UK The Queen

[Gethelred]

This thread is actively moderated, let's behave like adults, shall we?

For conversation on an Australian Republic:

Who wants a Republic?

I am just curious in the figure as it has been over 10 years since we had a referendum for it. Personally, I think we should become a Republic.

www.bigfooty.com

 

[Roylion]

Doesn’t answer my question. What is the Queen for then?

I've answered the question.

The reserve powers are vested in the monarch. The moment the Sovereign dies, the new Sovereign takes those powers. Governor-Generals come and go.

The reserve powers include:

• the power to appoint a Prime Minister if an election results in a hung Parliament
• the power to dismiss a Prime Minister in circumstances where the House of Representatives has passed a 'No Confidence' motion against the Prime Minister
• the power to refuse to dissolve the House of Representatives contrary to Ministerial advice.
• the power to refuse a double dissolution (this has not been exercised in Australia)
• the power to withhold assent to Bills that Parliament has passed and contrary to Ministerial advice (i.e. the power of veto)
• the independent discretion to select a new Prime Minister in circumstances where the outgoing Prime Minister resigns after a defeat in the House of Representatives.
• the power to dismiss a Prime Minister in circumstances where the Government cannot obtain supply and the Prime Minister refuses to resign or to call an election.

 

[Number37]

Why would the majority party in the Parliament (i..e the government) strip themselves of that power?

I never said they would. I said the rule is: words of a statute abrogate. Sometimes. Maybe. Depends

No kidding. Sovereign power rests with the people and is exercised through representative bodies such as Congress or Parliament

Borders are central to sovereignty. They establish the categories of citizen and alien, which is a fundamental element of sovereignty. As Joseph Carens stated: "The power to admit or exclude aliens is inherent in sovereignty and essential for any political community"

Only one problem with that....the rule of law.
Remember that? You mentioned it before, only this time it actually applies.

You're contradicting yourself. You've already stated that the royal perogrative is limited by Statute. A constitutional monarch simply cannot do as they like.

I said no such thing.

All done by Statute, which is the only way Parliament can govern. Reserve powers of the monarch / governor-general are also limited by statute (you said that yourself) and/or the Constitution.

I fail to see what your argument is.

Legislative power is the power to make laws, as a result a statute cannot determine guilt. Neither can the Executive power because Executive power also does not include the power to determine guilt.
Judicial power is the ONLY power that determines guilt.
Boilermakers case has 2 limbs... 1/ the Constitution vests judicial power in Chapter 3 courts and nobody else. 2/ Chapter 3 courts can only exercise judicial power. ie they can't do the bidding of the Executive.

The problem with each of the things that I listed is that they blur the lines between Executive power and Judicial power. They do so by using the judiciary as a rubber stamp for Executive decisions. That's not cool and nobody wants that because it puts us less than a step away from a dictatorship.

That list was examples of the Executive dreaming up new powers for itself, like the power to lock up people by circumventing the judicial process.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I've answered the question.

The reserve powers are vested in the monarch. The moment the Sovereign dies, the new Sovereign takes those powers. Governor-Generals come and go.

The reserve powers include:

• the power to appoint a Prime Minister if an election results in a hung Parliament
• the power to dismiss a Prime Minister in circumstances where the House of Representatives has passed a 'No Confidence' motion against the Prime Minister
• the power to refuse to dissolve the House of Representatives contrary to Ministerial advice.
• the power to refuse a double dissolution (this has not been exercised in Australia)
• the power to withhold assent to Bills that Parliament has passed and contrary to Ministerial advice (i.e. the power of veto)
• the independent discretion to select a new Prime Minister in circumstances where the outgoing Prime Minister resigns after a defeat in the House of Representatives.
• the power to dismiss a Prime Minister in circumstances where the Government cannot obtain supply and the Prime Minister refuses to resign or to call an election.

The post from spinynorman you responded to said that the monarchy is pointless and should be abolished.

You disagreed, saying the fact that the reserve powers exist mainly in the background serves a strong purpose.

When Sir John Kerr exercised those rarely-exercised reserve powers, at best he did so ham-fistedly, at worst very dubiously.

And the Palace held its nose, and turned away and said "just keep 'er Maj out of this."

So a legitimate government, which shouldn't have been dismissed, was dismissed.

That is a textbook example of the uselessness, perhaps even wilful uselessness of the monarchy.

In terms of the optimal functioning of Australian democracy, November 1975 showed the Queen to be useless.

