The Queen’s Coup
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But I am aware of a 51/49 class split between Liberal and Labor over Gough, and so the belief this "they tried to overthrow Gough" thing translates to "OMG the republicans will win" is ludicrous.
Enough people think Gough was bonkers, That even Razor-gang Malcom Frazer was better.
I am glued on Gough/Labor. I don't agree with the people who preferred Frazer (who in later life became quite left) -I just want to note that this isn't a huge "this story breaks monarchism" because enough people actually wanted what the Queen and John Kerr did, to make it more nuanced.
There is much discussion about how in the cold war, a swath of countries from East Germany to China ran as states led by one party. Not much discussed is how many western aligned countries did as well. As the Cold War heated up, from 1949 to 1972, the Liberal coalition ran Australia. In 1972 another party is elected into power, and an extraordinary amount of energy from within Australia and without (UK and US) went into undermining anything but the old one party led coalition. Whitlam was undermined every day for his less than three years in power, then ousted by the retainer of a foreign queen, so that the one party led rule would continue to 1983. Of course the undermined <3 year interruption to one party led rule was "bonkers" to those supporting decades of one party led rule.
One party led rule from 1949 to 1983, with the one elected other party with less than 3 years ousted by a representative of a queen. These people then had the gall to criticize the one party led coalitions running China and East Germany as being one party states that blocked political pluralism.
The same thing happened in the other western aligned countries in the Pacific during the Cold War - Japan, South Korea. The same case in South Africa, Italy, France etc.
Not in West Germany which reinstated the Nazi ban on the communist party. Not the USA which banned the communist party, criminalized the party and jailed its leaders ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_195... ). South Korea, South Africa, Indonesia wtc. all followed the same path.
Dissenting parties were outlawed in western and western aligned countries all over the world, and many of them like Japan, South Korea, France, Italy, Australia etc. became one party led states.
Australia did not outlaw the Labour party, but we can see what happened when the Liberal party interrupted the 1949 to 1983 Cold War rule led by the Liberal party - pressures national and international undermined any ability to rule until a foreign monarch had her footman toss him out.
This may be a somewhat outdated appraisal of the situation.
The number of people voting for neither of those parties (including coalition members) has been steadily growing for years, with the most recent federal election reaching 33%. I recall, more hazily, that the previous federal election (so several prime ministers ago) it was just north of 25%, which even then put us ahead of a lot of ersatz democracies where only two realistic options are presented to the population to pick from.
The idea of being 'glued' to a political party, or a political personality, feels a bit out-dated -- and/or a bit American (no offence intended to our cousins across the pond).
I find the growing popularity of a more nuanced political landscape domestically to be hugely encouraging, but somewhat tempered by a fear this trend can (also) be manipulated, once they work out the algorithms.
The most recent federal election was this year. The previous federal election was 2019. There were no changes of prime minister in that time; Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2019 election, and Scott Morrison was the prime minister going into the 2022 election. I realise this takes a bit of getting used to, since the last prime minister to get from one election to another was John Howard.
> a lot of ersatz democracies where only two realistic options are presented to the population to pick from.
Only the US has two realistic options, or else your statement is meaningless. Come up with a countexample.
In the UK and Canada there are three parties who regularly win general seats namely the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems, or the Tories, the Liberals and the NDP. They both also have Greens who can win certain seats. Moreover they also have various regional parties e.g. Bloc Quebecois or the SNP who compete against the general parties in their regions of interest. In such a system, there might only be two realistic possible governments foreseen by observers, but voters act as if there's more than two realistic options to vote for, and they vote for more than two options, and more than two options get seats.
Various other countries have two-bloc politics where you can give your vote to a left coalition or a right coalition, and to a certain party within that coalition. For instance, in NZ you can vote for Labour or the Greens if you like the left, and you can vote for National or ACT if you like the right (notice how the Greens got a ministry after the last election, even though Labour got a majority in their own right). But in such a situation there's clearly more than two realistic options to vote for, even if there's only two possible governments foreseen.
(Not to mention that you can also get the situation where no precommitments are made, or the precommitmentments are rendered vain by results, and coalitions have to be formed after the election. But I assume this is regarded as the ideal.)
Fundamentally the way people choose to describe a political system depends on the conclusions they intend to draw from it. The UK and Canada are substantially similar, but people want to praise Canada in comparison to its neighbor, and criticise the UK in comparison to its neighbors, so the UK gets called a "two-party system" and Canada gets called a "multi-party democracy". (Both are also sometimes describe as having proportional voting, since minor parties win: but this is false. Neither Canada, nor the UK, nor France have proportional voting.)
