On the Head of State

In “Canberra’s Chauvinist Citizenship Circus” (Australasian Spartacist No. 233, Summer 2017/18) we wrote: “Today, the representative of the British monarch, the governor-general, remains commander-in-chief of the armed forces and official head of state.” As a reader, Bret S., subsequently brought to our attention, it is not the governor-general who is the head of state but the Queen of England. We thank Bret for this correction.

While one can find contending assertions as to who is the head of state, official government publications are unequivocal. Thus the federal government’s DFAT website states:

“Australia’s Head of State is the Queen of Australia, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Under the Australian Constitution, executive power is exercised by the Governor-General as the Queen’s representative.”

In this far-flung part of the British Commonwealth, the Queen appoints the governor-general (on the advice of the prime minister). It is to the English Queen, not the governor-general, that the military, police, high court justices and members of parliament swear allegiance. In fact, the post of governor-general exists because of Australia’s constitutional ties to the “Royal Crown.”

From passport to currency, this society is permeated with images and references bolstering the authority of the British monarchy. A symbol of gross privilege and rigid social hierarchy, it is an anti-democratic institution in which the vestiges of the church-riddled feudalism of the Middle Ages hangs like a dark cloud. Moreover, the monarchy plays a far from decorative role (see article this page). In “The English Queen…and the Lizard of Oz” (ASp No. 144, Autumn 1992), in writing about the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government by the Queen’s representative, Governor-General John Kerr, we noted:

“The events of 1975 illustrated how the constitutional monarchy in Britain and here could be used in some future crisis to bestow ‘legitimacy’ on the establishment of a reactionary, possibly military regime to defend the capitalist order.”

We have always made clear our proletarian-centred opposition to the monarchy. As we wrote in “Canberra’s Chauvinist Citizenship Circus”: “The ties that still bind Australia to the English monarchy are an affront to the working class and to elementary democratic principles. We say: Down with the monarchy! Abolish the post of governor-general! And while at it, get rid of that other undemocratic vestige of the Westminster system, the Senate.”

While it falls to the workers of the British Isles to abolish the English monarchy, workers here can play a part by fighting to sever the “ties that bind” Australia to this reactionary institution. Our goal of a multiracial workers republic stands in class opposition to bourgeois republicans who seek to modernise the image of Australian imperialism as part of the capitalist rulers’ drive to engage more easily in the super-exploitation of the Asian masses. Our Trotskyist perspective is to build a fighting socialist labour movement that will sweep away racist Australian capitalism and establish a collectivised, planned economy under proletarian rule. For a workers republic of Australia, part of a Socialist Asia!