The royal tour has once more shown Australians’ respect and affection for Queen Elizabeth. At least for the tens of thousands who have turned out to royal events, she’s not the “foreign head of state”; she’s one of us.

 

Similar crowds could, perhaps, be summoned up for a fashionable celebrity but it’s hard to imagine us taking such pleasure in the presence of any other authority figure. The people who turned out in such numbers and in such spirit were hardly tugging the forelock to inherited privilege or asserting a lingering “Britishness”.  Some were acknowledging 60 years of public service; others were paying their respects to a system of government which, at its apex, is above and beyond politics; perhaps most turned out in response to a simple instinct that it was the “right thing to do”.

 

The crown is the oldest continuing institution in Western civilisation, after the papacy. The crown which we inherited in 1788 has evolved as our country has grown. Once, the crown in Australia was personified by an Englishman representing the British government. Today, the governor-general is always a distinguished Australian who is a representative of the people above and beyond politics.

 

The crown has been a symbol of stability and continuity because it has adapted to the changing times. Australians have rejected some change because they feared that it might not be real progress but would welcome other changes, such as ending discrimination against women in the line of succession and allowing marriage to Catholics, because that would be a sign that ancient institutions need not be anachronisms.

 

The monarchy is an expression of Burke’s lovely metaphor of institutions as compacts between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born. Previous generations, after all, weren’t wrong about everything. This generation doesn’t have a monopoly on wisdom and insight. We should keep faith with our forbearers just as our descendants should keep faith with us; just, indeed, as the Queen swore to do at her coronation.

 

The Commonwealth, too, has been on display this week. It’s easy to scoff at this loose association of the former constituent parts of the British Empire. Still, apart from the UN, it’s the only world body that brings together countries from all different continents and in every stage of economic development. What’s common is a heritage of language and institutions derived from Westminster. Some of them are hardly exemplars of pluralist democracy but their presence in Perth is an acknowledgement, at least, of family ties. 

 

28 October 2011