Who Cares About The Royal Family? (Seriously, a Monarchy in 2013?)

Heartbreakingly, the headlines and hashtags of the world over the past few days have been devoted to the royal family’s newest branch on the sordid family tree. This instead of the sickening fact that monarchy still exists in the twenty-first century. It is a tragedy that the idea of monarchy was not banished to out of print dictionaries centuries ago, to serve only as a musty reminder of a barbaric and puerile step in the history of humankind. While I harbor no resentment for the young George Alexander Louis, I find it impossible to muster up even a scrap of empathy or warmth for someone who will live an idle and halcyon life at the expense of Englishmen and their ancestors.

Little George has won the birth lottery, and all of England is stuck with the bill … all of his bills, for the entirety of his life. I don’t think I can stand reading one more thing about the “royal baby”. George is not a royal baby, he is a lucky baby. There is absolutely nothing special or unique about him. If thrown into a daycare’s playground, there would be absolutely nothing that would distinguish him from the layman’s children playing around him, regardless of what he will be told in the privacy of palatial walls.

A family burdened only more by scandal than by ceremony, the members of the Windsor Clan are the most loathsome form of social parasites.

As a Monarchist, and a dual citizen of two monarchies under the same Queen (Australia and the United Kingdom), a brief answer.

In our systems of government, the reserve powers of the monarchy represent the ultimate brake on a government that would attempt to act illegally and unconstitutionally. If the Monarchy was simply abolished, that brake would be removed. It would be gone - and sooner or later, a government would embrace tyranny.

The United States has managed to make a republican system of government work, but history is full of examples of such systems that have degraded into tyranny, or other forms of collapse. America worked because it has geniuses and patriots who had risked their lives designing its system of government - and even then the first attempt wasn't that successful - in both Australia and Britain, the type of people who agitate for the abolition of monarchy doesn't contain all that many patriots or geniuses. It's mostly socialists, or advocates of big government, in fact. If anybody ever proposed a system that looked like it would work as well as America's I'd consider it - but that is not what the opponents of monarchy in these countries want.

I know some members of the Royal family, and they are certainly just ordinary people - there's nothing special about them. Except for one big thing - from birth they are raised in the idea that they should serve their nation and the Commonwealth. That they have a duty above all else to do what they believe to be right for their country and the Commonwealth. They are as flawed as any other people, they don't always get it right, but they never stop trying. I wish everybody involved in public life had their dedication to right and country. I know many elected officials don't seem to.

For a start, Australians have not been disarmed. We do have some stupid gun laws, but they are nowhere near as severe as Americans seem to have been lead to believe. Law abiding citizens can own guns and there are million of guns legally held in private hands in Australia - mostly basic rifles and shotguns, but personally I own both hand guns and a semi-automatic ex-military rifle. That's a side issue, though.

There have been two significant uses of the reserve powers in Australian history - both of which involved the Monarch's representative in Australia acting to restrain the illegal actions of socialist governments that attempted to exceed their legal powers. The first of these occurred at a state level in the state of New South Wales in 1932. The socialist Premier (the elected head of government) of that state was Jack Lang of the Labor party. King George V's appointed representative in New South Wales was the Governor, Sir Philip Game. This was the time of the Great Depression, and the Australian Federal government required the state governments (as authorised under Australia's constitution) to transfer money from the state treasury to the federal treasury to cover interest on loans that the Federal Government had paid out to cover debts incurred by the state government. This was clearly legal and constitutional. Jack Lang refused to pay over the money - and to prevent the Federal government from accessing it actually withdrew all the state's money from the banks and moved it to the Trades Hall (centre of the trade union movement). Lang threatened to use the New South Wales Police Force to fight the Australian Army if the Federal government attempted to intervene - we came very close to a socialist revolution. At the point, the state Governor used the Reserve Powers of the Crown to dismiss Jack Lang from office, and appointed the leader of the opposition, Bertram Stevens, in his place. Critically, at this point, the first action Stevens took (and was required to take) was to call a general election - at which point the people exercised their power to reject Lang and his Labor government. In other words, the Reserve Powers of the Crown were used to compel an election so the people could decide whether to support a government that was acting illegally and unconstitutionally, or not.

