In the constitutional crisis of 1975, even when she was asked to intervene, Elizabeth was smart enough to decline. Sir John Kerr wore all the blame and Australia's constitutional monarchy survived.

The threat by Clarence House, home of Charles, Prince of Wales and his sons, to block the broadcast of the royal wedding to the ABC was bone-headed. It violated a canon of democratic freedom, and it put strain where none ought to be put.

In January, Charles recalled his school days at Geelong Grammar in 1966: "I have gone through my fair share of being called a Pommy bastard, I can assure you of that. But look what it has done for me. By God, it was good for the character. If you want to develop character, go to Australia."

The Clarence House censorship threat was unwise, but, worse, it shows that, unfortunately, Charles missed the classes on the Australian sense of humour.

Peter Hartcher is the political editor.

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