Let’s get this out of the way up front, as I can already see the responses coming: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are nice people. Kate Middleton and Prince William are nice people. Their children are adorable — and the one on the way will be too, no doubt. But how does any of this make any of them qualified to lead our country?
A Royal tour doesn’t show the real Australia
From accountants to electricians to nurses and teachers, we rightly demand a level of competence and merit from those who provide us with services. My parents migrated to this country because of a skilled migration scheme that demands applicants are qualified to work in an eligible skilled occupation in Australia if they would like to live here. We subject our members of Parliament, Ministers, Premiers and Prime Ministers to a great level of scrutiny. We dismiss governments at elections if they have failed to adhere to their election promises.
In the dual citizen scandal that brought Parliament to its knees, the High Court ruled that a number of members of Parliament had not surrendered their allegiance to another country. If we don’t allow any members of federal Parliament to be British citizens, why then do we continue to allow our head of state to be chosen on the basis not of their Australian citizenship, professional qualifications, or ability to serve national interests – but simply because of their birthright?
It might have been some small consolation if that lottery of birth at least rewarded an Australian citizen. Aside from maybe a couple of terms at one of Australia’s most exclusive private schools, our future heads of state have scant exposure to our culture, our rich multicultural story, or our traditions. They will be raised in an artificial environment that is removed even from everyday British people. Their only direct exposure to Australia is in the context of highly choreographed royal appearances at pre-planned events that are part of a broader international Royal tour. Those tours are not, and have never been designed to facilitate our present or future heads of state learning about the issues that matter to Australians.
Just because they’re young doesn’t mean they’re progressive
People like to wax lyrical about how Kate, William, Meghan and Harry are young, and therefore ‘progressive’. These people do not live ‘progressive’ lifestyles. Meghan Markle had to quit acting. She is not permitted to have her own, independent career. She had to shut down her social media accounts and her lifestyle website The Tig. The only news we hear of Meghan, Harry, Kate and William is through the @KensingtonRoyal accounts. The Royal family is also meant to be apolitical, so we hear nothing through the curated Royal family social media accounts about their political views.
What is reported on is their ‘Royal duties’. Even if you put all this aside, given the next in line is Prince Charles, by the time any of the ‘young’ four are themselves monarchs, they won’t be young anymore!
Prince Charles has dangerous and incoherent political views
Prince Charles’ political views are loud and manifold. On the one hand, he speaks openly in defence of climate change science, but he argues in his book, ‘Harmony’, that the “Westernized world has become far too firmly framed by a mechanistic approach to science.” Oh, and he’s a big believer in homoeopathy. He’s also a loud critic of modern pedagogic methods, claiming that education is too focused on helping young people to attain jobs.
Beyond the thousands of strange letters that Prince Charles has written to Ministers, his interventions in political debate are largely private and unaccountable. Unless a Freedom of Information request is made, or the content is made public some other way (like when his letter on education became public due to an employment tribunal involving a former staff member), it is impossible to know the extent of Prince Charles’ political influence.
Monarchists often claim we should not worry about the personal views of our monarchs because they are meant to remain apolitical and neutral. Prince Charles’ case exposes not just that Royals can clearly have influence by lobbying Parliamentarians in ways we rarely witness, but also that the next head of state has no interest in even pretending to be apolitical.
A constitutional monarchy is something we cannot ever vote on, remove, hold to account or truly understand the influence of. Now more than ever, it is clear why the monarchy is not the safe option, it is the truly dangerous option. We must become a Republic.
