The Queen is Queen of Australia and the Australian head of state and the playing of England’s national anthem God Save the Queen should not be played or sung while she or members of her family are in Australia.
Our national anthem is Advance Australia Fair and the Queen is either our sovereign and head of state or she isn’t. She can’t have it both ways. As she is, there is a need for only one anthem, the Australian anthem — not the anthem of a foreign country.
The world sees our current constitutional mess as being ambiguous to say the least, and the practise of playing the dual anthems only confuses people.
At last week’s Government reception for the Queen and her husband – at which Ms Gillard spoke so magnificently and Mr Abbott was so brutally boring – it was cringe-making to watch the silence that greeted the foreign national anthem while ours was sung with such gusto — but not by the Queen of Australia or her German/Greek/Danish consort.
Now that this royal visit is drawing to a close, it would be churlish indeed not to describe it as a success.
The Queen is popular here and she was shown the deference due to her as an 85 year old woman who had made such a gruelling journey to be here.
It can be assumed, some say incorrectly, that the journey will be her last – only time will tell.
But, it has to be said, the over the top descriptions of the “milling crowds”, which gathered to look at the royal couple were small compared to the hundreds of thousands who gathered to catch a glimpse of Oprah Winfrey on her visit.
Ms Winfrey achieved her fame and fortune by sheer hard work and diligence — her celebrity had nothing to do with an accident of birth.
Queen Elizabeth’s reason for being in Australia was to be at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, which will more than likely be her last.
Whether this expensive talk-fest, whose value is questionable, will survive after her eldest son takes the throne as Britain’s 42nd monarch since William the Conqueror, only time will tell.
The Prince of Wales isn’t known to be as enamoured of the Commonwealth as his mother and we haven’t yet learned how he will cope with the racism and despotism of many on the member countries — most of whom are best forgotten remnants of the Empire upon which the sun set decades ago.
