Should Australia give the Queen the flick?
EXCLUSIVE
SBS is exploring
the possible making of a program that questions the validity of the Queen as
Head of Australia. In a letter to various community organisations, the producer
makes the following points:
“As mentioned, I am putting together a story on multicultural perspectives on Queen Elizabeth.
“I am looking for someone whose family may have had a negative experience with the British Raj or something similar and is open to talking about that.
“I would also ask for their perspective on having a British head of state in Australia.
“It would be a TV interview and we would like to conduct the interview at their house.
“Their perspective will be aired
alongside Vietnamese, Malaysian and Greek perspectives, forming part of
multiple viewpoints.”
What is the worst
thing that can happen if you pursue this course?
It is deemed futile?
Mischief making?
A question that
needs to be asked?
Australia and the
United Kingdom have been joined at the hip and along the spine right up to the
skull for centuries. Thousands of Australian Brits, men and women, and other
Europeans and Aboriginals have died for King and country in two world wars. The
only difference in the lifestyles of the two countries is that Australia has
more sunshine and more beautiful beaches. Other than that, for all intents and
purposes, we are a British colony. And, why not?
Lots of white Australians still have tangible links with the United Kingdom. Most if, not all, swear allegiance to the Queen and the Crown. The Scots and the Welsh may return spoilt papers in a referendum!
In my case, my
family and I migrated to Australia from the UK, exchanging one country for a
similar one with the bonus that we could renew our tans in the abundant
sunshine of Australia, something that came naturally to us in our Mother
Country, Kenya. Having been born and raised in a colonial country, good, bad or
ugly, it is the only life we have known. The same goes for all those exiles
from the former Northern Rhodesia, South Africa, Namibia and the rest of
British colonial Africa where British passport holders became exiles with the
advent of independence. Britain and Canada gave thousands of British colony
exiles sanctuary in the first place, then we found a second home from home: Australia.
Barring the colour of my skin, I grew up a second or third-grade colonial. It was the only life I had known growing up. My parents were Goan with a Portuguese influence and pretty alien to the British way of life but they all soon got used to it.
The exiles who found new sanctuary in the UK, Canada, USA and other parts of the world, swear total allegiance to their new sanctuaries but they have never completely forgotten the land of the heritage (Goa) and their birth mother country, somewhere in Africa. I have been swearing allegiance to the Queen ever since I was a little boy.
Is there a case for an Aboriginal (First Australian) becoming Head of State? I don’t know. At best it would be tokenism because thousands would vote “No” in a referendum. A referendum is unlikely to return in the positive. The numbers do not add up. More importantly, I doubt if either of the two major political support would support such a referendum. I am even sure they would encourage discussion for such a change.
I think the only people who have the right to say aye or nay are the First Australians, Native Indigenous Australians. The rest of us are Australians by their leave. The problem is: White Australia from the earliest days is mainly British. Their mother country is Britain. They owe allegiance only to the British sovereign, by choice, by right.
When the UK gave
independence to India, various colonies in Africa, and South-East Asia, most of
the whites tried in the first instance to return to the ice-cold freezing UK,
only to return to Northern Rhodesia, South Africa (where apartheid) welcomed
them and Australia where many have found a welcoming home, including the
"colonial" whites from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Ian
Smith's Rhodesia and the rest of Africa.
Could not see the same happening here in a million years (granting the First Australians independence and Australia becoming a republic and remaining a member of the British Commonwealth). To even discuss the subject in public would be akin to mutiny and her Britannic Majesty's Subject would rush to bear arms, so to speak. +My goodness gracious me, what an ungrateful lot ... we gave them the best life they could have and now turn and shit on us ...+ "You see, you see! Pauline Hanson" was always right! Send them packing. If the question was ever put, and the Yes vote won, would we all be packing our bags for UK and places unknown? Lots of the white settlers who left East Africa first for the UK and then for parts unknown have returned to the lands they loved so much and called them home.
We call Australia home, but is it? Will all non-white skinned people be thrown out, one day? And you know what they say, Never, say, Never. But that is being too extreme.
Hence, in the final analysis, only the First Australians have the licence by birthright to say anything on the subject. Beggar's the question, will Australia ever have an Aboriginal Monarch, Head of State or Emperor?
THIS DROP THE QUEEN STUNT HAS BEEN TRIED BEFORE
CNN)On Australia Day, locals are asking if it's time to ditch the country's British royal rulers.
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