Sat, Mar 11, 2006 page5

• Royal visit stirs up republican passions

  CROWN The British monarch's trip to Australia next week has re-opened the debate on whether she should be head of state or whether the country should become a republic

  • AP
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  Many loyal subjects will warmly welcome Britain's Queen Elizabeth II when she arrives in Australia tomorrow, but her visit has also stirred passions of campaigners who would prefer a homegrown president as their head of state.

  The country rejected the idea of dumping the distant, absentee monarch as Australia's head of state in a 1999 referendum. But the Australian Republican Movement said yesterday her four-day visit was a timely opportunity to reopen the debate.

  "The issue is still very much alive," said the movement's national director, Allison Henry. "We would like to see a president who is drawn from the Australian population, somebody who lives here and understands what it is like to be Australian and can represent our values and interests abroad."

  Monarchists insisted that the matter was closed and said the queen was a cherished head of state.

  "I think she plays the role of queen of Australia impeccably," said David Flint, national convener of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy.

  "The country was formed under the Crown, we decided to federate under the Crown and it is the fulcrum of our federal system," he said.

  Australia became an independent state in 1901 when a group of British colonies joined together to form a confederation. But, like many former outposts of the British Empire such as Canada and Papua New Guinea, it still recognizes Britain's monarch as head of state.

  The nation overwhelmingly voted against changing the country's constitutional monarchy into a republic in 1999 -- not because they wanted to retain the queen, critics insist, but because of the wording of the referendum.

  Polls at the time suggested the republicans would have won, if the referendum had offered a clear choice between a queen or a directly elected head of state.

  Critics say that Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch monarchist, deliberately complicated the issue by proposing a president appointed by a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament. Faced with such an option, many Australians decided to keep the status quo.

  Since then the issue has simmered beneath the surface, with the republican cause perhaps weakened by the royal wedding of Australian real estate agent Mary Donaldson to Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The couple met in a bar during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and their fairytale marriage, covered in detail by Australia's tabloid press, sparked a surge of royalist sentiment in Australia.

  The royal visit, timed to coincide with next week's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, however, has reawakened the debate.

  Both sides have argued passionately in recent weeks about what national anthem to play when the queen officially opens the games on Thursday.

  Monarchists were outraged when organizers announced that Advance Australia Fair -- the country's national anthem since 1984 -- would be played in the opening ceremony instead of God Save the Queen.

  Reaching for a compromise, they announced last week that opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa would sing eight bars of the royal anthem.

  The queen, accompanied by her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, will visit Sydney on Monday, where she will receive a 21-gun artillery salute and be welcomed by Aboriginal leaders in the forecourt of the city's landmark Opera House.

  She is also scheduled to visit the nation's capital Canberra and Melbourne.
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