Farewell Elizabeth II

Because I was busy making things and because I’ve been busy making things all my life – including making trouble for various people – I put together a successful type-2 paramontage back in May featuring the Queen. I think the reason for the success of this type 2 is that the colour red and its lighter similar, pink, are so prominent, repeated in image after image like a bass note in a pop song. Thin Lizzie finally met her end and we’re all about to find out what it means to know ourselves.

QE2 wasn’t the most successful queen, according to one Japanese person I know but then again Japan’s royal family has its weaknesses, including a tendency to exclusively favour men over women in terms of the succession. I’m not sure how the succession will go in Australia, Charles III has a faint ring of autocracy to it due to the way the first Charles died (killed by Parliament) though my father always liked Charles II on account of his returning to the throne.

I became a staunch monarchist when Donald Trump became US president, it seems to me now a no-brainer that the symbolic and executive functions of leadership need to be separated in order to have a successful polity. The ways that people identify with the former can get in the way of the operations of the latter so that by keeping people’s minds focused on one thing at a time you allow them room to make mistakes without bringing down the whole house of cards. We’ll see what happens on account of the contents of Trump’s safe in Mar-a-Lago.

My mother was about the same age as QE2, mum was married in 1955 at about the time of the queen’s visit to Australia. Mum was given away at the altar by her brother as my grandfather had died of cancer of the skin, mum for her part had fond memories of the visit and talked about it sometimes in a way that made me realise how much QE2 meant to her personally, and this is the thing you cannot fabricate such links, they happen despite interventions and I feel sorry for the British peoples now in their moment of reckoning.

In Australia the media coverage is going to be saturation-level for a few days but we’re sheltered from the worst of the negative feelings because our vice-regal body is appointed by the government and is not a true son of the blood. No doubt we’ll see the governor-general talking on TV at some point and I welcome the intervention hopefully it’ll give people something meaningful to latch on to as they process their grief.

I have no doubt but that many people will feel the passing of QE2 keenly. It occurs to me that death has profound repercussions for those who remain alive, and this is why we have rituals when faced with death. Death is a pervasive element of popular culture, along with love, though you could say that the existence of the latter makes the former more potent, and losing love might be traumatic. The loss of a loved one is doubly so. 

Farewell QE2.

Cross-cultural threads embellish the royal wedding

A bearded Prince Harry wore a plain, dark military uniform and his fiancé Meghan Markle wore a white, off-the-shoulder Givenchy gown to get married in. Harry’s brother William was best man. William wore a uniform which matched his brother’s but it had an additional aiguillette on the right shoulder.

Yesterday’s ceremony borrowed from both American and English traditions to give spectators around the world some idea of the kinds of themes that the pair, now styled the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, will observe in their future careers as members of the royal family.

The measured, temperate tones of a royal event such as this were thoroughly ruffled when Bishop Michael Curry, the first African American to preside over the Episcopal Church in America, took to the pulpit.  Curry had been installed as leader of the US-based member of the Anglican Communion in 2015 and he gave the attendees – and, through the medium of television, the global audiences – a glimpse into the distinctive preaching styles used in the American south. The spicy sermon was full of striking images and evocative rhetoric.

He spoke about the invention of fire as a watershed moment for humanity and noted that he had harnessed fire to get to the event by flying across the Atlantic in an aeroplane. His main message was that people should embrace the logic of love in their daily lives. Love, he said, was as powerful as fire and could change the world. It was a reminder for the audience of how Harry’s mother had embraced the humanitarian elements of the job when she was a royal. Harry’s championing of the Invictus Games demonstrates that he also is a conviction player who is motivated by his passions as much as by a sense of duty.

Meghan, who is 36 years old, was born in the same year in which Diana and Charles were married. In another nod to Meghan’s heritage, a gospel choir based in England, the Kingdom Choir, led by Karen Gibson, performed a vocal rendition of 'Stand by Me' with no musical accompaniment. It is a 1961 hit song written by Ben E. King (1938-2015). I wrote about the roots of pop in gospel music and its own roots in the hymns of the 18th century on this blog some years ago. In that post, I pointed to hymns written by William Cowper and John Newton for use in Evangelical churches during the years when some Protestant denominations were still discriminated against by the Anglican mainstream.

It was impossible to become a government employee, for example, if the dictates of your conscience rendered you unable to subscribe to the articles of the Church of England. Those laws, which had been put in place in the years after Charles II returned to England in 1660 at the end of the republican Commonwealth, would eventually be repealed in the first decades of the 19th century. However what is more important to remark on here is that the enthusiasm that had animated the Evangelicals in Britain during the 17th and 18th centuries would eventually be leveraged for the purposes of improvement by reformers of the established church in the 19th century, which was also the era when Victoria pioneered the family-centred model of royalty that is still followed by the Windsors today.

