by DAVID FLINT ~ HAVING the honour of addressing a citizenship ceremony a few years ago, I told the new citizens that the country whose citizenship they had just received was one of the world’s oldest continuing democracies. Given that we have…
THE case for the Commonwealth is compelling when we watch a weak American President perform in uncertain times. Joe Biden has rarely been right on foreign policy in forty years – even before his cognitive decline he opposed finding and killing Osama…
THE Queen’s Birthday on June 14 for most of Australia, September 27 in Western Australia and October 4 in Queensland, annoys many in the political class.
Just the fact that it exists enrages pretend republicans who prefer a fraudulent imitation of the current model, a politicians’ republic, rather than honestly basing theirs on the world’s most successful republic, the United States.
WE OWE them, our dear Queen Elizabeth and the late Prince Philip, a debt greater than they would ever claim and we shall ever know. With the departure of that great and heroic Prince, Philip, we are reminded of how our ancient monarchy is now dedicated, as the Queen indicated when she attained her 21st year, to our service and the service of the great family to which we all belong, the Commonwealth.
AS A teenager growing up in England I was an active Trotskyist. My pal and fellow Trotskyist PJ and I devised a petition to have Queen Elizabeth – or Mrs Elizabeth Windsor as we preferred to called her – her husband, the late Duke of Edinburgh, and her children, evicted from Buckingham Palace and re-housed in a modest semi-detached home in the outer London dormitory suburb of Croydon.
CANBERRA’S latest folly is a referendum, costing up to a quarter of a billion dollars, to replace the politicians’ oath with an empty pledge without legal effect. Instead, why not bring in real reform and finally make the politicians accountable? The referendum should be to allow Australians to initiate recall elections for non-performing politicians.
THE extraordinary plans afoot in Canberra for Malcolm Turnbull, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd, or someone of their ilk, to succeed Queen Elizabeth in her capacity as Queen of Australia were noted in my comment in The Spectator Australia earlier this year. Under a plan concocted by Victorian federal Labor MP Julian Hill, this is to be achieved without a referendum.
ACCORDING to republicans, Australia should emulate China.
The front page banner headline on the London Daily Express (21/5) proclaimed a disturbing message: “Monarchy on the brink”.
A FAVOURITE argument of the elites is that something is “inevitable” or, more subtly, “the planets are aligned”.
Blasting what he dismisses as our “horse and buggy” constitution, Professor George Williams laments the lack of referendums. So, what even more pejorative term does he reserve for the much older US constitution? Prehistoric.
Extraordinary plans are afoot in Canberra for Malcolm Turnbull, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd or someone of their ilk to succeed Queen Elizabeth in her capacity as Queen of Australia.
This is to be done through the back door, not by the people, but by the politicians doing a deal among themselves.
