Tuesday 15th of October 2024
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the premiers might be forced to attend, in chains and shackles....

The heads of six Australian states will miss a reception for King Charles III when he arrives Down Under, while the British monarch has said he would not oppose the former prison colony declaring itself a republic.

While Australia has been fully independent since 1986, its titular head of state is still the British monarch. A 1999 referendum to declare a republic failed, in part due to the popularity of Queen Elizabeth II at the time.

Charles is due to arrive in Australia later this week. On Monday, the premiers of six federal states informed Canberra they would not be able to attend the reception for the monarch, citing prior commitments.

“The failure of state premiers to attend the reception in Canberra is completely indefensible,” Bev McArthur, a Liberal MP and head of the Australian Monarchist League told the BBC. She accused the premiers of wearing “republican hats” and engaging in “gesture-led politics” to insult the king.

Charles would be the second ruling British monarch to make an official visit to Australia, after his mother, who passed away in 2022.

With Queen Elizabeth’s passing, the Australian Republic Movement (ARM) revived their agitation for declaring a republic, arguing that the country should stand on equal footing with other nations around the world.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously said that the country “should have an Australian as our head of state,” suggesting he would support another referendum. The 1999 vote saw 54.9% of Australians voting to keep the monarchy.

Last week, the ARM wrote to Buckingham Palace to request a meeting with the king. While Charles III politely declined, his private secretary revealed that the monarch would not stand in the way of Australians electing a president instead.

“His Majesty, as a constitutional monarch, acts on the advice of his ministers and whether Australia becomes a republic is, therefore, a matter for the Australian public to decide,” Dr. Nathan Ross wrote to ARM, according to the Daily Mail. Ross also noted that ARM’s views “have been noted very carefully” and that Charles had “deep love and affection” for Australia.

The group’s invitation was “politely declined,” ARM co-chairman Nathan Hansford told the Mail. He added that Australians are “such a wonderfully diverse nation” that many people feel is not properly represented by a monarch.

There are 14 countries around the world that still consider the British sovereign their head of state. Barbados was the most recent to declare itself a republic, in 2021, but chose to remain in the Commonwealth and maintain cordial relations with London. Jamaica is set to hold a referendum on the issue later this year.

Britain began to settle Australia in 1788, when New South Wales was established as a penal colony. Other colonies followed, and eventually became the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Present-day Australia consists of six states: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, along with ten federal territories.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/605705-king-charles-britain-australia/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

IF GRANGE (HERMITAGE) WAS THE PLONK OF THE RECEPTION, THE PREMIERS MIGHT TURN UP?....

new voice needed....

 

Failure of all sides of politics to pick up the pieces after the Voice defeat is a national disgrace

 

The uncomfortable truth is that progress has not just stalled but gone backwards since the historic referendum campaign for an Indigenous Voice to parliament was rejected by 60.6 per cent of voters and supported by just 39.94 per cent.

The whole point of the argument for a Voice to parliament was that Indigenous affairs was in a terrible state and needed more attention. The Voice to parliament was defeated for reasons already well-ventilated, but that should not have given way to malaise, paralysis and near-total silence on Indigenous affairs from our political leaders.

As the Herald’s Paul Sakkal writes today, the goal of giving Indigenous Australians more say over issues that directly affect them has given way to a sense of voicelessness.

 

Much of the blame for this falls on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Despite his best intentions, it was the prime minister who took the referendum to the people and failed to adequately make the case for it. Albanese has the levers of government at his disposal to push on with reform but has shown little interest in doing so. Equally, Dutton and his colleagues have done nothing to offer their own policy vision should the Coalition claim the next federal election. It is a depressing state of affairs.

However, this silence is nothing new, according to high-profile Yes advocate Thomas Mayo. That void was one of the reasons Indigenous Australians asked for the Voice in the first place, he says. He also says Indigenous affairs was used as a political opportunity to wedge the Labor government and “they got wind in their sails from keeping us voiceless”.

“The other side [Labor] has returned back to the status quo, which is having no vision for Indigenous affairs,” Mayo tells the Herald today. That is certainly true. But it is as true for both federal Labor and the Coalition.

In an opinion piece for the Herald, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner Katie Kiss says many First Nations Australians feel more disillusioned than ever and rejected in their own lands.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/failure-of-all-sides-of-politics-to-pick-up-the-pieces-after-the-voice-defeat-is-a-national-disgrace-20241013-p5khv9.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.