or embrace the sillyness of having a monarch in the modern era and appoint a random tree kangaroo the monarch and all of their descendant be the new royal family. Wheel it out a couple time a year for ceremonies before taking them back to their estate some nature preserve
> Serious question: name someone who might realistically be President who would not make you sad.
Michael Kirby, Marie Bashir–both too old now, but either could have been a fine President if we had become a republic sooner. Or, similarly, Ted Egan, former Administrator of the Northern Territory.
Frank Brennan–the whole his being a Catholic priest thing is somewhat of an obstacle, admittedly (although possibly not a completely insurmountable one.)
The President is a largely symbolic apolitical role – yet also popularly elected. To ensure only high quality candidates run, the hurdle to nominate is rather high – nomination by at least 20 members of the Irish Parliament (the Oireachtas), or by at least four county/city councils (Ireland only has 31). My impression is that people are generally happy with the outcome of the process.
In Australia, we could similarly require nomination by at least 20 MPs (the Parliament of Australia is only slightly larger than the Oireachtas, 227 vs 220). The four councils requirement is a bit harder to translate – but rough equivalents would be nomination by 1 state/territory government, or by 70 local councils.
What? Most Australians do not support the monarchy, a lot of Australians want a republic.
For all of those Australians, having the democratically elected PM become president is clearly superior than having an unelected monarch be the head of state.
We might find out soon I suppose, no shortage of calls for a referendum. I imagine the dilly dallying has just been because the Queen was quite favorable, and didn't meddle. A don't fix what isn't broken situation.
When one doesn’t need to be worried about being elected, one can make decisions based on principle, and the longer-term view, rather than pandering to popular opinion.
We always complain that politicians work on a two-year cycle. If your position is permanent (pending death), you escape this cycle.
See also: the House of Lords.
It’s weird to think about, and I’m a working-class Labour voter from Sunderland whose grandad was a welder on the ships, but there’s something to be said for it.
There's also the argument that if your job as ruler is known from a young age you can be groomed into the role in a way a career politician never will be.
A system for choosing a head of state that requires an extensive training period and that meant they couldn't simply be turfed out on the whims of a gaggle of swinging voters has something to be said for it.
But what sort of long term decisions would you have them make?
Probably infrastructure, as that takes a long time to complete, and can be made a little more effective rather than "if I can find a way to tunnel from the country to the beach, I'll get more votes" (/s)
We do not have enough gusto here to lead ourselves.
Asus being a republic is doing to be 50 years of dumb, outdated ideas and strife. None of our pollies are going to be innovative (Kevin, Turnbull, and Gillard were the last attempts)
With Murdoch having such a strong grip on the public conversation, he's going to profit the most from shitty controversies over absolutely nothing.
There's already a "change" vacuum (think power vacuum) in Australia which really opens the door for totalitarianism in the future. And Australian nanny-state-ism hasn't been a good precedent so far.
Approximately zero of the indigenous population present prior to settlement by Europeans would have identified as being Australian, or of being born in Australia, or anything like that.
Definitively, yes, Australia "began" with European settlement of the continent.
Except I do live here, and it's patently ridiculous to say The Commonwealth of Australia is anything but an invention of European settlers. Of which Queen Elizabeth II was the Head of State for 57% of its existence. Which is the context of this comment thread.
Can't the term "Australia" just refer to the place on the globe? Like if someone was telling me what Antarctica looked like 50,000 years ago, I wouldn't tell them that Antarctica didn't exist back then. I'd know what they meant.
"Australia's history" was a poor choice of phrase exactly because of that ambiguity. In fact it was explicitly referring to the period since 1901, which very few people would consider to be the start of "Australia's history".
Yes, the commonwealth. Federation was not the start of Australia. It was colonisation. We began 1788, mate. That's it.
You can't just erase all those years of history or say they weren't part of our history, because they're "unpalatable". Ugh. Did you forget your history that you learned in school? :)
The GP's statement was completely factual: the title of "Queen of Australia" only came into existence in 1901 when the states of what is now Australia federated. Before that, the Queen was head of state individually over six separate colonies.