After the ceremony, which both the young people negotiated without mishap, musician Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who has been on TV in the UK, played some tunes on a cello. There was ‘Sicilienne’ by Austrian composer Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824), ‘Apres un reve’ (‘After a dream’) by French composer Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), and ‘Ave Maria’ by German composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828).

A nice moment occurred when Prince Charles, dressed in a plain grey suit, was on his way to the exit of the chapel. As he was walking, he held out his hand as an offering of companionship to Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, who had been standing waiting in front of her seat in the choir stalls near the altar. The two parents walked out of the place together. It was an impromptu gesture that showed a fitting level of solicitude for a king. Charles had also walked Meghan down the aisle before the ceremony started.

I’m in favour of keeping the Windsors

Donald Trump changes everything. With his election in the US, all bets are off. Democracy takes one in the guts. I have a friend I meet with at the pub every couple of weeks and we have been talking a lot recently about the Windsors and their relationship with the Australian political settlement. We both agree that Charles, who is next in line (he’ll be Charles III) and William, his son, who is the next in line after that (and will be William V) are pretty sure bets. Nothing fancy. Good family men. Safe pairs of hands. Raising their children with dedication.

The monarch who pioneered the art of raising children well was Victoria, in the 19th century. Her hatred of the proto-modernist painter Turner is as famous as her dedication to her family. The monarchy in the United Kingdom had taken a few hits over the centuries and Victoria was as wise as she was long-lived. If you can’t have real temporal power – by her time most power had devolved to Parliament – you can at least be a good parent. Her family had a reputation for poor relations between the generations. In the hundred years or so after the Hanoverians were installed on the UK throne, none of the Georges got along with their fathers. But Victoria put her energies into making a good family. Following the death of his first wife in a tragic traffic accident, Charles has done the same thing.

There’s no comparison between Charles and Trump. I gave my opinion to someone on Twitter and the republican movement’s account picked up on the tweet and told me that according to the model they favour a proposed governor-general for Australia who is not one of the Windsors would still be appointed by Parliament. The current settlement where the prime minister is appointed by the party room of the party that wins the most seats in the lower house in a federal election, would be retained. The prime minister would still be head of government and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

I don’t have much of a problem with this kind of settlement but I still think that party should be eliminated from the role of governor-general. The way the governor-general is currently appointed, by the ruling party under the prime minster, seems to me to be a doable solution. It’s the same way that the governors of the states are appointed. When the ruling party loses an election the governor-general does not change. And the governor-general has no involvement in party activities. The only way that I would agree to abolishing the Windsors would be under such conditions.

The Donald makes even old Lizzie look appealing

I tuned into the ABC News channel as usual yesterday after getting home from a lunch appointment which had terminated at the Duke Hotel on Enmore Road - lots of odd characters there, I'll tell you, enough for an episode of a sitcom at least - and later after the sun had gone down I sat on the couch to watch Bill Shorten gab away about a Republic. I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the sentiments involved in this particular debate, I should hasten to say, so it was entertaining for me to listen to this statesman fill in the gaps with his own knowledge.

A new perspective, and about time, I hear you say. And I agree. We need to have our own, native, head of state. Enough of these old notables the administration wheels out to do the honours and that sort of thing. We need someone who can truly embody who we are as a people, as a nation. Someone whose story says something about Australia in a way that Lizzie's family history fails to do. Someone who can exist on the lofty plains of our collective ambition for ourselves. Someone wholesome and interesting and talented and wise. God knows it can't be hard to find someone who ticks all the boxes when the alternative is Chuckie, that sorry old codger with his cracked notions and untold inherited wealth.

But then you see how they have arranged things in America. This is the sticking point for me. When Donald Trump was elected a lot of people stateside, it is true, started thinking seriously about migrating to Canada (or Australia). But things have just gotten worse and worse. Every day, it seems, there is some new piece of news that merely serves to illustrate the foolishness of the American president. And he can't even get any legislation through Congress. It's a sham.

So in the light of things that are happening in Washington DC old Chuck is even starting to look appealing. Many might say that we should wait until mum Liz has moved on to make way for her goofy son, or until she has kicked the bucket, before becoming a republic, but the process in a legal sense can take a bit of time. We'll have to see what the people of Australia do when the next federal election comes around because the Opposition have made organising a referendum on the republic party policy. Who knows how things will turn out. Will we end up with a complete deadbeat like Trump or will the people decide to stick with the Coalition in order to keep the Queen as head of state?

