Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The British monarchy is a racist institution that is founded upon the principle of white supremacy and which exists today in the modern world as a relic of a time when, nakedly and without question, white people bestrode the earth claiming all before them to be theirs and, in the name of that sentiment, in that belief, brought death and destruction upon so many peoples of the earth. In the 21st century, it is the cold, hard reality that this mentality lives to this very day. We need only look to the colonial attitudes of the nation states of Europe, of the United States and, indeed, of Australia in relation to our own region, or to the white people of this nation in relation to First Nations people, to see the continuing existence of white supremacy in this world.

It is an edifice that must be challenged and torn down. That great work, in which so many are now engaged, is hindered by the continual perpetuation of the myth, of the banality, of the British Empire. The British Empire was a cruel and extractive capitalist exercise which took the lives of millions across the world. The hollowed out, irrelevant edifice of the British monarchy which now stands in its place, looming over the continuing so-called Commonwealth, is the inheritor of that bloody legacy. We cannot and should not talk of it in this place without placing it in its context. To do so is to excuse and perpetuate its crimes.

I sit here as a proud member of the Australian Greens, a party avowedly committed to the establishment of Australia as a nation under treaty with its First Nations people. If, as part of that process of treaty, of truth-telling, of justice, it decides to take its place alongside the nations of the world that've cast off the moniker of monarchy and proclaimed themselves a republic, then that is what we believe that this country should be. One of the very many reasons that I believe that that is a course that we should take is that I am a democrat. I believe in democracy and that core democratic tenet that power is only legitimate when it is derived from the willing consent of the people over which that power is exercised. The reality of the British monarchy is that its power, in the absence of treaty, is illegitimate on this soil and has never been established according to key democratic principles. Sovereignty has never been ceded, and so it is the cruellest of jokes that this place would waste its valuable time uttering a sentence in relation to a foreign sovereign.

The last thing I'll say on this issue is as a young person. To young people, the British monarchy exists as a strange combination of two things. Firstly, it's as a strange, continually present reminder of that poison of imperialism which is so deeply imbibed into the heart of this country, a kind of soft sinew back to the deep-seated racism, the very beginning of the proposition of the continent of Australia, of that assertion of terra nullius, that assertion of superiority and the idea that there was a dirt here that needed cleansing. Simultaneously it exists to us as young people—the vast majority of us—as a bit of a joke, as an irrelevant edifice kept alive by the sycophantic expressions of journalists that have lost all rudder in their careers.

So many contributions in relation to the monarchy take the form of individuals that feel they have a personal connection to the monarchy and to the institution when nothing could be further from the truth. The reality of the British monarchy of the 21st century is that it is divided. It is, in many parts of the world, a disgraced institution. When it comes to certain members of that monarchy at the current time, it is on trial for crime. And so there is very little willingness in any part of our community to engage with it as anything more or less than a historical irrelevancy that should be cast off and done away with as part of a process of this country coming to terms with the truth of our history. Rather than hiding in the crevices of the past we should be embracing the wisdom and lived experience of the oldest continual civilisation on this earth, the oldest continuing culture. Embracing that wisdom, that knowledge and that holistic, inclusive conception of sovereignty is what we must do in this moment. We must join the nations of the world, like Barbados and so many others, that have finally, after all these years, stepped forward into themselves and stopped hiding behind an old idea that is grounded in immorality and a set of values that have no place in a modern Australia.