Factual? From what point of view? The narrow one that Australia only existed after federation? That's f*** ridiculous I'm sorry. It was called Australia way before that. And the Queen was still the queen of those f*** colonies come on. It's not factual, Australia's history extends from more than 200 years. Why do engineers have to be so narrow about definitions: they think they're right but they're wrong they're just not seeing the other points of view. They just paint themselves into a corner on a narrow definition and then double down... it's f*** pathetic. But they use this to be abusive and quarrelsome and start fights, on the false pretense that they're right and they're the only right. it's b****. rather than just going, "yeah there's another point of view."
Like how you can question 1788 is the start of Australia is just ridiculous. And the monarch was the monarch of Australia for all that time because it was a British colony and then federation and we still have those heads of state. so it's not completely factual... what I said is factual what the other person said is wrong or limited to the point of view of federation. To argue against what I'm saying is crazy. What's the point of it even it's just like picking fights.
Your facts don't cover the reality of the situation I'm sorry. Australia is not just a name on a piece of paper after federation. Why do engineers think a single fact conveys the whole truth. Then I realize it's abusive to stick to that and not consider all the points of view...ugh. whatever.
Convince yourself what you want man but it's not the truth. But I don't think you've got any skin in the game to even argue this... Haha :)
> The Tjapwurung, an Aboriginal people in what is now southern Australia, shared the story of this bird hunt from generation to generation across an unbelievably large slice of time—many more millennia than one might think possible. The birds (most likely the species with the scientific name Genyornis newtoni) memorialized in this tale are now long extinct. Yet the story of the Tjapwurung’s “tradition respecting the existence” of these birds conveys how people pursued the giant animals. At the time of this particular hunt, between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, volcanoes in the area were erupting, wrote amateur ethnographer James Dawson in his 1881 book Australian Aborigines, and so scientists have been able to corroborate this oral history by dating volcanic rocks.
...
> What are the limits of such ancient memories? For what length of time can knowledge be transferred within oral societies before its essence becomes irretrievably lost? Under optimal conditions, as suggested by science-determined ages for events recalled in ancient stories, orally shared knowledge can demonstrably endure more than 7,000 years, quite possibly 10,000, but probably not much longer.
Under her reign it was Her Majesty’s government and she took an active role in it that wasn’t publicly visible. Laws did not take effect without her assent, and the government formed with her permission which was asked for.
Under Charles III’s reign, it will be His Majesty’s government; how actively he takes an interest in its affairs will be on him, but at a minimum laws will not take effect without his assent and his permission will be asked for to form future governments.
That’s the system of the United Kingdom. It never stopped being a Kingdom, people just chose to view the late Queen as ceremonial because it was a convenient way to square the Throne with democratic ideals, but it really isn’t all that ceremonial. The reason the customs held fast is because Queen Elizabeth II worked to make the system work. A different sort of Queen may have sparked a constitutional crisis or two by now and there’s no guarantee she would have necessarily lost to the Commons.
Small correction: not “you guys” because I’m not British, just an observant American that took a serious interest in the functioning of foreign governments as a lens through which to evaluate our own.
The functions and powers of our Presidency are a much closer derivative of the British monarchy than we tell ourselves in our classrooms. The President signing bills into law is a copy of the requisite assent of the monarchy. Political appointments were a copy of how the King vested power, and as you guessed it, the King is the Head of the British Armed Forces.
Also I think even British folks are undersold on how powerful the late Queen really was. She may not have vetoed any legislation, but her Prime Ministers sought and received her advice regularly, consulting with her and unburdening themselves to her the problems they were faced with or tasked with resolving. Put another way, she was an active participant in how laws were formed and the business of Her Majesty’s governments proceeded even if she did not participate in the drafting of the texts or have any policy objectives per se. That isn’t ceremonial at all, although many of her duties as Queen and Defender of the Faith were ceremonial.