All light and sound: the 2013 RAN Fleet Review

A large-scale popular display such as the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Review presented on Saturday night in Sydney has to please as many people as possible, for a start. As has become routine, the sails of the magnificent Sydney Opera House - a building with a global recall second only to Mickey Mouse - doubled as a cinema screen and on them were shown a sequence of images, often involving newspaper clippings, designed to provide a shorthand history of the RAN. The RAN's credentials thus extend from WWI through the better-known drama of WWII to mostly forgotten wars in Korea and Vietnam. Cyclone Tracey also featured: this was a big mission for the RAN in December 1974 when the force helped to evacuate Darwin after the storm flattened the town. The final phases of the display unfortunately resembled nothing more than a recruitment video designed to inspire the potential sailor with positive feelings like loyalty, pride, and gratitude.

The final image on the sails was the insignia of the RAN with the crown on top - you can see similar crowns on the insignia of the country's state police forces - signalling toward the overt symbolism of Prince Harry's presence at the review as the representative of his grandmother, the Australian monarch. Governor-General Quentin Bryce dutifully played second-fiddle to "the world's most eligible bachelor", a gentleman whose casual review-day attentions were much sought-after by young Sydney women.

The young women who did not get a chance to touch Harry's hurriedly-extended hand as he made his progress through the city's streets could comfort themselves by enjoying the palpable excitement generated by figurations of the most memorable naval event in Australia's history: the war against the Japanese in WWII. This section of the evening's hugely-exploded diorama served up to the audience on the ground in Sydney and - by way of the TV broadcast - to watchers elsewhere was set to the famous strains of part of Gustav Holst's The Planets orchestral suite, 'Mars'. The work was written between 1914 and 1916, we're told, and so dates from about the same time as the RAN was established in 1913. Holst's stirring and menacing music dedicated to the planet named after the Roman god of war - it's where we get the word 'martial' from after all, as in 'martial arts' - came at the same time as the fireworks being set off from boats at anchor at different planes along Sydney's amazing harbour made the night glow red. Spotlights mimicking searchlights added drama to the display.

A lone bugler playing a variety of tunes including the song Australians recognise from ANZAC Day parades - the Last Post - which are memorials for the dead, helped to turn the attention of the crowds and the TV watchers to the men and women who lost their lives in battle, and added a fitting long, solemn moment to the display.

Sailors interviewed by ABC TV after the display were all grins and yelps in their excitement at the show put on in their honour. Fathers and mothers lined up along the shoreline of possibly the best harbour in the world wiped away tears inspired by complex emotions. Children stood around quietly in exhaustion from all the activity - enough to equal their own inherent capacity for movement and sound. The TV anchors beamed with pleasure for the sheer size of the moment of shared community they had helped to create, and happily declared themselves speechless. The cooling air of the calm spring night, absent rain, slowly dispersed the clouds of smoke from the dead incendiary devices. A million people turned their attentions to the problem of getting home on crowded public transport. The black water of the harbour lapped quietly against the stone parapets at the Botanic Gardens and beneath the apartment blocks of Kirribilli. The long weekend continued.

Not the bloody republic thing again

It looks as though Wayne Swan and Malcolm Turnbull are beating the drums to gather support again for a debate on a republic for Australia. They'll be speaking at a book launch at Parliament House today dealing with the issue. As an ALP man, Swannie has his pride, and we remember Turnbull as one of the movers in the lead-up to the conclusive 1999 referendum, on the side "for" a republic.

While many people will be again looking back, due to the ABC's current screening of a series about Gough Whitlam's government, at the events of 1975, I think that there needs to be more awareness in Australia about the relationship between British monarchs and the people they have governed - and continue to govern - and specifically about the nexus between the Crown and popular self-determination, in other words democracy. With an unelected monarch the issue is always going to be about priorities. Are the monarch's priorities the same as those of the governed? If Australia continues to keep its head of state overseas, this issue will eventually surface. And because the monarch can have a material impact on Australia's government - cf Whitlam's sacking - it is not a trivial matter. Swannie brings up some of these ideas in his op-ed piece.

He also notes that the matter of the quality of the monarch is important. Most people like Elizabeth II, he remarks, but some other, less adept family member might sit on the throne one day. It's an important point, especially when you think of George III (pic); I see a distinct resemblance to Prince Charles, don't you? Look at the mouth and the eyes in this 1799 portrait, a portrait made in a time of war. Another war.

George III's dynastic priorities had been instrumental in bringing England into war earlier in the century, between 1754 and 1763. The matter of colonial trade was also involved. Ironically, it was the gain of France's Canadian colonies during that war by British forces under the command of General Wolfe in 1759 that ultimately enabled the American colonies to declare independence - they could never have done so with such a formidable enemy breathing down their necks - in addition to the more well-known matter of the British Parliament passing laws to tax the American colonies. On this matter, understandably, the colonials protested, and with reason, pointing to the 1689 Bill of Rights which said there could be no taxation without parliamentary consent, and since the colonists had no representatives in Parliament they felt they were exempt from taxation. What's notable in this conflict is how politically aware the American colonists were.

