On 4 and 5 February, the High Court has heard submissions from opposing sides in Professor Jenny Hocking’s appeal to have the personal correspondence of GG John Kerr with our Head of State between 1974 and 1977 declared Commonwealth records. To do so, would allow the documents to be considered by the National Archives of Australia (where copies are held) for release. For one and a half whole days, the Court heard discussion about the roles of the Queen and Governor-General and how power is exercised between the two offices. This got a thorough airing in relation to Sections 1 and 2 as well as many other sections of the Constitution where the G-G’s powers are set out. It was, in short, republican heaven for hardy campaigners and so timely that this matter and the secrecy of the House of Windsor were given such a comprehensive airing in the highest court in the land. The full-bench of seven justices took a lively interest in proceedings as did the packed gallery in the High Court in Canberra. Both barristers – one an SC and one a QC – raised numerous issues and examples directly relevant to the arguments for a Republic. WfaAR was present for most of the hearing and could only conclude “republic, republic, republic asap” as the cases were laid out and argued. If nothing else, a new start and a new Constitution would sort out some of the vagaries and muddled mess that we now find ourselves in. Most interesting of all was defence barrister Bret Walker’s argument that the British Monarch has a role and is not powerless, it’s just a special one exercised only by the monarch as Head of State on the advice of her Australian Ministers. The court has adjourned to consider its decision, not expected until later in the year. WfaAR tweeted key points for republicans. There were plenty of them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 4 and 5 February, the High Court has heard submissions from opposing sides in Professor Jenny Hocking’s appeal to have the personal correspondence of GG John Kerr with our Head of State between 1974 and 1977 declared Commonwealth records. To do so, would allow the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","wpcat-5-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}