Royalty never made sense | Gympie News | Local News in Gympie

People used to ask me why I am a republican in the same awed voice one would use to inquire into the origins of Hannibal Lector’s taste for human flesh. This occurs less frequently now than it did in the early seventies when the world could not accept that a 13-year-old might dare to ask what the Queen was for or why we bothered in any event. I was too young to realise that in a country throttled by a conservative political death grip it is sometimes best to just shut up.

To me Royalty never made much sense anyway. Why does someone’s distance ancestor having been a smidge faster with the sword than the opposition qualify the descendants to be better rulers than the bloke who tells the most believable lies every four years or so after an expensive and ultimately non probative lying competition in which every one gets a vote? What is the real world relevance of the head of state? Why couldn’t the Prime Minister do the job and save us the extra brass? And it is substantial extra brass at that, when you account for one Governor General and a few state governors thrown in. We spend millions every year so that someone unaccountable can be the titular representative of an even more titular head of state whom we only ever see on British TV. I have known a couple of Governors and even a couple of Governors General. Not one of them would have claimed to put their pants on other than one leg at a time. What distinguishes the Queens representative from a thousand other people with similar social achievements is not clear. Whatever it is, no one is born to the job; which brings me back to my original doubts about the value of birth as a qualification for anything other than the most limited of biological functions.

How I can both deeply admire the current incumbent on the throne while doing all I can to convince Australians to ditch the crown at the earliest opportunity is a better question. Unlike my more rabid republican mates and the straw men frequently created by Monarchists to scare children into behaving, I do not despise the crown and all it stands for. I simply cannot see that it is relevant in the modern world. Her Royal Highness Elizabeth the Second has done all that any one woman could do to try to make the English royalty relevant; done a damn sight more than any of her menfolk have done I might add. Apart from Anne, the queen is the only living royal worth a cracker. She has had no help and often positive hindrance from the boys, her prince consort and the heir to the throne being the worst of the lot.

I am not alone in this view. Even the Nation Review, a now defunct paper not noted for its right wing sympathies, captured the plight of the Queen in a cartoon which showed HRH in bed with a cup of tea as the footman brings in the morning paper, folded on a silver tray of course, saying “I respectfully suggest that Ma’am may be advised to consider this morning’s headlines”, to which the Queen replies “Oh Gawd. What has Phillip done now?”

Maintaining dignity while your husband randomly insults every minority, collecting social gaffs like bubble gum cards and implies to the world that he thinks his son and heir an idiot and his eldest grand son a fairy takes considerable poise. Watching your descendants generally confirm the public perception that the young royals are irrelevant spoiled and obnoxious brats cannot be easy. The papers must really hurt some mornings.

Elizabeth was not born to be queen but having received the nod, she has done the best she can with the material she has been given. For that alone I salute her.

In some ways she has been too good at her job, leaving the problem for the monarchy of where next? The Queen is 83. Even if she inherited her mother’s longevity, the monarchy can only guarantee stability for about another 20 years. Then someone has to step into the breach. This will test the stability of the monarchy far more than Cromwell did, because this time the battle will be about relevancy and fought with words. The likely royal champions are far less comfortable with wars of words than the incumbent, mainly because they use too many of the wrong sort. While Charles is unlikely to follow his previous namesakes, either losing his head or fathering 12 illegitimate children, he could very well be the second Charles to lose the kingdom. A few years of his well meaning but incompetent best might well convert the English to republicanism and completely alienate the commonwealth. Even if Elizabeth outlives him, something she is making a determined effort to do at present, the bench is not exactly stacked with talent. Plenty of guts, grit and hale fellow well met but little in the way of tact or brains.

An Australian Republic within 10 years of the Queen’s death is an odds-on bet; in England itself, even money. The only certainty is that even a republican can see that Elizabeth the Second will be a hard act to follow; which is why I admire the lady but not the institution.