Australia may say farewell to Queen after republican leader wins election

Australia will hold a referendum on removing the Queen as head of state after Kevin Rudd, the Labor leader and a staunch republican, swept to power at the weekend, bringing an end to 11 years of Conservative rule.

Mr Rudd, 50, a former diplomat, has promised to hold a plebiscite on severing links with the monarchy. He said yesterday that he would withdraw Australian troops from Iraq and ratify the Kyoto pact on climate change.

With 53 percent of the vote, Mr Rudd brought an emphatic end to the 11-year tenure of John Howard, an avowed monarchist who was set last night to become the first Prime Minister since 1929 to lose his seat at a general election.

During the campaign Mr Rudd, who speaks fluent Mandarin and has lived in China, said: “Can I say, we’re going to consult the people again. We haven’t fixed a time frame for doing that, and I think the time will come before too much longer when we do have an Australian as our head of state,” Mr Howard allowed a referendum on the issue in 1999 but it was roundly rejected despite two thirds of Australian voters saying in successive polls that they wanted a Republic with an Australian head of state.

Critics of the referendum argued that it was rigged in favour of monarchists because it gave voters only the option of having Parliament elect a President and not the direct election of a head of state by the people.

Mr Rudd, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural Queensland, has promised a plebiscite which is likely to offer a far broader means of choosing an Australian head of state. It is expected that the plebiscite would probably be held in 2010 in conjunction with the next general election.

Adding to the strong likelihood of Australia now becoming a republic was an announcement yesterday that Mr Howard’s Treasurer and heirapparent as leader of the LiberalNational Coalition, Peter Costello, was withdrawing from political life and would not seek to lead the Opposition.

It is now expected that the richest man in the Australian Parliament, a former lawyer and businessman, Malcolm Turnbull, will be elected Opposition leader later this week. Mr Turnbull, 52, is a leading republican and headed the Australian Republic movement at the time of the last referendum.

With polls showing strong support for a republic, Buckingham Palace insists that the issue can only be resolved at the ballot box. “I have always made it clear that the future of the monarchy in Australia is an issue for you, the Australian people, and you alone to decide by democratic and constitutional means. It should not be otherwise,” the Queen said during a State visit to Australia in 2000.

Mr Howard, the last avowed monarchist at the top of Australian public life, was set for an inglorious end to a career in public life by becoming only the second sitting Prime Minister in Australia to lose his seat at a general election.

The Sydney suburban parliamentary seat he has held for 33 years was expected to go to a former television newscaster, Maxine McKew. Mr Howard, 68, ignored the advice of some senior ministers that he should stand aside before the election.

Mr Rudd swept the Labor Party into office on the back of about 53 per cent of the vote compared with the Government’s 47 per cent. Computer projections show Labor on track to take at least 86 seats in Australia’s 150-seat House of Representatives.

Mr Howard was clearly unnerved by the scale of Labor’s win, which came despite his attempts throughout the campaign to sow alarm at the prospects of the party ruining Australia’s economy. Such an emphatic victory will allow Mr Rudd to begin implementing the core promises of his campaign, which include the withdrawal of Australia’s 550 troops in Iraq. Mr Rudd has said the troop withdrawal will be staged and done in consultation with the United States — which he will visit early next year. He will also the sign the Kyoto agreement on climate change on behalf of Australia — something Mr Howard had always refused to endorse.

Mr Rudd has also said he will offer a formal apology to Australian Aborigines for the injustices they have suffered at white hands.

Labor’s win sees the elevation of Australia’s first woman as deputy Prime Minister. Julia Gillard, 46, emigrated with her parents from Barry, South Glamorgan, when she was five years old. The daughter of a retired policeman, she trained as a lawyer and first came to public attention as leader of the Australian Union of Students.

Mr Rudd has three children and is independently wealthy because of the business success of his wife, Therese Rein, the founder of the Ingeus empire which bids for contracts to assist disabled people back into work.

are uncommitted to either, according to the latest poll conducted by The Australian in January 2007

I have always made it clear that the future of the monarchy in Australia is an issue for you, the Australian people, and you alone to decide by democratic and constitutional means. It should not be otherwise.

I shall continue faithfully to serve as Queen of Australia under the Constitution to the very best of my ability, as I have tried to do for the last 48 years. It is my duty to remain true to the interests of Australia and all Australians as we enter the 21st century. That is my duty. It is also my privilege and my pleasure.