The British Parliament might have been more intent on raising revenue to pay for the long war just finished, but George III should have reflected more on how jealous the British Americans were of their rights. Especially, he should have given more thought to how the earlier conflict between Parliament and the monarch - in that case Charles I - on precisely the same point of sovereignty, had turned out. (Charles - 0, Cromwell - 1.) What the American case shows us though is how the Crown can easily come to make the same stupid mistake twice, so there is no reason why 1975 cannot occur again.

As to the relations between the Crown and the colonists on the Australian continent, we might want to remember that when she was asked by the New South Wales colonists to grant them the franchise, Victoria agreed, in 1856, although the upper house was still populated by gubernatorial appointees. Her willingness to concede elements of sovereignty to the New South Wales colonists is one reason why Victoria has such a good reputation still in Australia today. But what issues arose in the debates leading up to the event are largely unknown here, which is a shame, although there are books available, such as Peter Cochrane's 2007 Colonial Ambition. While Americans all have opinions about their Founding Fathers, and bring up their long-past utterances in political debates that occur every four years when the time comes to elect a new president, it says something about Australians' identity that men like democrat William Wentworth are largely ignored while mere property barons like John Macarthur are well-known.

Economic matters dominate much of what passes for debate in Australia, where many people feel relieved to have dodged a bullet in 2007, one that hit America and Europe especially hard. Why would you want to change the nature of government in Australia, when our system of bank regulation clearly worked better than the system that failed Americans so badly? Such comparisons to the dominant global hegemony animate the minds of Australians when they think about the matter of sovereignty. For example, secular-minded Aussies might feel happy that religion is so much less important where they live, compared to how it frequently enters politics Stateside, and possibly feel there is less need for the comfort that religion gives to people for the precise reason that we look to the British monarch for moral and spiritual guidance, rather than to a church preacher.

And anyway debates about sovereignty are so out-of-date in Australia, because they largely took place at the time of the gold rush. That was the time, for instance, when my own ancestors arrived - in the period of expansion that followed the cessation of Transportation - making me a 6th-generation Australian. We wear our rights like a soft, long coat so well-used and comfortable that we hardly feel its weight hanging on our backs. We look at the spastic gyrations of politics in countries where the head of state is elected by the people and we wonder why they can't just get their act together, and get along. We are ignorant of the battles fought in Britain following the French Revolution over the matter of self-determination, because a universal franchise is something that we take for granted. Sydneysiders might ride past the Wollstonecraft train station on their way to a business meeting in Chatswood and never give a thought to who the place is named after: women had the vote here in 1901, at the time of Federation. So what's the fuss all about? Why worry?

"Charles is a good bloke, right?" But will Charles III be a good king?

Let's hope Charles III keeps his head

Top: "Ouch!"; middle: "Erk"; bottom: "Um..."

Lots of people are paying attention to the British royals again starting this weekend because of the Diamond Jubilee for Elizabeth II.

The what?

I didn't know either so I called my mother to ask. "The Queen has been on the throne for 60 years," she told me. Oh, OK.

News of this sort, once affirmed in this way, automatically gets one thinking of what's going to happen when Elizabeth II starts thinking about handing over the reins to her successor, which will be her son, Charles. For anyone who has a basic understanding of history this conjures up some interesting images (see right). It has been 327 years since we had a Charles on the throne, after all. And the British monarch is Australia's head of state. So we should give a bit of an expletive. Not too much, but a bit.

Before we get to the Charles thing it's worth noting that British queens tend to reign for a long time. During the Renaissance Elizabeth I held the reins for 46 years and during the 19th Century Victoria held them for 63 years. So maybe Elizabeth II is waiting for the right moment to hand over the controls to her son, namely when she gets past Queen Victoria in the endurance stakes. Just a thought. Or it may be a cultural thing. The most significant thing about Elizabeth I was that she was on the throne when William Shakespeare was active, and Victoria had Charles Dickens working while she was alive. Both men were Very Good Writers and enjoy an extraordinary quantum of esteem among people who read books. Elizabeth II had Anthony Burgess and Salman Rushdie to adorn her reign, which is not quite the same thing I guess. With changing times other, lesser-known British authors might lift their stakes in the collective consciousness and eclipse both of these men. Who knows? Maybe the Queen is waiting for definitive signs of this nature before she steps down and goes off to feed her dogs in quiet tranquillity.

So who was Charles I?