As to 'Only the US has two realistic options' - you appear to be switching in 'realistic', and overloading 'options', when comparing other countries.
I'd contend, f.e. that even with 33% of people not voting for the Labor or Lib/Nat coalition in Australia, we're still in the regrettable situation of only have 'two realistic options'.
In the sense of 'who'll be head of state' (or PM in Canada, AU, UK, etc) it's well understood going into an election who the two candidates for that job are, and undeniably that has an influence on voters in electorates where that person isn't running (ie. almost all voters).
I know nothing about Canadian politics, but was living in London in 2010 - pop media were struggling to understand & describe how a coalition could even work. Anyway, that went as well as we expected, and my point is mostly that there was only two potentials before, and zero doubt after the election, about who the prime minister would be.
You observe that other parties present candidates and win seats in the UK and Canada (and presumably everywhere except the USA?) - which is true, but misses my point. Consider, if an independent in the US won a seat, could that conceivably change the selection of president?
Aside - a model I'd love to see employed more widely is a Swiss-style Federal Council.
Case in point of the modern US meddling for "freedom" is Libya.
Once seen as a model of development African countries can look to, has spiralled into filth with open slave markets.
I don't know whether to applaud the US for destroying a such a promising country with such effortless guile or spit on disgust that other powerful nations looked on and did nothing.
Constitutional change in Australia is rare and difficult and requires bipartisan support to get the change across.
The current government is already proposing a referendum on the "voice" of First Nations, which would make changes to the Constitution to formally recognize the presence of Aboriginal people prior to Australia's colonization, as well as requiring "consultation" when laws are passed that specifically address First Nation concerns.
This will take all of the bandwidth Australia has for "change" in the first term (3 years for Federal Governments), so trying to get more than one referendum through would be impossible.
We had a referendum on becoming a republic back in the late 90s, but our government at the time (led by John Howard) basically white-anted it, along with the pro-republic forces not having a settled agreement on what the republic would look like.
Confidence = voting for the government in confidence motions (or votes which are not explicit confidence votes but considered to be "matters of confidence"). Supply = voting for the budget (because if the government can't pass a budget, then it is considered to not have the confidence of the house, and has to be replaced).
[1] https://www.moadoph.gov.au/blog/double-dissolution-what-is-i...
While in the US either the House or Senate can do that, in Australia effectively only the Senate can - each “Administration” (we say “government”) gets its power from a majority vote of the House, so if the House votes against the budget, the government must resign. If the Senate does the same, it isn’t forced to.
Another difference relates to the consequences - the monarch’s representative (the Governor-General) can use that as grounds to sack the Prime Minister, appoint a new one, and force a new election, as controversially happened in this case. In the US system there is no constitutional way to have an early election, plus sacking the President is a lot harder (needs an impeachment trial)
The traditional way for a lower house to register a lack of confidence in the government is in fact to amend the appropriation bills to appropriate one additional dollar from the treasury. A government that no longer controls the treasury must resign or call an election.
> After decades of speculation, the letters show once and for all that the Queen and Prince Charles, now Australia’s King, knew as early as September 1975 that Kerr was considering dismissing the government, two months before he did so. This timing was damning.
> They knew a dismissal was being considered by Kerr in the absence of any crisis in government, since the Opposition had not yet made its decision to withhold supply in the Senate.
Thank goodness Australia had serious cutting edge journalists covering The Dismissal [1].
If you cannot pay those then the government is effectively not a government.
Unlike the United States,
By law, and by basic common sense, there MUST be a bill passed that contains the budget for the coming year. Otherwise no money is made available to public servants.
Any government must be able to secure support for this bill once a year.
Otherwise the entire civil service will not be paid.
What the Queen established was the precedent that, instead of having a government shutdown over supply like the United States, you instead just have an election right away.
Frankly, compared to the US approach, it's much more practical.
Minority governments, with confidence and supply agreements from minor parties (or not) are not uncommon in the world, but they're obviously not as stable ... but in an English (and commonwealth) parliamentary democracy it takes a loss of confidence (a majority vote of no-confidence in the parliament), or loss of supply (the inability to fund government) for the head of state to force an election
But the Queen and GC have dissolved (or prorogated) the Canadian Parliament as recent as 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_par...
Supply relates to the access to money, specifically through approval of the government budget. If a government has supply, it has an agreement with enough members of the house that it will retain approval to spend money on its policies. If a government loses supply, it loses the support of the house to spend any state money.