Not according to this NY Sun article:

Debauchery May Win Premiership for Australia’s Rudd

If, as expected, Prime Minister Howard of Australia loses this week’s general election, he can blame his defeat in large part on a drunken evening that his opponent, Kevin Rudd, spent in a Manhattan lap-dancing club with the editor of the New York Post, Col Allan.

Whereas in most countries a well-publicized night on the tiles by a self-professed “Christian socialist” might bring about a swift end to a political career, in Australia the news that the clean-cut leader of the Labor Party was one of the boys did him no end of good.

As soon as news of his evening of debauchery in New York with Mr. Allan, fellow Australian, reached home, his poll lead began to increase, and with less than a week to go until the polls open on Saturday, he leads Mr. Howard, 68, by between 8 and 10 points.

http://www.nysun.com/article/66645

November 11th, 1975.

Australia's most socialist Prime Minister Gough Whitlam has spent the last few months violating Australia's constitutional conventions by refusing to call a general election in a situation where he is unable to effectively govern. Because he knows he will lose the election, he's not willing to call it.

He presents a plan by which the Australian Government will compel the Commonwealth Bank - the bank the vast majority of ordinary Australians have their savings invested in - to make an unsecured, interest free loan to perpetuate his government.

The Queen's representative in Australia, His Excellency Sir John Kerr, Governor General of Australia, summons the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser and asks him what he would do if he was Prime Minister. Fraser informs the Governor General that his first act would be to pass the money bill held up in the Senate, and his second act would be to call a General Election.

The Governor General commissions Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister, and shortly thereafter dismisses the Whitlam government from office. Parliament is dissolved later that afternoon so an election can be held.

The worst constitutional crisis in Australia's history is averted because at the head of our system of government is a figure who is outside politics, who never has to run for office, and whose powers are almost entirely ceremonial - except in an emergency.

This is why a large number of Australians are monarchists.

If someone can come up with another way of giving us a largely apolitical Head of State, with a long tradition of allowing the government to govern without interference, except in times of major crisis, we'd be interested in hearing about it.

As for the idea that the Royal Family are on some sort of 'permanent dole' at the expense of the taxpayer, that's not true of most of them. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh do receive money from the Civil List. They receive that money as a result of a 1760 agreement by which George III transferred the hereditary revenues of the Crown, to the state, on condition that certain expenses would be paid by the government. He gave up his family's money to his country, in exchange for expenses being covered. If the Royal Family had kept those revenues, they'd be far higher than the money paid out under the Civil List. It's called the Crown Estate, and it's worth about £7,000,000,000. But it's true that they do get some money. About £10,000,000 a year - so in about another 500 or so years, the British government will have paid back the value of the land George III gave them in payments to the Royal family. Put it another way, the British government gets about £180,000,000 in revenue each year from the Crown Estates, and gives the Crown £10,000,000 in exchange for that.

And it's only those two get money from the taxpayers. Other members of the Royal Family are largely funded by monies gathered in rent from the Duchy of Lancaster - rent paid on properties that the Royal family owns in the same way, anybody else can own property. They've owned it since before they became the Royal Family, in fact, since 1265, with it first being held by a monarch in 1399. So unless you want land and property to be simply seized from this family by the state, it's their cash. Their property. It's worth about £300,000,000.

Want to steal it from them?

I can understand people thinking the idea of a Royal Family is old fashioned. But economically, it's a pretty good deal for British taxpayers.

And an even better deal for those of us in the rest of the Commonwealth - we only pay for them when they visit.

(Declaring a bias, I'm a friend of the Duke of York, and I know the Prince of Wales as well. I like these people, and I know they do a great deal of hard work to serve their nation, and their people.)

Ah, here's the thread.

Seems those Aussies supporters of a "Republic", believe it would consist of doing away with the MONARCHY in Australia, rather than moving to "Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them". (which they ALREADY have in place have WITHOUT being a "Republic").

To make matters worse, they seem to think they can still have DEMOCRATIC elections after becoming a Republic! That can't be, since a bunch of freepers here INSIST that it's not possible to be a Democratic Republic. They claim those are TOTALLY separate, COMPETITING "forms" of government (see their lecturing on "Republic vs. a Democracy", and America is clearly ONLY a Republic and NOT Democratic.

Perhaps the "we're not a democracy" crowd here should start a letter writing campaign to "inform" the Aussies of the truth. I suppose they already are a "Republic", according to what the "we're not a democracy" crowd claims is the meaning of the word "Republic"

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