The second time it happened was in 1975, and this time it happened at a Federal level, and in this case, involved a socialist Prime Minister (Gough Whitlam) and Queen Elizabeth II's representative in Australia, the Governor General, Sir John Kerr. The issues were similar though not quite as egregious. Because of changes in the makeup of the Parliament since the previous election due to people dying and retiring, the Prime Minister and his Labor government could not get a budget through Parliament. Constitutional convention says that in such a case, the Prime Minister should call an election, but Gough Whitlam refused to do this. The Governor General asked him to explain how he planned to continue governing without a budget and when he revealed that his plan was to illegally order the Commonwealth Bank - full of money invested by people all over Australia - to give him illegal loans, the Governor General used the reserve powers of the crown to remove him from office, and once again commission the leader of the opposition (in this case, Malcolm Fraser) as Prime Minister on condition he would immediately call an election - and once again, the people voted to reject the socialist government and its illegal actions.

These are the two most prominent examples in Australia.

In the United Kingdom, the monarch has not actually had to use these powers (except with the approval of the Prime Minister to resolve some technical issues) in many years, but only because no government has forced them to do so - when push has come to shove, the existence of the powers has meant that governments have acted within the law and constitution. The most recent example of this is at the last British General election. As you will remember, that election ended with neither Labour or the Conservatives having a majority, and forcing both parties to consider forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats to form government. The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, would have preferred to form a government with Labour, even though the Conservatives had won more seats than Labour, and attempted to prolong negotiations to try and achieve this. These attempts ended when Gordon Brown reportedly made the following statement to him in a phone call:

"Nick, Nick. I can't hold on any longer. Nick. I've got to go to the palace. The country expects me to do that. I have to go. The Queen expects me to go. I can't hold on any longer."

It's possible the Queen had expressly told him that time was up (such a conversation would be private), but it's actually far more likely that he simply fully understood the constitutional situation, and did the right thing at the point where convention required him to do so.

There are other less dramatic examples throughout the Commonwealth as well - at the last state election in Tasmania, here in Australia, Labor and the conservative coalition wound up with equal numbers of seats, with the Greens holding the balance of power, and the Labor Premier initially planned to hand over power to the opposition rather than lead a minority government. The state governor told him he could not do that, because convention says in the case of a draw, the incumbent is supposed to make the first attempt at government. And only a few weeks ago, when the Australia Labor Party changed its leader (and therefore the Prime Minister) from Julia Gillard to Kevin Rudd, it is known that the current Governor General, Quentin Bryce, took legal advice as to whether or not she should allow the replacement, or instead, set up a process leading to an immediate general election - the advice was that she should, so she did, but the point is, she had the power available to block a change if it wasn't legal or constitutional.

Crucial to all of this is the fact that Governor General or state Governors are appointed by the Queen and are apolitical - they do not have to run for office, so they do not have to worry about party type politics, and are free and expected to act only in line with constitutional law - and the same applies to the Queen herself in the UK. Sir John Kerr, who dismissed Gough Whitlam and his Labor government, was a former member of the Labor Party - nonetheless, when his duty said 'Dismiss', he did it without hesitation (he wound up a heavy drinker afterwards, in the opinion of many because he hated what he'd had to do, but he did it anyway, because that was his duty). Quentin Bryce, the current Governor General is the mother-in-law of one of the most senior members of the Labor government - the marriage occurred after she'd taken office, she never would have been appointed with such a potential conflict of interest, but so great is our trust in this system, that even a staunch conservative like myself has no doubt she would act appropriately, even if it meant sacking her own son-in-law. We've never had a Governor General act inappropriately in any significant way - in 2003, a Governor General resigned from office, simply because he was connected to a scandal, because he felt that any controversy meant he had to protect the office.