 

[Number37]

The post from spinynorman you responded to said that the monarchy is pointless and should be abolished.

You disagreed, saying the fact that the reserve powers exist mainly in the background serves a strong purpose.

When Sir John Kerr exercised those rarely-exercised reserve powers, at best he did so ham-fistedly, at worst very dubiously.

And the Palace held its nose, and turned away and said "just keep 'er Maj out of this."

So a legitimate government, which shouldn't have been dismissed, was dismissed.

That is a textbook example of the uselessness, perhaps even wilful uselessness of the monarchy.

In terms of the optimal functioning of Australian democracy, November 1975 showed the Queen to be useless.

As revealed recently in the trove of declassified documents from that era, the Queen could have intervened, she chose not to.

 

[Roylion]

As revealed recently in the trove of declassified documents from that era, the Queen could have intervened, she chose not to.

And how should the Queen have "intervened"?

 

[Roylion]

The post from spinynorman you responded to said that the monarchy is pointless and should be abolished.

You disagreed, saying the fact that the reserve powers exist mainly in the background serves a strong purpose.

When Sir John Kerr exercised those rarely-exercised reserve powers, at best he did so ham-fistedly, at worst very dubiously.

And the Palace held its nose, and turned away and said "just keep 'er Maj out of this."

I've explained this already.

According to Paul Kelly's and Troy Bramston's excellent "The Truth of the Palace Letters", it is clear that the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris didn’t know Kerr was definitely going to dismiss Whitlam and most definitely did not advise him to do so.

All Charteris knew from Kerr’s letters was that a resort to the reserve powers was an option.

And, acting on this knowledge, Charteris' letter of November 4th 1975 directly warned Kerr against a dismissal.

Charteris very properly said that the reserve powers should be used only as a "last resort", said the threshold had not yet been passed to a “constitutional” crisis and finally said the reserve powers should be used only "at the very end when there is demonstrably no other course", the point being there is always another course - the warning role of a sovereign and governor-general.

Charteris also told Kerr the real "value" of the reserve powers was their non-use; that is, their role as a backup for a governor-general giving a prime minister a warning.

Anne Twomey - Professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney stated about the Palace's role in the Dismissal

"Throughout, the Palace placed stress on behaviour that was constitutional and measured, but without ever suggesting what action Kerr should actually take.

"Charteris rightly took the view that Kerr, as a former judge, had a better understanding of the Australian constitution than anyone at Buckingham Palace."

Kerr's role as Governor-General was to exercise the powers vested in the Queen. He had those powers, he exercised them as he saw them.

Kerr also sought advice from Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Garfield Barwick and asked for his views of a dismissal of Whitlam.

Barwick furnished Kerr with written advice containing his view that a Governor-General could and should dismiss a Prime Minister who was unable to obtain supply.

So a legitimate government, which shouldn't have been dismissed, was dismissed.

Whether you think the government should have been dismissed is a matter of opinion. The Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Garfield Barwick had a different view.

That is a textbook example of the uselessness, perhaps even wilful uselessness of the monarchy.

I disagree. For the reasons given below.

In terms of the optimal functioning of Australian democracy, November 1975 showed the Queen to be useless.

The reserve powers are vested in the monarch and are transferred immediately on the death of the monarch. "The Queen is dead. Long live the King." The whole point of a hereditary constitutional monarchy is continuity and an ability to be more readily apolitical.

Margaret Thatcher once said: "Those who imagine that a politician would make a better figurehead than a hereditary monarch might perhaps make the acquaintance of more politicians."

Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell - January 1997: "The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing."

Harold George Nicholson diplomat, author, diarist and politician...

"The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The monarch personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. In an epoch of change, he [she] remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. He [she] is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure.

The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his [her] personal prejudices or affections, he [she] is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State.”

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I've explained this already.

According to Paul Kelly's and Troy Bramston's excellent "The Truth of the Palace Letters", it is clear that the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris didn’t know Kerr was definitely going to dismiss Whitlam and most definitely did not advise him to do so.

All Charteris knew from Kerr’s letters was that a resort to the reserve powers was an option.

And, acting on this knowledge, Charteris' letter of November 4th 1975 directly warned Kerr against a dismissal.

Charteris very properly said that the reserve powers should be used only as a "last resort", said the threshold had not yet been passed to a “constitutional” crisis and finally said the reserve powers should be used only "at the very end when there is demonstrably no other course", the point being there is always another course - the warning role of a sovereign and governor-general.

