Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is my very strong opinion, and I think the member for Kennedy might have some strong views on that as well. I'm proud to be part of a government that has introduced the first ever Assistant Minister for the Republic, the Hon. Matt Thistlethwaite. While we acknowledge the strong cultural, diplomatic, legal, sporting and many other ties that our country shares with the British people, I do point out that we are not British. Monarchy is not a fundamental part of our national identity. Ask our First Nations people. Ask those descendants of the Irish convicts that came out in the First Fleet and many other people. It is disappointing that debates around the idea of a republic in the past have forgotten that.

So this bill replaces references to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with 'the Sovereign', providing consistency across existing and future legislation and avoiding the need to make future amendments should a queen ascend the throne, as well as clarifying language that reflects Commonwealth practice.

This bill would allow legislation to reference 'the Sovereign' by the office that they hold regardless of the corporeal presence sitting on the 700-year-old coronation chair, or St Edward's Chair, as it is called. This is certainly not a controversial or revolutionary proposal because we do the same thing with ministers, parliamentarians and other statutory office holders. While the crown is a part of our system of government—I don't think there is a crown in here; it's still a part of our system of government—this measure recognises the crown appropriately, similar to the current Commonwealth laws, but removes the consistent need to update references depending on the gender of the office bearer.

This bill also introduces the definition of 'Senior Counsel' in the Acts Interpretation Act 1901, to replace references to 'King's Counsel' and 'Queen's Counsel'. While this country continues to swear obedience to the British Crown, legislation such as this will be necessary and will continue to take up more of this parliament's valuable time.

Quite frankly, while I agree with the principle and legislative objects of this bill, any time that this House spends discussing a sovereign who lives thousands of kilometres away must amuse the people for whom we're all here to govern. The very notion that we actually need this bill to maintain consistency in our legislative framework cheapens the values that we claim to embody as a people. It is the notion that we are beholden to a hierarchical feudal system of governance that doesn't sit right with much of the Australian public.

I believe it is time our country had an Australian head of state—someone who understands our unique place in the world, our commitment to egalitarianism and the fair go. I know we had the debate back in November 1999, but the reality is that if we are to develop as an entirely Australian identity then we must become a fully independent nation.

The 1999 referendum on the republic failed because Australians couldn't agree on what model we should adopt, but, at that time, 24 years ago, many Australians agreed that we should become a republic. A republic would represent a change to our government and a chance to make amends and to reconcile us to our place in history and our role in the world as a leader and as a beacon—a great democratic model .

When Elizabeth took over as monarch, back in 1952, Australia was much more British, I would suggest. Most Australians, if they held a passport, held a British passport. We sang 'God save the Queen'. I certainly was singing that all through the seventies. Every day I went to primary school, we sang 'God save the Queen'. The majority of the population either came from Great Britain or Ireland or were of British descent in some way. The Australia of today is a completely different nation. Today migrants make up about 30 per cent of all Australians, and, although British immigrants remain the largest foreign-born population, the number of Indian- and Chinese-born Australians is increasing rapidly. I think they've been No. 1 and No. 2 for the last four, five or six years.

A republic means reimagining what it means to belong to this country. The legal idea of 'Australia' was founded on the idea of terra nullius and also the exclusion of non-white people, something—the terra nullius fiction—which was overturned by the High Court in the Mabo decision in June 1992.

One of the first pieces of legislation of the federal parliament back in the early 1900s was the White Australia policy. Now we are different. It is time to rectify that by having different people—First Nations people, migrants—sitting at the table. It is up to them and to us to help determine our future type of government. Obviously that would only be determined by another referendum.

Section 16 of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 stipulates that references to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Commonwealth acts are interpreted as references to the sovereign. As such, this bill does not change references to Queen Elizabeth II in existing legislation, nor does it make amendments to the Royal Style and Titles Act 1973 or the Australia Act 1986. And don't get me started on the idea that you have to change the crown, the actual crown, in our letterhead because the crown has changed under King Charles. We don't have to do all of that stuff, thankfully. I can imagine the waste of money.

This bill ensures congruence in references to the sovereign across Australia's legislative framework and demonstrates how deeply ingrained British influence is in our institutional processes. Obviously many good things have come from that—the rule of law, Westminster et cetera.

While certain personalities in the coalition have the audacity to claim that the legacy of colonialism does not have an ongoing negative impact on this country and on First Nations people in particular, as was said during the recent referendum, I would remind the House of the many historical injustices, massacres and violence perpetrated against the First Australians by the British Crown in the decades before the colonies federated. The genocide visited on so many mobs that we can see in the placenames of many Australian towns now, the attempted ethnic cleansing, the poisoned flour, the infected blankets, the stolen generations, the forced sterilisations—these are not for the history books. Many of these occurred in the lifetimes of people sitting in this chamber. More than 200 years of being told that your culture is worthless and feeling rejected from society, and we still have some politicians wondering why many Indigenous Australians choose to disengage or feel unrepresented.

In my lifetime, Indigenous Australians were still considered to be fauna. They weren't counted in our Constitution. Our people are still not mentioned in our Constitution, despite 60,000 years of connection to this wonderful land. Yet here we are discussing a bill that is necessary only because this country still swears fealty to the same Crown that was a part of that dispossessing and murdering of Australians in the past. At a time when many Australians, including us on this side of the House, are attempting to reconcile some of the entrenched disadvantages that First Nations Australians continue to suffer, what more proof do we need? We need to close that gap.

The legacy of imperial power in this country is literally written into our legislative framework. Some of those opposite speak of division when we strive for better outcomes for Indigenous Australians, but they're the first to stand in this place and defend a system that is predicated on the belief that one particular family has a sacred birthright bestowed by God. It saddens me that this bill is still necessary in a modern democratic society like Australia, but as a tool of updating references to the sovereign, I commend the bill to the House. In doing so, I recognise the growth of our country and the willingness that many have to stand on our own two feet in international politics, with our own identity, our own connections with the world to lead on so many things, as we have in the past. I look forward to a future where legislation such as this will no longer be necessary because we no longer have a foreign sovereign to reference, and instead have an Australian head of state.

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