The Crown of Australia

The Australian Prime Minister's raising of the republican issue in the late stages of the General Election campaign there is commented on by the Radical Royalist, and his comments are a corrective to the frequent inevitabilist arguments in the press.

Not a few people fail to realise how comprehensive was the defeat of the issue in the 1999 referendum. To effect such a change in the Australian constitution required a four-fold majority of votes and states, and failed on all counts - and that was on a proposal essentially drafted by the republican activists in the convention. As an active Australian monarchist pointed out to me years ago in a conversation in Oriel such a change is far more difficult to achieve than its proponents think, or wish it to be.

The Oriel connection reminds me that in 1999 the college JCR passed a vote of censure on the previous Provost and former Governor-General of Australia, Sir Zelman Cowan, for having been the only ex-Governor-General to come out in favour of a republic. Now that's the sort of student activism I approve of...