Comment on There’s something about Mary: the Australians going ‘absolutely mad’ over Denmark’s new queen [actual article]

• unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’d rather have a British head of state than a partisan populist

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• Nath@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s something to be said for an overall “boss” to the Government. Someone with no real power day-to-day, but with the power to sack the government and force us to an election. Critically: someone outside our politics.

  The one time the power was invoked, it was done terribly by a Governor General worried over his own job and for local political reasons.

  If we disconnect from the monarchy, I would want that position to be retained by someone. But who? The queen king fills this role fairly well at the moment.

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  • Marsupial@quokk.au ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There’s nothing to be said about democracy being subverted.

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    • Nath@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Even The Dismissal was not a subversion of democracy. It was a dissolution of parliment and an invocation of democracy: taking us to an election. I was a little kid, so obviously wasn’t involved in the politics at the time. My dad was a die-hard Labor voter and he was furious. So, my personal memories of it are very anti-Fraser/Kerr as a result of that influence in my formative years.

      But for all of that, I concede that the Government needs to be accountable to someone. I believe we need an “emergency stop” button in our constitutional makeup. I just don’t think the one time it was used was a valid emergency. I think history has the same conclusion - that was not the way the power should be invoked. I doubt it’ll happen again like that.

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      • Marsupial@quokk.au ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        An unelected person or persons, being given control over government is not democratic.

        The government if it has to exist, needs only to be accountable to the citizens it exists to serves.

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  • brisk@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Given the crown has a policy of interfering with neither the decisions nor appointment of the Governor General, we could become a Republic without changing the practical power at all.

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