Head to Head

This week’s topic:

‘That the Queen of Australia is a good sort and long may she reign’

Andrew Woodhouse

Sydney is Australia’s gay capital but we need more Queens.

Gough Whitlam’s 1973 Act made QE II Queen of Australia. Did he realise he was offering us our own home-grown Queen, effectively de-throning QE II, really the queen of a foreign country’

But ditching a 1,000 year-old system, inchoate with our economic security and heritage, is un-smart. It’s not just throwing baby out with the bathwater: it’s drowning the poor tot and tossing the whole bathroom after it. Doh!

Is this personal’ Do we really like QE II and her rellies’ They don’t satisfy my BBQ invite test.

Who wants Harry, that gun-toting, racist brat over for drinks, or his grandpa, Phillip, ‘ a loose-tongued, louche, sailor ‘ to put a snag on the barbie’ I’m still hearing stories about offspring from his alleged 1950s Rose Bay boat shed antics. With the Queen Mum underground we can now unlock the gin cupboard and, yep ‘ bring out organic wine for Prince Charles, the man that married his ‘mother’ ‘ a right charlie. My potted plants wouldn’t be safe from Charles’s whisperings. Whoa! This BBQ is Nerdsville.

The Battenbergs, their real (Germanic) surname, changed during WW II, are users who wouldn’t bring a beer to a BBQ, yet would double-park the Rolls on the footpath with air-con pumping to keep interiors at 19.5 degrees.

Yet there is beauty in random selection. George III (1760-1820) was completely camp and bonkers: he was a Queen, not a King.

The monarchy isn’t a merit-based selection panel process. That is its real merit. It’s a shallow gene pool we can marry into: we can all be monarchs. Isn’t this actually more democratic’ And we already have a monarchial republic with our gaggle of governors as back-up. We make our own laws anyway.
So let’s bring back ostrich-plumed tricorn hats, white horses with lacquered coaches, and orbs to emphasise the importance of their unimportance.

My monarch nominees are: Marie Bashir [governor and psychiatrist], Noel Pearson [Aboriginal lawyer], Michael Kirby [judge] and Simone Young [conductor].
No politicians please.

It’s our future, our choice and our monarch. Long may they reign.

Peter Whitehead (The Duke of Darlinghurst)

We are talking about the bird on our small change aren’t we’ That cravenly kind likeness of Elizabeth Regina on the coin in your pocket was scraped up by an artist not unaware of the penalties for treason.

My fellow Australians, this is the twenty-first century. It is time to stop tugging our forelocks to those inbred Huns skulking on the dark side of the globe.

Dead set, what a lot’. Since the gin stopped preserving the Queen Mother, Lizzie has been head of a family that is redefining shameless. Give the old duck her due, her manners have been exemplary through half a century of state dinners with all sorts of elected officials and lesser crowned heads.

But look at the rest of her consanguineous* mob ‘ the philandering Phillip brought little to the family apart from an arrogant disregard for civility. His eldest son is next in line to be head of the Church of England, a compromised position for a notorious adulterer one should have thought.

The second son, Randy Andy, dated the porn star Koo Stark before losing the Duchess of Pork to a Texan toe-sucker.

Sister Anne’s first marriage was not much supported by her family [aka ‘The Firm’] who dubbed her husband ‘Fog’. Apparently Captain Mark Phillips was considered rather thick and wet.

Charles’ two sons by the tragically mistreated Princess Di [who did indeed die a precautionary tale for sweet young things] are icons for yob youf. The whole brood is an indictment of British education. A dire display of how the public purse cannot resolve family problems.

Let us be spared these freeloaders’ occasional exorbitant visits. If we must have hereditary heads of state then get fair dinkum and find an indigenous Australian and their family to lead us into the third millennium. Like Peter Garret said before he became a politician ‘ ‘Let’s give it back’.

*Elizabeth and Philip are great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, from the House of Hanover, who married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They are also related through Phil’s father’s side.