Our stable, constitutional monarchy isn’t working properly. This time, it’s Queensland refusing to give up its direct constitutional links to the Crown and not cooperating with the rest of the Federation in one piece of federal legislation to recognise the changes to British royal succession that would, at the very least, remove the sexism inherent in the current rules: male children succeed ahead of female children regardless of birth order. The British are intent on fixing this before the next heir appears around July but the Australian squabblers can’t get their act together. Queensland has put its own legislation into State Parliament, no sign of the overarching change law. We’re now way behind Canada (31 Jan) and New Zealand (18 Feb) both of which have tabled their own (rather different) bills. WfaAR wrote to The Canberra Times about this – see our letter to the editor below; published 15 March. And in what has become very complex legal territory as ancient UK laws need to be amended and adapted by each realm, Professor Anne Twomey has put out two very good blogs recently to illustrate the debacle. The upshot of all of this is that we need to put our own streamlined, modern system in place instead of sticking around with the Brits and the legal quagmire that brings
Download: our letter here [55KB, pdf]