Similarly, confidence relates to support that the government represents the will of the people. Just as with supply, a government must secure a vote from enough members that they will support the government’s actions (they have confidence in the government). When they talk about a “vote of no confidence” it specifically means voting to remove support of the government in this way.
Further info can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply
Subsequent to this, there is an agreement that appropriations bills are split in 2. One bill is to continue funding from last years budget (on the basis that it was approved, and passed both houses, and therefore those things need to continue to be funded), and appropriations bill #2 which is all of the new initiatives. This way, government will continue to function, but the government and opposition can still debate and argue over changes.
The U.K. monarchy clearly lacks the wherewithal to influence Australian politics today that it possibly had back then and has nothing like the influence (through the Euro) of the ECB on the democratic Governments of Eurozone countries.
The lesson might actually be (ironically if so) that the monarchy would be more resilient to republican opinion if it wielded more power. It is the perceived pointlessness of it that will lead to its decline, not any strength.
One could quip that we need someone to inaugurate new infrastructure works, provide soothing, apolitical speeches in time of need and serve as an unelected symbol of our country - the 'unelected' bit being important, as otherwise we'd just end up with some has-been politician put out to pasture, someone probably the majority of the population had never voted for and don't see as 'their' head of state.
Now, on principle, the monarchy is laughable, anachronistic and undemocratic - but donning my pragmatist glasses, I see it as probably the best way to ensure we have a (symbolic) head of state for performing just those duties where you need someone not overtly political. As long as the royals feel like doing the job, I say let them.
In the UK, the monarchy fits pretty well with the other European constitutional monarchies, and there are reasons to support it as you say. I still think hard questions need to be asked about the exact nature of the monarchy, but it's clearly an English/Scottish/Welsh institution that belongs here.
In Australia, it's a remnant of colonialism, a foreign invader that destroyed one of the oldest, if not the oldest, civilisations on the planet. If we're ever going to get over this, then we need to remove these remnants. Having a British constitutional monarchy in modern Australia is a ridiculous anachronism. The "advantages" could clearly be replicated without the historical baggage. We need to be a republic.
But (note, UK person here, add salt accordingly) it seems like you could retain that part while also stripping any actual power - i.e. 'power-wise practically a republic, emphasis on the -nominal- in my first sentence.'
Implementation details thereof I don't have a strong opinion on except perhaps "if I ever do develop such an opinion you should probably ignore it anyway."
I always vote "below the line" - it's more fun trying to rank all those micro-parties in order of how much I agree with them :)
It's still miles better than the UK's system
If Malayans wouldn't be so iddle Australia would be like Indonesia or rather Madagascar now and nobody would ever hear about any other natives there, like we don't hear about modern Ainu. Oldest doesn't mean better nor in any way more civilized. Australians could spend more time defending their guaranteed basic civil rights that become only theoretical in time of barbarian madness of sanitarism*. If they feel bad for aboriginal folk they can carve them big piece of Austrialia back and we will see how civilized they are at giverning themselves. But we all know Australia is equally imperial, predatory & hypocritical state as old Britain after what happened to Timor. So it won't ever happen.
How, exactly? I don't recall the EU appointing technocratic governments there, i recall elections and the Greek and Italian people making a choice. Choice in specific circumstances that probably influenced them, but same as any election during a crisis.
Monti was supported by both democratically-elected Houses of Parliament, otherwise Napolitano would not have given him the task of creating a government.
In the UK you very much vote for a person, using the arcane first past the post system. People usually vote based on party allegiance, but at the circonscription level you cast a vote for the one winner, resulting in massive disenfranchisement.
We're talking about the PM here. You vote for a person who then votes on the PM, so it's an indirect system.
> using the arcane first past the post system.
FPTP sucks, but I've never heard it called arcane before. It's arguably the default normal way to vote for anything.
Both countries are beneficiaries of EU munificence. I wonder whether that has anything to do with it?
The Wikipedia article on this is less... certain, shall we say. [0]
We always knew that there was correspondence between the Governor General and the Palace, because after all, the GG is the representative of the current monarch, when a GG is going to wade in and cause a constitutional crisis, I'd expect there to be such correspondence.
But calling it the "Queen's Coup" is overegging the pudding.
It was very much John Kerr's Coup.
And for fun, there's lots of salacious rumours that the CIA and UK's Foreign Office were encouraging the removal of Whitlam because he was perceived as too friendly to the darn Commies.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
It was very much John Kerr's Coup.
