Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish all of the parliament family a happy Saint Patrick's Day. People have commented that perhaps it is somewhat ironic that this bill, which is to do with the succession of the Crown and Australia's head of state, is being held on Saint Patrick's Day. I think it is really important to make it clear that those of us who see this legislation and the fact that we have a head of state who is a British monarch as ironic is not a result of us having an anti-British sentiment—far from it. It is rather that here—150 years after we became a nation-state that had universal suffrage right at its very heart and where men and women were treated equally—we are dealing with a piece of legislation that seeks finally to catch up and change the gender preference of the British monarch so that female children are treated equally to male children in the order of succession.

I think it is also ironic that it is 115 years since we enshrined our Constitution, which was steadfastly a secular constitution, that we are having to deal with the removal of a religious principle. For the spouse of the head of state, no longer will a concern of Romanism be enshrined into the marriage entitlements of the British monarchy and therefore the Australian head of state. We do note that this legislation, however, does not cease to require the British monarch to be an Anglican. Of course, in Australia we are a staunchly secular country in terms of our political structures, where all faiths and no faith are given equal standing. But we are nevertheless compelled to have as our head of state a member of the Anglican Church. I think probably the percentage of Anglicans in the Australian community now is probably down to around 30 per cent, if that.

Again, I think this legislation that we are dealing with today is a powerful reminder that the structures we have in place for the determination of our head of state are really, really quite inappropriate for that very thing that we are. It is not, as I say, that to take this view one needs to be anti-British. The majority of my ancestry is Irish and German; I did have one great-grandmother who was born on Bayswater Road. But nevertheless, notwithstanding that, whilst genetically I have very little British inheritance, I would believe very strongly that culturally we have a British inheritance. I think that anyone who has studied history, has studied law or has been in this parliament would deeply value those things that we inherited from the British culture. They are not the things that we have inherited through the monarchy; they are those powerful institutions of a parliamentary democracy, a Westminster system, the rule of law and the beautiful practicality of the common law.

All of those things have been very fundamentally at the foundation of Australia as a nation state. What has not been at the foundation of Australia as a nation state is a deeply incensed system of inequality. The whole notion of a monarch is deeply discordant with the whole enterprise that is Australia. The idea that we have a position that one inherits is indeed absolutely antithetical to the very notion of what it is to be Australian. Australia is a land that has offered people from across the globe and people from all walks of life an opportunity to make their own destiny. So the symbolism of a head of state that has that position bestowed on them by virtue of their birth and not by virtue of their attainment is, as I say, deeply antithetical to the whole exercise of Australia and, as such, is very much the wrong symbol for us to have enshrined in modern day Australia.

Whilst I do pay tribute to the British institutions that have very much shaped this country, we have to recognise that we have institutions and cultural influences now from all around the world. It was very interesting at the Simpson Prize awards to talk to a young girl, Alicia, from Western Australia who was the runner-up. We talked about her essay on the young people who signed up from Australia to participate in the war. She made the comment that her research showed that, overwhelmingly, people who were going to fight were going to fight for Britain rather than for Australia and, indeed, the majority of those that she looked at had actually been born or had a parent born in Britain.

But it is vastly different today. We are such a different country. We have people who have been in this country for many generations. We now, fortunately—albeit belatedly—acknowledge the value and the traditions of the original Australians, and they are very much woven into our heritage. We have had the waves of migration from southern Europe, from Vietnam and, more recently, from the Middle East, Africa and other parts of Asia. So we have become a much richer and more complex society culturally. So, again, it seems to me to be totally inappropriate that we have as our symbol this position that one inherits and one that can only be British and be Anglican. We need to recognise that we have this richer society, and we need a symbol. We need a head of state that is drawn from that.

As has been said by many speakers, the idea that we can have a head of state that is one of us—that comes from this country—that we can have a person who is Australian being the symbolic head of our community is really important for the creation of that social glue, the creation of that strong sense of an Australian identity and the value of that Australian identity. Having an Australian head of state delivers value to our community—a value that I think is very much lost by having a British monarch as our head of state.

As a staunch republican—but a staunch republican who values our British heritage—I think it is important that we have minimalist change. I certainly think that the complexities that are introduced by having an elected head of state have undermined the arguments for a monarchy. Notwithstanding what they might think of us individually or as a class, I think that, by and large, Australians are generally pretty happy with the structure of our democracy. So it is really important that we make a change that is very transparent to the community and that we not have a great many unknowns—as people were concerned about. For example, what happens if you have a directly elected head of state? Do you have conflict between that head of state and the Prime Minister, each of them having, arguably, their own mandate?

By recognising the strength of our parliamentary democracy and the system that we inherited and preserving that structure where we have a Governor-General and that Governor-General however becoming the pinnacle of the political structure is, I think, very much the way that we should go. The only thing that would change is that, instead of the government of the day advising through the Governor-General to the Queen who the next person to be appointed to that position would be, that would happen directly to the Governor-General. So, effectively, it would be exactly the same structure and exactly the same rights and obligations would remain, except it would simply not have to be processed through the Governor-General to the British monarch. That is a clear case that I would love to see all republicans get behind. Whilst I can see the superficial appeal of an elected head of state, I think that, unfortunately, the type of person most people would like to see—and have been happy to have—as governors-general would tend not to want to put up their hand to be elected as a governor-general, and I think it creates a difficulty if you have these two offices where there are two competing mandates.

Again, in summary, of course we support this legislation, but it is really quite absurd that, 115 years into our nationhood, we have to have these extraordinarily archaic discussions about the line of succession to a monarchy many tens of thousands of kilometres from this country. In the next decade I would really like to see, and I hope that we will see, Australia reach that final level of maturity where we have a head of state who is an Australian, who is a person that achieves that position not by virtue of the privilege of birth but by virtue of the things that they have achieved within their life, and that that will strengthen this incredible exercise that we have here in Australia, where we are seeking to weld together peoples from all over the world into a single common identity.

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