The question of whether or not Elizabeth II is an Australian has once more risen it’s head thanks to the venerable Mike Carlton, who of course says, quite correctly, she is not. Barry Everingham writes.
This is being denied by the usual suspects – members of the Flat Earth Society, the Alan Jones Fan club, the North Shore of Sydney Blue Rinse Set and Australians for Constitutional Monarchy – who claim that not only is she an Aussie sheila, members of her family have been “intimately involved” in Australia since 1788.
Talk about drawing a long bow—that one takes the cake.
Carlton correctly points out that if Elizabeth or any member of her family applied for an Australia passport, they’d be knocked back:
The Parkinson speech made the sound, if unremarkable point, that Australia will eventually become a republic, after the death of the current monarch. This inflamed the royalist grovellers, among them the inevitable Professor David Flint, who called the speech ''a stunt''.
''The Queen is of course Australian,'' he huffed, barmy as ever. No, she's not. If Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor or any of her offspring were to apply for an Australian passport they wouldn't clear the first hurdle.
The monarchists try to conflate ruling over a country with nationality—obvious bunkum. To demonstrate why, using the monarchist argument, Hitler became a Pole after Germany overran Poland. Try telling a Pole that!
No, in the only test of Australianess that makes any sense – the one contained in Australian Citizenship Act of 2007 – the Queen fails every criteria dismally: she was born in Britain, she's lived there all her life, hasn't got any Australian ancestry or family and has never once called this country home.
She's about as Australian as soggy chips and the Norfolk Broads.
In 1788, when Australia was colonised by the British, the King was George III—a man as crazy as a March hare.
Then came George IV, who was said to have “ridded himself of his better qualities except good taste”.
William IV was also crazy as well as being a sexual gorgon; he had several children, all of them bastards, so the throne went to his niece, Victoria, and she started the ball rolling.
Apart from being a recluse following the death of her first-cousin husband, she manipulated her children and married her them off to gaggle of royal foreigners – most of them German cousins of varying degrees – and there a dynasty was born—an inbred dynasty that produced litters of people to be avoided at all costs.
Back to the ACM claim of the “intimate involvement” of the royals with Australia. That's just pure and utter hyperbole.
There’s nothing "intimate" in official, stage-managed, tours of a few days every decade or so. There's not much "involvement" when it's remembered that of all the English monarchs, Elizabeth was the first to ever even set foot in this country. As far as the British monarchy went, Australia was obviously never regarded as very important.
How can the Queen even be remotely called “Australian”? Would ever admit to being one herself? Of course not. Along with her grandfather George V – who became an Englishman by getting rid of his German surname – she has promoted her Englishness by even going so far as denying Philip’s sisters, all of whom were married to Nazis, invitations to her wedding to their brother.
And while we are on the subject of ACM, it’s co-controller, the foreign-born David Flint, is casting all kinds of aspersions on the membership of the ARM. He forgets the opprobrium he heaps on those of us who dare criticise his cause, and he conveniently forgets two can play his game.