Charteris also told Kerr the real "value" of the reserve powers was their non-use; that is, their role as a backup for a governor-general giving a prime minister a warning.

Anne Twomey - Professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney stated about the Palace's role in the Dismissal

"Throughout, the Palace placed stress on behaviour that was constitutional and measured, but without ever suggesting what action Kerr should actually take.

"Charteris rightly took the view that Kerr, as a former judge, had a better understanding of the Australian constitution than anyone at Buckingham Palace."

Kerr's role as Governor-General was to exercise the powers vested in the Queen. He had those powers, he exercised them as he saw them.

Kerr also sought advice from Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Garfield Barwick and asked for his views of a dismissal of Whitlam.

Barwick furnished Kerr with written advice containing his view that a Governor-General could and should dismiss a Prime Minister who was unable to obtain supply.




Whether you think the government should have been dismissed is a matter of opinion. The Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Garfield Barwick had a different view.



I disagree. For the reasons given below.



The reserve powers are vested in the monarch and are transferred immediately on the death of the monarch. "The Queen is dead. Long live the King." The whole point of a hereditary constitutional monarchy is continuity and an ability to be more readily apolitical.

Margaret Thatcher once said: "Those who imagine that a politician would make a better figurehead than a hereditary monarch might perhaps make the acquaintance of more politicians."

Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell - January 1997: "The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing."

Harold George Nicholson diplomat, author, diarist and politician...

"The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The monarch personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. In an epoch of change, he [she] remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. He [she] is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure.

The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his [her] personal prejudices or affections, he [she] is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State.”

Have you ever considered penning a short reply to a short question?

Your truly awesome cut and paste skills are on full display.

Anyway, I don’t know if you’re a monarchist, or simply playing devil’s advocate, but you appear to be proceeding from the same unexamined assumption that they do - namely, that a key component of a democracy is a functionless figurehead.

This is not even remotely established as fact.

And, like the monarchists, when pushed to explain this contradiction, you expect people to accept an even greater contradiction - the functionless figurehead's very function is to be functionless.

You present the Palace washing its hands of the Whitlam dismissal as some sort of evidence of a truly foolproof system in action, when a ten-year-old could see it as self-serving nonsense.

 

[Festerz]

 

[Chief]

Have you ever considered penning a short reply to a short question?

Your truly awesome cut and paste skills are on full display.

Roylion knows his history.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Sean Kelly's piece on the fundamental contradictions of the Queen is excellent.

 

[LeakyValve]

Is she in the ground yet?

Let's end this tripe.

 

[Chief]

Same thought I had earlier. She was a treasure... but didn't do anything so has to be respected.

 

[Gough]

Sean Kelly's piece on the fundamental contradictions of the Queen is excellent.

Now that the hysteria has started to die down, inshallah we'll start to see a bit more of this.

 

[Festerz]

Roylion knows his history.

That may be true.

Also true is that the discipline of history contains both fact and opinion.

Something to always bear in mind when someone is attempting to spin an authoritative narrative to support a particular political perspective.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

When truly great human beings like Fred Hollows, or Catherine Hamlin - people who spent a lifetime selflessly and tirelessly helping make people better in meaningful, practical ways - when they died, we certainly saw plenty of wonderful tributes to them, as we should.

But when a woman born into unimaginable wealth and privilege dies, a person whose greatest contribution to Australia (according to some on here) was to pointedly do nothing - it's wall-to-wall media coverage of tsunami-like proportions, and the PM calls an effing public holiday!

Whole world's got it backwards, it seems.

 

[Theseventhhamster]

Having a queen/king is is like a Schrodinger's Head of State. Super important and impartial but also there's no record of them ever actually doing anything in their role.

Could scrap the whole thing and give the job to a family of Golden Retrievers for the same result.

 

[footyfan1978]

Is she in the ground yet?

Let's end this tripe.

I do not think so.
Buried an auntie less than two weeks ago.
It is kind of surreal seeing a coffin go into a ground.
Thankfully it was not drawn out in terms of trip to site of burial like this seems to be.

It truly weird to me the body is in coffin for people to look at for days on end before burial.
I not following on tv but the body was taken from Scotland to somewhere last night and apparently today to somewhere else and then again on a plane. I not sure when actually buried but seems very drawn out. It must feel weird for actual family members even if they are royal family member in public.