This king had his head chopped off in public in London in 1649. Ouch! From his point of view this was not a Good Thing but lots of people were happy about it. What happened? It's complex of course, but basically Elizabeth I had handled the sectarian struggles in England quite well, and she also got along with Parliament in a constructive manner but Charles I annoyed both these sets of constituents with the result that he came to declare war against Parliament, lost the war, and was killed. Ostensibly it was about taxes. Charles I made it a habit to shut down Parliament because he thought its members were a bit uppity, asking for things he didn't like, and so when it came to raising money for his undertakings he decided to levy taxes without parliamentary fiat. Shades of 1776 here, right? Englishmen hated being asked to pay money to their rulers without being asked via Parliament. He lost the war because of Oliver Cromwell, a soldier who developed novel ways of fighting and who was the first Army general to use remote-controlled drones against an enemy combatant.

The people wanted to make Cromwell king but he said, "No." He was styled Lord Protector instead. When he died, aged 59, his son lasted nine months in the role his father had held before being forced to quit and then Charles II came across from France where he had been living during the Commonwealth. Apart from instituting a new form of government in the British Isles, Cromwell is now notable for having had John Milton writing during this period. Milton, as is now known, invented moving pictures, Dolby Surround Sound and the Moog synthesiser. But nobody reads him now outside universities, which is a pity.

Charles II liked girls and also lived at a time when British scientists were doing some pretty cool stuff. He was not a geek, however, although he established the Royal Society. There is nothing else of interest associated with the reign of Charles II because apart from John Dryden, who cleaned up the language, nobody wrote anything interesting during these years apart from the minor poet Robert Herrick, who wrote pretty verses about girls.

As for Charles III, the only thing we need to know is that he went to high school in Australia and married the Wrong Woman. He is also quite outspoken and has a reputation for saying controversial things. He wrote a children's book and then married the Right Woman. He has two sons, one of whom once wore a Nazi costume to a party. The other one will be king and he will be styled William V.

Just quickly on the Williams. William I was the guy who, in 1066, brought horses and soldiers from northern France across the English Channel and took over the country. The most critical result of this event was that English school children find it easy to learn French because there are so many French-based words in the English language. And nobody now can read Chaucer in the original. Nobody knows anything about William II so I'll pass quickly to William III, a Dutchman who was invited by Parliament to invade England with horses and soldiers in 1688. This event is known as the 'Glorious Revolution' because it resulted in the rise of the middle class in England, and the winners always get to write the history. The event was about stopping a Catholic from becoming king. Yay.

As for William IV, he ruled just before Victoria did and was in charge when a number of major reforms to English law were pushed through Parliament. These things are worth reading about so go to Wikipedia and then maybe go out and buy some books so that you can learn more about them. Possibly it's also worth mentioning that by the time of William IV the transfer of real power in England from the king to Parliament was pretty much a done deal. The next William has no children yet but at least he's married, and he's apparently married to the Right Woman, which is a Good Thing.

New royal succession rule will have far-reaching impact

This is the kind of announcement that politicians love because it was a bombshell. In Perth at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which was opened by the British monarch, it was announced yesterday that the rules of succession to the British throne would change in two material respects. A daughter can now enter the line of succession over a younger brother, for a start. The story was given precedence over other stories on the websites of the Guardian and the New York Times and this will be a much-discussed alteration of the political reality in many countries (there are 17 countries that recognise the British monarch as their head of state, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada) and not just those. There are 54 Commonwealth countries, for a start. Then there are the people who live in other countries that have a monarch, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and Spain. The odd thing is that the media were caught completely off-balance. There had been no inkling of such an announcement in the days leading up to the CHOGM meeting. Sure, the Queen was to attend, but nothing in the way of preparation. The PR embargo was tight, and it worked.

So now we know. Of course, the current succession will not change. Prince Charles is older than Princess Anne (pictured), and Lady Di produced two useful sons in quick order. But a daughter born, say, in the next two years, to Prince William and Kate Middleton (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) would be next in line to succeed to the British throne.

Canada's Globe and Mail and the New York Times credited those two with accelerating the rate of change to succession rules, but I don't think it's material. The Queen is looking ahead and Britain's prime minister David Cameron - who himself made the announcement in Perth - has obviously been looking to do something about the outdated conventions, for some time.

The other rule that has changed is that, 500 years after Henry VIII split with Rome to form the Church of England, a British monarch can now marry a Catholic.

The reverberations of the first change will be widespread and enduring. Children and parents in countries where daughters are murdered soon after birth because of the taint of the female gender will live different lives, perhaps, because of the Perth announcement. Mothers telling stories to their little daughters will be able to make the point out that, yes, they have equal chances in life because, 'Look, now William and Kate, if they have a daughter first, she can become queen.' Romances and tales of wonder need to have this kind of message embedded in them so that children can dream and grow, without complicated answers being needed from unhappy parents.