In America we celebrate the separation of powers, telling ourselves a few myths along the way about the co-equality of branches (essentially Nixon era propaganda from when he was facing down the gun barrel of impeachment, but Congress adopted the myth despite being head and shoulders the most powerful branch of Government under the Constitution). The King-in-Parliament—or under the late Queen, the Queen-in-Parliament—is absolute power in the United Kingdom and no one may question their directives because this is King, Lords and Commons speaking as one. Their power as one body is what we separated into the President, Senate, Representatives and Supreme Court. We then limited it further by conceiving of powers as enumerated, although clearly this was insufficient as a power limiter.
Yes but the last time a monarch vetoed a law was in 1707, and that was only because parliament asked Queen Anne to veto the law.
In reality, if King Charles started vetoing then after a short constitutional crisis, parliament would basically just change the rules of the game to say that the monarch no longer has the power to veto laws.
Wouldn’t the loophole still be if one house of the parliament co-opts King, essentially simulating American democracy where you have a Republican King and Republican Party in power allowing the Republicans to veto laws and stop monarchy reform in parliament?
The British Armed Forces are also know as "Her Majesty's Armed Forces" (now His Majesty's). The official head of the armed forces is the monarch and that's who they swear their allegiance to. However, there is a long standing constitutional convention that the executive authority is given to the Prime Minister by "royal perogative". So technically the monarch, but in reality it's the Prime Minister.
If the monarch tried to actually do something significant with that power I imagine the law would be changed pretty quickly.
This is why working royals generally have various military titles and positions, because the monarch is the head of the armed forces. It's also why the monarch dresses in military regalia for various military events.
Why? Constitutionally the Prime Minister is just the "first" minister to the monarch. These days, of course, the monarch defers all governance to the Prime Minister, but the origin of the role is as an advisor of sorts to the monarch. It shouldn't sound any worse than saying Merrick Garland is Joe Biden's Attorney General.
Along those lines, Britain joined the EU a year after Smalltalk-72 and K&R C were introduced. Smalltalk inspired Objective-C, which is still used today in Macs.
The British Constitution can be seen as a large piece of legacy code which has never been tossed and rewritten from scratch, just incrementally patched and refactored over a really long period of time.
Downside: lots of bizarre complexities, bits of dead code, stuff that works as long as nobody touches it etc. Upsides: it's really stable.
Yea, it seems like yesterday it got announced. I was working in Berlin with an English guy, he took it super hard. We went out for drinks after work and at the end of the night he was telling one of the Germans they were lucky - because they were still in the EU.
I feel slightly bad for Liz Truss, since I imagine that one of the things she will be remembered is that the Queen died less than 48 hours into her government.
Truss wouldn’t care about that. If anything she’ll spin this to her advantage. It’s pretty common for governments to release embarrassing documents or unpopular changes during busy news weeks, or at the weekend, knowing that peoples attention is elsewhere.
Oh I'm sure she at least appreciates the opportunity to bury some unappealing news. News broke e.g. of her decision to rescind all restrictions on fracking (and – just a funny coincidence – of the fact that her campaign's biggest donation came from the wife of a BP exec), at about the same time as news of the Queen's deteriorating health.
It's interesting you bring this up as in my view Truss is the antithesis of Queen Elizabeth II. Truss is somebody that would say anything that people wanted to hear to be popular and amass political power whereas Queen Elizabeth refrained from staying anything people didn't want to hear to be dutifully detached from the fickleness of politics.
Alternatively, a new King took power less than 48hrs into her government. The ascendancy of a new monarch is at least as memorable as the passing of, in this instance his, predecessor.
Anthony Eden (1955–57)
Harold Macmillan (1957–63)
Alec Douglas-Home (1963–64)
Harold Wilson (1964–70)
Edward Heath (1970–74)
Harold Wilson (1974–76)
James Callaghan (1976–79)
Margaret Thatcher (1979–90)
John Major (1990–97)
Tony Blair (1997–07)
Gordon Brown (2007–10)
David Cameron (2010–16)
Theresa May (2016–19)
Boris Johnson (2019–22)
Liz Truss (2022 (two days ago) - current)
Quite the reign! Can't help but feel a bit sad really.