Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to associate my electorate, the electorate of Hinkler, with this motion of the House, the Prime Minister's motion, congratulating the Queen on the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne. As other members have said, for most of us the Queen is the only head of state, the only monarch, we have known in our lifetime. Her reign is compared, I think quite fairly, with that of Queen Victoria and that of the first Queen Elizabeth as landmark reigns and landmark events in British history that shaped democracy, politics and indeed the development of the world.

I can remember very vividly the Queen's first visit to Australia. I was a young cadet and all the streets of Brisbane were lined with military people, from cadets right through to regular Army people. We were very lucky—my school got the spot just on the rise going up to Fernberg House, which of course is Government House in Brisbane, so we got an absolutely stellar view of this new, young Queen.

I can remember coming back on another occasion in 1969 or 1970 and meeting her at a garden party at Parliament House, the year I was state president of the Young Nationals, or the young Country Party as it was then. Then I remember the opening of Expo '88 in Brisbane, on the river stage at Expo '88, and what a marvellous event that was. It was the coming-of-age of Queensland, and it was appropriate that the monarch should be there for that.

As the member for Ryan has said, the Queen's coming to Queensland over and over again has coincided with significant events in the development of the city of Brisbane and the state of Queensland. In my own electorate—or what has been in my electorate from time to time—two events stand out. The first was when the Queen came out in 1954 and Bundaberg was chosen as the Wide Bay centre for the event. There are still today photos of her visit to the Bundaberg showgrounds and the kids there in the circles around which the royal car circumnavigated. The image of the little flower girl presenting the flowers—she was interviewed just recently, I might add—was a very potent image. Interestingly, when Prince Charles went to Timbertop, he went for his holidays to Eidsvold Station, just west of Bundaberg, which, for a time, was in my electorate. I have stayed out there at Eidsvold Station. At the time the owner was Barney Joyce. Barney was a great outback character, and Mrs Joyce was a great mentor and substitute mother for Prince Charles. So there are two very vivid images of the Queen's influence over my electorate. Of course, it came home to us in a very forceful way at the time of the Childers backpacker fire, when she sent Princess Anne to Childers to meet the people associated with that horrific event and for the celebration of the recovery from that dreadful event. So they are the very vivid images in and around my electorate.

I am a monarchist but I am not some fawning devotee of a particular person. I think that the strength of the monarchy is not in the power it invests in any one person but in the power it denies to all others. In other words, the monarchy becomes the unifying symbol of a nation—in our extended form, the Commonwealth—and that power is invested in that figurehead. It is not a power that was used by kings of old in some cruel or demonic way, quite the contrary. The more brutal aspects of monarchy within the system we live in have been flushed out over time, from when William the Conqueror came through to the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors, the first Elizabethan age, the Stuarts and so on into modern times. It has gone hand-in-hand with the development of law. We and the parliament we serve here and the parliaments of the Commonwealth, and in particular I refer to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom, have grown up within that framework of law and monarchy and constitutional government.

Those things are intricately interwoven. They are especially potent symbols. When you get someone who not only is the embodiment of that but carries out the task with an even greater aplomb, a person who, as people have said in this chamber today, became the embodiment of duty, purpose, leadership, family and unity of nations, it becomes a much more potent symbol. I was quite surprised during the royal tour last year at the level of affection that has grown for the person of the Queen; there is a tremendous level of affection. Strangely, in that whole event, which I thought would be riddled with republican sentiment, quite the opposite happened. There was even a truce called, if you might call it that, by the republicans because, even amongst them, there is a genuine affection for Elizabeth Windsor, Elizabeth II.

She has continued to be that symbol. We can remember her during the Second World War as part of the unity of the British nation, working on trucks as a young mechanic. We have seen her become the young Queen. We have seen her reign for 60 years. We have seen her as a symbol of unity for 53 or 54 nations, and we saw that in a very potent way in Western Australia at the last CHOGM meeting. We have seen her now introduce another step in modernity for the monarchy in so far as succession will now apply equally to male and female heirs. So, if the firstborn is a female, she will be the heir presumptive to the throne. I think that is a great form of leadership and I think it is one of the crowning glories of this reign. On behalf of the people of my electorate, whom she has visited and whom on other occasions she has sent her children to visit, may I extend the warmest congratulations. I hope this year is a memorable and happy one and that God will continue to bless her in her work.

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