Yes, I find the detailed history fascinating, but I am a bit unconvinced by the spin put on it. Clearly, the claim that the palace had no idea it was coming is false, but I don't read the supposedly damning quotes from the letters as the Queen (or anyone else in the palace) giving partisan advise about what action to take. I read it as advising him of what powers he held and that he was free to use them should he decide it was necessary.
Frankly, I feel like this is exactly the sort of role that a Governor General should take: acting as a neutral referee when the children stop playing nicely. The Governor General's powers are quite limited, but they are very real. The fact that the Prime Minister can replace the Governor General more or less at will acts as a strong democratic check on this power. (This is more problematic in the UK where the King cannot be replaced.) Personally, I think the "theoretical monarchy" and the role of the Governor General is a very nice feature in Canada and Australia (and presumably other commonwealth realms).
I'm not going to pretend to be informed enough about the overall events and motivations to have an opinion, but it does seem likely that the piece's overall tone is likely to be affected by that fact.
As such, her advice to Kerr should have been "Take the advice from the PM and the legal advice he has asked the Solicitor General and Attorney General to provide to you".
That should have been it. Anything else is improper and against the rules of a constitutional monarch.
If the Queen had tried to do the same thing in the UK, Parliament would immediately remove the Crown from power.
In a similar situation in the UK, where the House of Lords attempted to block supply passed by the Commons, the Lords have no power to amend the bill. If they refuse to pass it, the Commons can reintroduce the bill unchanged.
The Crown would have no power to intervene unless there was a "loss of confidence" in the Commons, at which point the PM would have no alternative to advising the Crown to call an election.
EDIT: To be clear, I am not well enough versed in the history to make a judgment on whether Kerr was right or wrong, and I understand that it will always be controversial, but I do think it is a feature and not a bug for the GG to have that power.
Almost the single job is to call on someone to be Prime Minister and form a government that holds the confidence of the House of Representatives. Then swear in who that person advises you to as members of the Executive Council.
We recently had the ridiculous situation that the Prime Minister advised the Governor General to swear him in as a "secret" additional minister in a number of ministries. That is now the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry.
That's very far-fetched. MPs take an oath of loyalty to the monarch on taking their seat. The entire House of Lords hold their positions wholly by the grace of some monarch or other. Without an electoral mandate, it's inconceivable that Parliament would dismiss the monarchy.
Yeah, I know, it's happened once or twice before; but the last time was 400 years ago, and the world has changed.
If the monarch attempted to expand their power beyond their current minimal role in the UK, Parliament would exercise its supremacy.
As for "without an electoral mandate", the current UK government is on it's 4th (or 5th? I lose count) Prime Minister because it holds the confidence of the Commons.
"The Palace" sounds just like an insulation layer to guarantee Queen's infallibleness: If something is good, then the Queen did it. If anything turns out hairy, it's "the Palace".
Similar to multiple management layers in companies. Unless it's a major blunder, the CEO won't take any blame. There are multiple management layers that "absorb" the hit.
I can't be too exercised about it considering the government of the day fell for an advanced fee fraud scam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loans_affair
More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...
Reading into the background in less partial news articles it seems that the Royal team were rightly answering the GG's questions in his uncommonly frequent letters and stressing the action should be a last resort.
If the guy was a bad choice, that's ultimately on the Prime Minister who selected him, the one he dismissed...
Even weirder in this case, the prime minister (not directly elected by the general populace) appointed an Governor General (not elected at all) to a position with monarchic powers, and that power was used against him.
Having PMs elected by MPs means that it is harder for a single rabble rousing politician to sweep to power and distort the use of, say, the military.
Having Governers General appointed by PMs, and confirmed by the monarch, means that someone outside of politics (usually a well respected figure like a university president or astronaut) holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called. Since it's via appointment, the monarch doesn't bear the brunt of the public rage for it. And since the monarch must confirm the GG it means that the position can't be stuffed with an obvious political hack.
It jives better than it sounds it would jive. It's like checks and balances with as many arguments and gridlock.
As an aside, I feel the same way about the Notwithstanding Clause[0] of the Canadian Constitution. It's a useful tool to diffuse hard issues that can't be used against the public to stop them from voting or speaking and since it automatically expires after a short, preset time the power is ultimately in the hands of the electorate.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
This seems like only a theoretical red line. If/when the GG does anything against the advice of the PM it's a crisis moment. There was a bit of a media fuss in 2008 but then the GG just did as she was told, no?