The system works - it wasn't really designed, nobody would have designed this system deliberately from scratch - but it's evolved into something that works incredibly well. And does act as a brake on illegal actions by governments, but only intervening when those actions really do reach the stage that they must act.

Well thank you for the excellent executive summary. I never had an inkling of the reserve powers and always presumed the link between the two nations to be pure historical form rather than substance. Parliamentary politics have always mystified me, and this adds a new wrinkle. I still wonder though...suppose Mr. Whitlam, backed by a cabal of well placed supporters, had simply ignored Mr. Kerr and told the Crown to pound sand?

The simple answer is that if he had attempted that, he would have been in rebellion against the Crown. And take a look at the following badges:

Notice what device is on every single badge for the Australian Defence Forces and Australian Police Forces? It's the Crown of St Edward, which is normally used at the Coronation of a King or Queen. Every Australian soldier, sailor, airman, and policeman, swears or affirms their allegiance to the Queen of Australia. And under the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commander-in-Chief of Australia's military forces is the Governor-General. I actually was a serving naval officer at the time of the dismissal of the Whitlam government - and there would have been no doubt in my mind as to who had the power to issue me with legitimate orders in a situation where a Prime Minister and Governor General were in dispute.

Yes, it's theoretically possible that a Prime Minister might try to resist - just as I would say it's theoretically possible that in the US, a President might resist impeachment if the situation came up. If they did, there'd be a bit of chaos, but the situation would be resolved as needed.

And, since he did not have majority support, could not Parliament have acted to removed him just as effectively by simple vote? If so, I question the reserve power's utility in dealing with a Parliament gone tyrannical.

No, Parliament couldn't remove him in this case. Australia's system of government, though primarily based on that of the UK, adopted some ideas from the US - and our Parliament has two Houses - a House of Representatives (made up of representatives elected to represent geographic areas each containing a roughly equal number of voters and who stand at each election) and a Senate (with an equal number of Senators for each state, half of whom stand for election at a time, with overlapping terms for the two halves (I am simplifying - there are cases where the entire Senate is up for reelection). Any law needs to pass through both the House and Senate.

The Prime Minister is (normally - nearly always in fact, except for brief periods caused by unusual circumstances) the leader of the party or group of parties that controls the House of Representatives. A Prime Minister who loses a vote of no confidence in the House of Representatives either has to resign, or ask for an election - but Whitlam's Labor party had a majority of five seats in the House, so that was not going to happen. Whitlam however, did not have control of the Senate - and getting the Budget bill through required them to pass it as well.

Under the circumstances, once the government ran out of money, Whitlam had one legitimate options available to him - he could ask for a general election. He refused to do so. And that's why he was removed.

Incidentally, after Whitlam was dismissed, and Malcolm Fraser was appointed as caretaker Prime Minister, the House of Representatives did have a vote of no confidence to remove him from office (Labor did have the numbers to do that), but as all that would have done is force Fraser to ask for an election, and he had already done so, before the vote was taken, it had no practical effect.

On the subject of firearms--I guess I am guilty of lumping you in with the very subjected British. Mea culpa. Really, the way to deal with a tyranny is to do it the old-fashioned way: destroy it through force of arms or the fear of same. Armed citizens are the greatest inhibiting factor to would-be tyrants. I can't imagine it's much fun plotting to oppress people who are perfectly capable of killing you if pushed too far.

I agree that it may sometimes be necessary for an armed citizenry to take action to stop a tyrannical government, and that is the final safeguard in the final resort. But the existence of the Crown in our system of government, gives us one more available step before things reach that stage.

If you look at US history, in 1774, the Constitutional Congress wrote a letter of petition to King George III (the Petition to the King) asking him to overrule the Coercive Acts of the British Parliament. America resorted to revolution partly because that petition failed - because the King did not act to preserve the rights of the American colonists.

In 1774 (and in 1776), the Monarchy was not as it was today, and the principles of democracy within the Westminster system, and British monarchy, are not as they were today. But even then, some of the basics were in place - and rising in revolution was a step taken after the Crown failed to intervene to restore justice.

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