But the fact that there was no heads-up in the press in Australia prior to the announcement is further proof, if any more were needed, of the irrelevance of the monarchy here. The New York Times notes that the issue had been discussed in London as part of "a series of unsuccessful attempts in Britain’s Parliament to change the succession rules in recent years". First I heard of it, David. And Australian prime minister Julia Gillard apparently told delegates that Australians supported the changes. First I heard of it, Jules. The manoeuvre to contemporaneanise the British Crown is clearly a success, and one that noone Down Under saw on the horizon. It might change the way some people view the Crown. It might give the Crown more "legs" in this country. It might do all these things. But if it stops one Indian couple killing their daughter because they cannot countenance the shame of bringing a girl child into the world, then it is a fine thing indeed.

Republic a scheme just too daring for Australians

Mike Keating, chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, knows a thing or two about Australians' sense of independence. Keating was interviewed by Fairfax journo David Marr for a long story about the republic debate that appears in today's Sydney Morning Herald. Two things in particular that he said are worth commenting on.

"People say when the Queen dies it will happen. But it's not inevitable. We are pretty resilient when things are done to us. Take world wars: we responded well. Take natural disasters, fires and floods: we respond well. Take the global financial crisis: we respond well. But with the republic issue it's not a matter of responding. We have to take the initiative. It's our issue. Unless we summon the national will, nothing will happen."

This is the first thing: Australians are reactive doers, not proactive thinkers. And this feeds into the second thing that Keating tells Marr: we are not actually who we think we are. In the story, Marr and Keating have been talking about the current head-of-state situation and Marr gets Keating to sum up, which he does.

"None of this is consistent with what we say is our Australian ethos. We say we are egalitarian, so where does this aristocratic family come in? We say we value all religions equally, so why does our head of state have to be Church of England? We say we value men and women equally, so where do they get off favouring males? We say we value people and admire people who advance by their own achievements, and our head of state just gets it by birthright."

Then maybe, I venture, we aren't who we think we are. He ventures a quiet: "Perhaps."

Australians are not great initiators and we are faithful followers. The two things don't automatically proceed one to the next but, in this case, they buttress each other to create a reliable frame of reference. In innovation, for example, Australia does not lead markets or industries. Innovation is devilishly hard to bring about in Australia where neither governments or other sources of funding respond enthusiastically to novel proposals. This is my observation from experience gleaned by writing, for the past two years, about innovation in a number of industries. We need to be told that something will work by an already authoritative source, before we will believe that it will work and venture capital to make sure it does. Just look at the way governments have dealt with large-scale solar-power plants seeking funding.

And Australians respond well when put in a position of subjection. Larrikinism is not, as many think, an independent pose. The larrikin scoffs at the unusual, and belittles the outsider because that is what his betters would do, he thinks. Without those betters the larrikin does not know how to behave. He is automatically subject and, given the chance, will run off a few objectionable lines but shuts up as soon as he is called to account. A larrikin is not a dreamer, he is only too aware of his position.

Australians actually love to be subject. As Keating says, we are not who we think we are. Then, of course, there's not a lot to find attractive about the label 'republic'. In most cases that we routinely see, republics are struggling nations that are often beset by corruption and civil discord. The alternative is America. But Americans are a bit full of themselves, a bit brash and proud of who they are. Yes, they innovate to die for but do we really want all that independence when our current system serves us just as well? Keating knows all this but is too polite to tell it straight. He mutters the truth, rather than spells it out clearly. He is, after all, an Australian.

Not much hullaballoo, Mrs Windsor

A visit from the Queen of England is not an every-day event. When it happens, there's a lot of kids carrying bunches of flowers, a lot of headlines, and a lot of speculation as to how the Australian prime minister of the day will behave - at least since Paul Keating place his arm on the Queen's back in 1992. But this time there's been a noticeable lack of excitement compared, say, to when my mother and father each grabbed a chair at the Melbourne cafe where they were eating to carry down the street to stand on to watch the Queen drive past (she thinks it was 1954 or 1956). "She was a beautiful woman," says mum.

This time, journalists got their underwear in a knot on the Queen's arrival in Canberra because Julia Gillard did not curtsey, even though protocol does not require such a manouevre from the sitting prime minister of Australia.

But apart from that undignified conjecture the visit has been very low-key, with Dame Windsor going about her duties in a relative obscurity that has been illuminated only by regular broadcasts and the nightly segments on the news. It's a bit of a dud, in reality, when titular majesty has been overtaken by irony, as in the Brisbane Courier Mail's humourous itinerary - on their website - showing 'Where one's been', 'Where one's at' and 'Where one's going'. We take our leaders with a grain of sarcasm and we don't chew for very long, unless we really care. The light touch these last few days contrasts glaringly with the soil liberally thrown at Gillard during the run-up to the recent carbon tax legislation where the attention - 'Ditch the witch', 'Bob Brown's bitch' - attests to the person's importance. Likewise, the recent ABC comedy At Home With Julia got a lot of airtime because it drew a lot of public comment. The scene where Jules and Tim do the dirty on the carpet in the prime ministerial office has been recycled multiple times by other comedians because it resonates with earthy reality.

