Heather Ridout, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group and influential lobbyist, speaks at the National Press Club in Canberra. In a speech about the industrial relations framework, she surprised listeners by adding a personal view about the importance for our opportunities in the Asian Century – as the 21st century has been dubbed for Australia – of having an Australian head of state. She said that although Queen has a strong following…” we really need to move on into the new century with an Australian head of state. We should embrace our history but we will not have a truly Australian brand until we allow ourselves to produce our own head of state. As Paul Keating once said, we need to cease being ‘the branch office of the Empire’. While the polls may currently be against are republic, this will emerge as the mainstream view.”
In question time, she added that she thought that a woman like present Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, would be a good choice for head of state and commented on the 1999 referendum, “we all got hung up on the model. We should just have a poll: do we want a republic? And then go and get a few sensible people, not politicians, to work out how we are going to do it, have a transition to doing it, and stop it being a political issue. But I also believe it should be a bipartisan commitment. If it is, we might have a chance of getting there. But it doesn’t have to be overnight. We just need to have the aspiration: that’s where we’re going to move.” [Question Time comments reported in The Canberra Times 3 December 2011, No Doubts for this Republican by Edmund Barton]
