Australia should drop its ties to the British monarchy after the reign of Queen Elizabeth II ends, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said yesterday.
Gillard, whose center-left Labor Party has long held that the country should become a republic and stop having the British monarch as its head of state, said that Australia had “deep affection” for the queen but that she should be Australia’s final monarch.
“What I would like to see as prime minister is that we work our way through to an agreement on a model for the republic,” Gillard told reporters in Townsville. “I think the appropriate time for this nation to move to be a republic is when we see the monarch change. Obviously I’m hoping for Queen Elizabeth that she lives a long and happy life, and having watched her mother I think there’s every chance that she will.”
The issue is a contentious one for Australians, many of whom are British immigrants or descendants who still feel strong loyalty to Britain and the queen.
Many members of the opposition Liberal Party are monarchists — though the party also has had high-profile republicans. Liberal Party leader Tony Abbot, Gillard’s rival in Saturday’s national elections, said he sees no need to change the status quo.
“I think that our existing constitutional arrangements have worked well in the past and I see no reason whatsoever why they can’t continue to work well in the future,” Abbott told the National Press Club. “So while there may very well be future episodes of republicanism in this country, I am far from certain — at least in our lifetimes — that there is likely to be any significant change.”
As head of state in Australia, the British monarch serves a largely symbolic function and is represented by the governor general. Labor wants to replace the governor general with a president. Parliament would retain its power to rule, with the president a largely symbolic figure.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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