By this stage, with a day to go, some people had either had enough or were so enamoured of the younger royals that they were keen to see them on the Australian throne sooner rather than later. There were calls for the Queen to abdicate. If Australians couldn’t get their act together for a republic (the movement never having “offered a better system” than the one we’ve got and because “it became infected by a sneering negativity that has poisoned the well for a generation” – this being unexplained) then it’s time for the Queen herself to modernise the monarchy by abdicating. It’s a thoughtful article with suggestions by Paul Sheehan in the SMH and can be found below. However, WfaAR saw in Bob Carr’s very recent “Diary of a Foreign Minister” that the Queen commented, “It’s not something we do here,” when discussing the recent abdication of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands with the Australian High Commissioner in London. Carr comments, “More’s the pity. Think on it Ma’am, think on it”. Carr thinks Charles would make a good monarch. [Why it’s time for the Queen to pass on the baton” by Paul Sheehan, SMH 24 April 2014)
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