 

[Roylion]

Have you ever considered penning a short reply to a short question?

Should I not provide any detail in support of my comments or an answer I provide? You don't seem to object to detailed replies from me on the 'Ask a Christian' thread, when it appears to agree with your stance.

Your truly awesome cut and paste skills are on full display.

Am I supposed to type quotes out character by character? What I've said to you I've said many times on these boards before.

Anyway, I don’t know if you’re a monarchist, or simply playing devil’s advocate, but you appear to be proceeding from the same unexamined assumption that they do - namely, that a key component of a democracy is a functionless figurehead.

I've already provided quotes from the likes of Barwick, Thatcher, Bagehot and so on, that they in fact do provide a function.

And, like the monarchists, when pushed to explain this contradiction, you expect people to accept an even greater contradiction - the functionless figurehead's very function is to be functionless.

It seems that many disagree with your contention that the monarch is a functionless figurehead. I've provided a few quotes explaining what those function are.

You present the Palace washing its hands of the Whitlam dismissal as some sort of evidence of a truly foolproof system in action, when a ten-year-old could see it as self-serving nonsense.

The system worked as it was supposed to have worked. Anne Twomey Professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney argues that, as do Paul Kelly's and Troy Bramston's in their book "The Truth of the Palace Letters".

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

If the sole reason for liking a system of Constitutional Monarchy is the advantages an apolitical wielder of Reserve Powers can bring to the executive process then it shouldn't really matter who wields those reserve powers, as long as they are outside the system of party politics and that they acted on no vested interests.

Why shouldn't the wielder of that power be an Australian?

 

[LeakyValve]

I do not think so.
Buried an auntie less than two weeks ago.
It is kind of surreal seeing a coffin go into a ground.
Thankfully it was not drawn out in terms of trip to site of burial like this seems to be.

It truly weird to me the body is in coffin for people to look at for days on end before burial.
I not following on tv but the body was taken from Scotland to somewhere last night and apparently today to somewhere else and then again on a plane. I not sure when actually buried but seems very drawn out. It must feel weird for actual family members even if they are royal family member in public.

Am treading carefully here as your response was good natured and measured (unusually so for BF) but to be honest, the old duck (ER) should be dispatched post haste.
The mawkishness and forelock tugging is gross.
It is way over the top.
Blah blah blah......................................................ad infinitum.

 

[spinynorman]

It seems a lot of it boils down to the fact that she lived a really long time so did her Queen thing for a really long time, therefore worth celebrating.

 

[spinynorman]

Meanwhile, it's nice to see Britons can show their respect for the death of the Queen by dying themselves.

Thousands of hospital appointments are being cancelled because of Queen's funeral.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Should I not provide any detail in support of my comments or an answer I provide? You don't seem to object to detailed replies from me on the 'Ask a Christian' thread, when it appears to agree with your stance.

Hate to break it to you mate, but I’ve been scrolling past your Tolstoy-sized contributions on that thread for a long time now.

Among others, you provided a quote from Margaret Thatcher, a politician, on why politicians can’t be trusted.
Do you even stop to think of the implications of what you’re cut and pasting?

Anyway, you can quote all you want, the fact remains, a big majority of Australians want a republic, and it’s hardly unreasonable to assume a lot of them do so because unlike you, they can see the fundamental stupidity of basing a nation’s political structure on thin air.

If the question we’re examining is what is the optimal political system for Australia, then a hereditary monarchy, where a remote figure radiates power which apparently gains its strength from never being exercised (except when it is, and then it’s done ham-fistedly or dubiously) is not it.

Have a look at what you’re typing and see if you can grasp how absurd it is.

Anyway, it’s like talking to a robot. I’m done here.

 

[Underarm]

If the sole reason for liking a system of Constitutional Monarchy is the advantages an apolitical wielder of Reserve Powers can bring to the executive process then it shouldn't really matter who wields those reserve powers, as long as they are outside the system of party politics and that they acted on no vested interests.

Why shouldn't the wielder of that power be an Australian?

So what method would choose for selecting that head of state? How do you pick one free from party politics?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

So what method would choose for selecting that head of state? How do you pick one free from party politics?

Good question, but no reason to default to a hereditary monarchy, which is basically just putting the issue in the Too Hard.

Maybe we need to look outside the Anglosphere.

Switzerland has had centuries of peace and prosperity. How does their system work? (genuine question, I know very little other than it's an exemplar of commonsense.)