You say that like it’s a good thing.
It’s archaic that any barriers still remain.
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It was a good thing when previously a Catholic was excluded from any employment in the public sector, from voting and from holding public office and there was a commercial bias against employing Catholics.
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Maybe it was then…whenever then was…but if any such barriers still exist…then it’s not good at all.
Try the faith bodies here which are allowed to discriminate in the employment of teachers in private schools funded by the State, among other discriminatory measures.
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Church and state. They are entirely devoted to removing the secular state thing with Trump and the current SCOTUS
The whole idea of a hereditary monarchy is illogical and silly. But it works as well as any other system and better than many.
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And it would work better if we just got rid of them and ran our own country without any potential interference from people who should have absolutely no say in how our country runs.
If the English want to continue to have a bunch of people (who haven’t earned their roles) running things due to the chance of birth, then good luck to them, but we do not need them in any way at all.
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Well I know that the King is the titular head of State, but he has zero input into the running of our country, as did his mother before him. We choose the governor-general and the King says yes. And the governor-general writes every so often to a British civil servant and tells him things that are going on, and that civil servant may occasionally pass something on to the King. And the response of the civil servant is to say thank you for letting him or her know.
I’m in favour of us becoming a republic, but I can’t see it making any practical difference at all. Not unless the republic model that’s adopted is stupid.
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Jenny Hocking is getting the involvement of QE2 and her heir in the Dismissal out there to the public. Now that QE2 has died, she may be able to release more documents held by our own Archives ( which has refused to release papers relevant to QE2).
Does the current system still allow for a repeat of 1975 and Whitlam’s dismissal?
If so, then it needs to go…because Whitlam’s dismissal had nothing to do with the Australian electoral system…and all to do with the Vice Regal powers of John Kerr (bestowed by The Queen of England).
Whitlam might very well have been voted out at an election…but the Australian voting public were denied that opportunity by some sort of Royal bastardry.
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She was involved in the sacking of the Whitlam govt and the Poms fought for years to keep all correspondence from her to Kerr secret.
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From memory, the Senate as from 1970 can’t originate or amend finance bills. More importantly, there is now a convention that, when a Senator leaves office before the six year term, the State affected will nominate a replacement from the same Party as the departing Senator ( which had been practice).
The crisis was brought on by Vince Gair leaving to become Ambbasador to Ireland, Jo replacing him with Mal Colton ( one of his own).
Ireland has suffered from our Ambassadorial appointments, Brian Burke after the Vince Gair scandal.
If Fraser had bided his time to wait for the next election it wouldn’t have happened.
And carpe diem didn’t work for him when the Hawke Government came to power.
Yes it does, but that’s nothing to do with the monarch or the UK. It’s the result of the constitution of Australia.
Yes they fought to keep it secret, but the only involvement of the UK or the monarchy was letters between Kerr and an English civil servant whose name I forget. And having read that correspondence I can say that it consists of Kerr describing the political deadlock and what he was thinking of doing about it, and the English civil servant saying thank you for keeping me informed. Kerr acted on his own views and the advice of the then Chief Justice of the High Court. What happened is on their shoulders, not the monarchy’s or the UK’s.
There are the Palace Letters between Kerr and QE2.
That was still a thing in the 60s here. I remember an older guy I worked with had been at National Mutual, and he broke the haitch rule when in the presence of senior executives. “I didn’t know Ron was a Catholic” said one. Funny thing was…he wasn’t.
Dr Mannix didn’t help things in the war between the Micks and the Prods. But there were occupations, or more particularly, professions that Catholics struggled to get into. One of my rels couldn’t get into surveying, I think it was, despite excellent qualifications. It was why there were so many Catholics in the Public Service.
It was awful in Northern Ireland back at the beginning of the Troubles (the latest lot, about 1968) where Catholics were banned from lots of jobs and living areas. As Jimmy Rabbitte said in The Commitments…the Irish (Southern ones) are the blacks of Europe.
It wasn’t Mal Colton, was it. Albert Field is my recollection.
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That’s what I was talking about. I don’t think any of them were addressed to the Queen or answered by her. They went to “the Palace”, which in practice was a civil servant called Lord Something or other, and his part in the correspondence was to say thank you and it was all very interesting.
You’re right. And Colton was in fact Colson, who was appointed in a different situation.
In the papers grudgingly given her, Hocking found a reference to correspondence between the Queen and Kerr. She was refused access based on advice from the Brits that any such correspondence was embargoed while she was alive.
You could check out Jenny Hocking’s posts on her Twitter account.
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