We really do have a woman as a leader. The other woman - always away, never writes, and anyway she's stopped making payments - is not held in great esteem by the majority of Australians except in so much as we remember what it used to be like when dominion held real meaning. Now, we resolve our problems on-shore. We are independent in all ways. We are a strong and successful country and we do not need a foreign monarch to tell us what we should value, and what we should ignore.

It's fitting that the Queen should be spending most of her time in Canberra, this time round. It's where Jules lives, after all. We can only hope that the two women will discuss when and how to transfer the final vestiges of state sovereignty from the northern hemisphere to ours. A trip to visit the Aussie PM Down Under, the headlines should read. "Queen recommends native head of state in Australia." We can only hope.

Harry Nicolaides’ pardon saw a welcoming party (see photos from ABC’s news coverage below) at Melbourne airport including father Socrates and other family members. Nicolaides served five and a half months of a three year sentence in a murderously dirty and inhuman Bangkok prison.

Socrates Nicolaides hugged his son on camera before the 41 year old broke down in tears as he remembered the horror of his time behind bars. He received anonymous postcards, letters, gifts of food and medicines while in jail and thanked the Australians who sent them. He noted the "quintessential, iconic language that only Australians can make".

Harry plans to return to Thailand and to write an account of his ordeal. "Do you plan to write a book now?" asked a journalist. "I certainly will," said Harry. "Truth is stranger than fiction."

The pardon was mooted a week ago following front page coverage in The Sydney Morning Herald.

The release comes four days after the announcement of a plan to forward a request for a pardon to the royal palace. King Bumiphol Adulyadej finalised the pardon in quick time.

On Facebook Voula Demosthenous distributed a message at 6pm from Harry’s brother Forde to those who had joined a support group. With the subject line ‘Harry Is Free!!!!!!!!’, Forde wrote that “The Nicolaides family is grateful to his Majesty the King for the decision he has made and to the relevant Thai authorities who dealt with the pardon application in an expeditious manner.”

Harry’s brother also thanked “everyone who has supported the family’s efforts” “and in assisting with encouraging the Australian government to take affirmative action to secure Harry’s release”.

In the SMH’s 4.15pm story today, Harry was reported thanking “the Australian people for their support and the media for helping to get him released”. At the airport Harry thanked the media who had been "dauntless and courageous" and had kept up the pressure on the government to get the release approved. "We have rare privileges in this country," he said.

Harry Nicolaides' pardon may be forthcoming, according to his brother Forde. The poor man, who Sharon Bakar at Malaysia's Bibliobibuli blog wrote about on 20 January, is in a terrible state. Sleeping in a foot-wide area on the floor, walking in cat vomit and fish bones during the day, and watching his back when he's not being handed manuscripts by other inmates, Nicolaides deserves our pity.

Sharon says that the Australian consulate had done nothing for him. For sure I've heard little word about the case, which began on 31 August when the author was levaing Thailand by aeroplane. I've heard nothing from officials, including the Greens. It's appalling and it's time it stopped.

Seven copies of the book were sold, Nicolaides, who lives in the northern Thai town of Chiang Rai, tells us. He also tells us that he's becoming resigned to living in a place where deadly contagious diseases are commonplace. He says "other foreigners" tell him that "this, too, shall pass". It's a chilling quote in today's The Sydney Morning Herald, which placed a picture of Harry, finally, on its front page (click on pic to enlarge).

On 4 February 2009, the same paper published a story that told us "On Monday, the Bring Harry Home website (www.bringharryhome.com) was launched to raise the profile of the case." Politicians currently blabbing about the economic stimulus package should get their fingers out of their noses and start making phone calls. Surely, Mr Rudd, a call from you to Thailand's new president could make some sort of difference.

A 12 November AAP story tells us that "The federal government says it has made representations to the Thai authorities on behalf of an Australian man charged with criticising the country's royal family."

A video Sharon points to about Thai politicians misusing the same law that caused Harry to be incarcerated for alternative reasons has been removed by YouTube "due to terms of use violation". The Facebook site for Harry had, as of today, over 3100 members. Sharon notes that the passage in the book about the relations of the royal family was "just 103 words long". That's the length of a short news story.

The lese majeste law has been invoked, thinks the BBC, because the police and army are trying to "suppress what they fear is a rising tide of anti-monarchy sentiment". The king, Bumiphol Adulyadej, is frequently involved in politics. Recent unrest in Thailand caused a group of anti-Thakshin protesters to squat in the country's main airport. The government collapsed as a result.

