The Queen

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Europe; Published: 19 August 2013; Hits: 40746

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Acts of the British Parliament guided its six Australian colonies from local suffrage through to Federation in 1901. Australia therefore traces its legal and political system; and many of its institutions back to Britain. To this day we rely on the British monarch to act as our nominal Head of State; appointing the State Governors and the Australian Governor General, on the recommendation of the various governments, as de facto Heads of State.

Government House Sydney - the closest thing to a palace

This will continue until a mandate is achieved, requiring a majority of electors in both the individual States and the Commonwealth, to arrive at an alternative method of appointing State Governors; and a President to replace the Governor General. Republicans can't agree on either: an elected; or indirectly appointed head of State; or on the powers that might be added to, or removed from, the position of President.

I for one, certainly don't want to see yet another politician, with yet another competing electoral mandate, in the job of de facto monarch. A practical alternative might be a US style 'separation of powers' but that would require excising the Executive from the Parliament; and 'hell will freeze over' before the various Australian Parliaments and their majority leaders (Premiers and Prime Minister) give up their Ministers of State; together with control of the Public Service and executive power. British and New Zealand and Canadian Republicans face the same problem.

So Betty remains our Queen de jure into the foreseeable future, with Chuck and Will; and little Georgy Porgy to follow. We can still get excited about royal weddings; and babies; and see the trooping of the colours; or the changing of the guard; or the presence of the royal standard over Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle or Holyrood Palace; and flotillas down the Thames; all relevant to us as well.

The Mall; Buckingham Palace; Holyrood Palace; Edinburgh Castle

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Travel

Hawaii

When we talked of going to Hawaii for a couple of weeks in February 2018 several of our friends enthusiastically recommended it. To many of them it's a nice place to go on holidays - a little further to go than Bali but with a nicer climate, better beaches and better shopping - with bargains to be had at the designer outlets.

Waikiki

To nearly one and a half million racially diverse Hawaiians it's home.

Downtown Hilo

To other Americans it's the newest State, the only one thousands of miles from the North American Continent, and the one that's more exotic than Florida.

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Book of Mormon

Back in the mid 1960's when I was at university and still living at home with my parents in Thornleigh, two dark suited, white shirted, dark tied, earnest young men, fresh from the United States, appeared at our door.

Having discovered that they weren't from IBM my mother was all for shooing them away. But I was taking an interest in philosophy and psychology and here were two interesting examples of religious fervour.

As I often have with similar missionaries (see: Daniel, the Jehovah’s Witness in Easter on this Website), I invited them in and they were very pleased to tell me about their book. I remember them poised on the front of our couch, not daring or willing to sit back in comfort, as they eagerly told me about their revelation.

And so it came to pass that a week ago when we travelled to Melbourne to stay with my step-son Lachlan and his family and to see the musical: The Book of Mormon I was immediately taken back to 1964.

Opinions and Philosophy

World Population – again and again

David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:

‘He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."

Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton:

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