Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday scrapped knights and dames from the nation’s honors system, less than one year after a furore sparked by the award of a knighthood to Britain’s Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott, a staunch monarchist, reintroduced the honors last year, provoking criticism that he was out of touch with public sentiment.
Abbott was ousted by Turnbull in a party coup in September.
The politically disastrous decision to give Prince Philip the nation’s highest honor — Knight of the Order of Australia, on Australia Day, has been cited as the beginning of the end for Abbott.
The decision by Turnbull, a former head of Australia’s republican movement, to scrap the honors might be interpreted as a signal of his willingness to revisit the thorny question of the nation’s relationship with the British monarchy.
“Knights and dames are titles that are really anachronistic, out of date and not appropriate in 2015,” Turnbull told reporters.
Australian Greens Party leader Senator Richard Di Natale welcomed the decision, even as he used it to mock the government.
“It says something about the standard of leadership in this country that installing knights and dames was one of the most significant acts of our former prime minister, and undoing that folly is so far one of the most significant acts of our new one,” he said in a statement.
Others who received the honors were former Australian governor-general Quentin Bryce and Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, former Australian air chief marshal Angus Houston and New South Wales state Governor Marie Bashir, which Turnbull has said they can retain.
Queen Elizabeth is Australia’s largely ceremonial head of state, but has the power to approve the abolition of parliament, which last happened in the controversial 1975 toppling of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam’s administration.
Australia’s sometimes strained relationship with the British crown came to a head in a 1999 national referendum, when almost 55 percent of Australians voted against breaking with the monarchy, defeating Turnbull’s republicans.
However, Turnbull’s move into the leadership has buoyed the hopes of republicans eager to revisit the issue in a fresh referendum, despite his ranking of the faltering economy, not the monarchy, as his government’s top priority.
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