But this is ridiculous. A 41 year old Australian writer who has lived in Thailand, peacefully, for years, has been charged with a medieval law in a medieval manner and is kept in medieval conditions for a self published (2005) novel. The ABC broke the story on 12 November in its 7.30 Report feature program.

Nicolaides is an unlikely criminal. He "taught English, wrote columns about expat life for an online magazine" (The Age, 22 November) and wrote books. "When he published Verisimilitude three years ago, Nicolaides took the precaution of sending his book to the National Library, the Thai Ministry of Culture, the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Bureau of the Royal Household to check that its contents were acceptable. He received no response." The book was accepted in the National Library of Thailand.

Thai authorities issued a warrant for Nicolaides' arrest on March 17 2008. "The authorities are very concerned to keep the royal family out of politics, and to clamp down on any discussion which might reflect negatively on the royal family. There's a strong campaign to pursue lese majeste charges," says Dr Andrew Walker, an anthropologist at ANU's Asia-Pacific program.

Forde Nicolaides says the book "is in no way about the monarchy" (New Zealand Herald, 24 November). Nicholas Pearson in The Australian (1 December) says that "arrests for lese majeste are seen by the ruling elite as a means of harnessing populist support". "King Bhumibol Adulyadej himself has stated publicly that use of the charge lowers the status of the throne."

Nicolaides is in prison because of the way "in which he referred to the way an unamed Crown Prince treated one of his mistresses" (Canada NewsWire, 5 December). The Australian (6 December) suggests that, with the king ailing in his old age, Crown Prince Maha is enjoying "growing influence" and is thus responsible for Harry's detention. "Some have taken this unflattering depiction as a comment on Prince [Maha] Vajiralongkom," writes The Age (19 December).

Kylie's OBE show ran on the ABC after everything else because it is the biggest story.

What came before? Complaints about muelsing by PETA, again in Europe. The story ran into a wool design award won by a man with a Chinese name - Shanghai designer Qiu Hao.

After the program break the main item was climate change and Chinese investment in Australian mining.

After Alan Kohler we watched a story about bullying in the NSW Ambulance Service. Next we heard about August medal chances in womens basketball. This was followed by a rugby union piece which focused on a telegenic young man given the job of running line-outs. Australia and France play tonight.

When the Kylie segment came on we got a tantalising glimpse of her sequinned stars, but that's all. When Kevin Rudd visited Buckingham Palace in May, his green-and-gold (the tie, see pic below) stood out.

After this, pictures with green and yellow predominant gathered momentum. The shot, included before Kylie's below, of a Macquarie Street news spot gives an idea.

But Kylie's meeting with the heir to the Australian throne was designed to take attention off her costume, and place it on the prince - bestowing a fragment of grace on a loyal subject.

This is great PR for the royal family. It's also a sign of how dislocated our political process is; the problem being that Elizabeth holds such a strong claim on collective feelings here.

Perhaps with Charles we have a chance - a historic one - of unlocking the bonds of cosanguineity. The kind of PR event we saw today will not help but there are other ways to skin a cat.

Why Australians insist on believing in sovereignty is a puzzle. It just cannot be, under current arrangements. A recent story on the governor-general, Michael Jeffrey, makes plain the fact that this is not a sovereign state.

During his term, Jeffrey told us, he "sent back" numerous items of legislation. "About eleven" was his estimate. If true, what kind of relationship does the GG have with London?

To be, in any form, independent, Jeffrey - and his successor - needs some official privilege. Some information must be available to the GG that the prime minister lacks.

But what? The trouble is listed among Jeffrey's many beefs against the media and modern culture generally. Despite 700,000 hits on the GG website monthly and hundreds of photo opportunities, the media don't get involved.

As a result, there's no opportunity for a message to get out. If we can have fun picking colours out of Kevin Rudd's tie, surely there are places within ceremony for information to pass through the - apparently - hermetic membrane that currently fits between our head of state and the unwashed.

It's time for a rethink. Kylie did her best - stars are also found on the part of the flag not occupied by the Union Jack. Maybe Quentin Bryce can do better?

From the Sydney Morning Herald article (13 June 2008):

The Governor-General says he meets the prime minister about once a month when the elected leader comes around "to have breakfast and a catch-up". He also regularly holds court with ministers who come to present legislation or seek his approval of various appointments.

What data does he capture during interactions with Her Majesty?

"I talk to the Queen about how Australia's going but I find that she's very well informed anyway. She does her homework."

And what about Kylie Minogue?

"It's glitzy celebrity rather than genuine celebrity in terms of substance, and what people have achieved through hard work and skill and compassion and innovation. It's the celebrity based on other things, different sorts of values which I don't see as values at all."