I mean that isn’t how it works in the US of course but I was under the impression our system was more unusual. Parliamentary systems seem quite popular.
(In the US it often seems like we’ve got this weird old version of Representative Democracy XP, while most of the rest of the advanced democracies have updated to Representative Democracy 10: Parliamentary Edition. We had a bunch of the original devs on staff, so they wrote a bunch of in-house patches, which let us keep XP running well past EOL, but now it turns out layering on patches like that results in an incredibly fragile system and we can’t update anything without possibly taking down the whole system.)
If you’re only interested in XP’s kernel rather than the rest of it, you’re going to have a bad time.
Likely, if these countries were only just de-colonizing and ratifying constitutions today — where the existence of an intelligence service with global reach, directly reporting to the Sovereign, can be assumed — then the GG appointment for each country would be probably be done directly by the Sovereign, with MI6 analysts doing the nominations and then the countries’ PMs (or trusted delegate cabinet ministers) merely doing recorded interviews for the Sovereign to watch and evaluate.
Is there are practical difference between this description and just saying that the country's PM does the appointment? I guess one test would be what happens if the sovereign decides to override the PM. What happens then?
That being said, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the benefits our current system affords, though there's precisely ZERO reason those functions need to be performed by a monarch. There are other ways to achieve the same results without needing to prop up and pander to the spoilt, entitled children of some long dead yet highly effective murderer.
If we want a single, final, sole, human decision maker I do not see how we can accomplish this without a monarchy that doesn't come with the massive downsides of attracting those that have a lust for power. That the monarchy is essentially toothless in all but the most dire circumstances is a feature not a bug.
It's like the folks in the military that get slated to man the nuclear weapons silos. Very few want the job because they know that they're only need in the very rare circumstance where the whole world is on the line.
It's illiquid power.
As for the rest of it, the holdings, etc. I looked at the Queen as essentially a guardian of nature and an encourager of those in the military, intelligence and of the many charities that exist across The Common Wealth. Yes, she had many fancy dinners, but we got more than what we paid for. Whether encouraging a single little girl to become a doctor when she grows up or slapping a good-hearted wealthy guy on the back when he donates a colossal fortune to helping orphans the return on investment is obvious. Fifteen minutes of her time yielded (and continues to yield) tremendous return.
And then the candidate Prime Minister you (partially) based your decision on might resign, and the MPs of the governing party will pick a new person to exercise those powers, with no recourse to the electorate.
This is not theoretical. In the UK it's happened twice in the last six months.
I've really enjoyed reading the discussion in this thread; having approached this general topic with no prior knowledge I now have about 8 Wikipedia pages up that I'll skim throughout the day! Always a fun time.
I believe this sort of news appears in the context of it being commonly argued that in a "British style constitutional monarchy" the monarch holds no real power, and people who suggest otherwise are often dismissed as lunatics.
It is good to point out that one cannot have it both ways. Either this is indeed a coup, or the regime is not a full democracy.
Almost every Brit I’ve ever spoken to about this will fastidiously argue that the Queen or King in power holds no real power. I simply don’t believe them. Given a constitutional crisis large enough for the House of Commons to want to strip the Royal family of its power and privileges, I wasn’t convinced they would be the guaranteed victors of that conflict with Queen Elizabeth II. King Charles hasn’t been King for very long, so a conflict with the Commons probably would favor the Commons at this point in time, but I’m not convinced the King could easily be run over either.
The reason this remained hypothetical under the Queen and will probably remain so under the King is they know how to effectively wield power without attracting spotlights and given a choice want the spotlights pointed in a different direction than at them. Compare and contrast with the President of the United States where every possible move he could make is scrutinized and gamed out within an inch of its life before he can make it, and when the Executive team leading the country does something, the President wants his credit so he can leverage that in forthcoming elections both for his own re-election and to bolster the campaigns of members of his party; but taking credit—even opportunistically—also means you suffer the blame as well.
Australia has good reasons to want to take a different approach though, and well, the King of Australia does live on the opposite end of the world, so picking up the Republican ball will probably be more straightforward for them should they choose to go down that route.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-eleventh/id1499296...
well...
In the end it is academic. The Australian people had their chance to judge the performance of the Whitlam government at the election held 13 December (both Whitlam and Kerr knew that 11 November was effectively the last day that this could be considered due to the requirements for elections to be held) and delivered a resounding message to the former Whitlam government. Even if Whitlam had the half senate election he wanted, it would not have achieved his aims and he would have had to take the issue to a full House election.