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Britain and the European Union - Australian constitutional implications

By David Flint - posted Thursday, 6 November 2003


I am often asked about Britain’s membership of the European Union, and its legal and constitutional impact on Australia. More recently, people are asking how the EU’s draft constitution will affect the role of the Crown in our constitutions, state and federal. The draft constitution is not as the British government suggests, no more than a document setting out what is the present status of the Union. It takes it further, the Union looking suspiciously like a federated republic.

It is truly extraordinary that Tony Blair is refusing to hold a referendum on this - which demonstrates once again the wisdom of our Australian Founding Fathers in requiring that any change to our constitution be put to a referendum, and not, incidentally, to that spin doctors’ dream, a plebiscite.

And why not a plebiscite?

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Because the Founders were aware that in a plebiscite the government first asks a cleverly designed question, and then fills in the details later. It is the equivalent of a blank cheque on the constitution.

But returning to the UK, a London newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, in its edition of 16 October 2003, reported that Buckingham Palace is growing more and more concerned about the draft European constitution, and especially about Article 10. This provides that not only the constitution, but also European law will have” primacy over the law of the member states”!

If ratified, will this not undermine the Queen’s supreme authority as the guardian of the British constitution, asserted as it is through the sovereignty of Parliament? Will not the Queen be reduced to the status of a princeling, and the UK to that of a mere principality or province, like those of the old German Empire that Bismarck had long conspired to create with his “blood and iron” policy? This necessitated the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which was the precursor of those two terrible World Wars.

Sadly, the answer is obvious. So while the British people are to be consulted- at some, as yet unspecified, time in the future- on whether to replace the pound sterling with the Euro, they are not to be asked whether the constitution is to be ratified and whether their country, undefeated since 1066, should be swallowed up into a vast bureaucratically managed entity, governed according to broad policies settled in Paris and Berlin. Forget the wars against the dictators that sought to conquer all Europe. These may one day be seen, in the long tide of history, as mere skirmishes on the path to continental domination, a domination chosen by the elites without the consent of the people.

So when I am questioned about this, I say that if I were a citizen of the UK, I would be outraged, and I would protest strongly about this. And I would oppose substituting the Euro for the pound, too. That the monetary union is run for the benefit of France and Germany is clearly demonstrated by the cavalier way the deficit limits in the so called Stability Pact - which was to have been the guarantee of the integrity of the system - have been ignored by both. And how can you possibly have the same monetary policy for so many countries when some economies are booming and others have little or no growth and high unemployment? A first year student in economics would know that radically different policies are required for each.

It should be recalled that the UK entered the EEC (then not much more than a customs union - Bismarck’s German Empire started with one of those too, the Zollverein) on the promise, or rather the vain hope, of the British elites that the UK would be at the centre of Europe, in the “driving seat” as they say. Not so. The driving seat was well and truly occupied, and after all, three is a crowd. The EU was, is, and for the foreseeable future will be, governed according to the wishes of the Franco-German directoire. In the meantime the unfortunate citizens of Germany and the UK remain the principal source of the largesse which is lavished on every one else in the EU and also used to finance Third World support in ensuring a smooth path in matters diplomatic. This was well demonstrated during Australia’s last and unsuccessful attempt to gain a seat on the Security Council, as the Tasmanian Governor Richard Butler will immediately recall - he was then our ambassador.

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Nevertheless, since Margaret Thatcher brought her admirable good sense to the governance of the United Kingdom, the British economy has done quite well, although this may now be changing.

Imagine just how much better she would have done without the cost of the protectionist Common Agricultural Policy – to say nothing of its deleterious impact on the UK environment, the health of its people (wasn’t Mad Cow Disease the result, in part at least, of the intensive forms of farming that the CAP encourages?) and the economies of Third World countries. The UK could have secured all the access she wanted to Europe through a Free Trade Agreement, as Norway and Switzerland have. Neither have to subsidize the CAP. And her market would have remained open to Australian and other produce priced competitively. True, the UK would not be in the EU driving seat - but she is not now and in fact will never be, at least if her French and German allies have anything to do with it!

But what is there in this for us and the other realms, including Canada and New Zealand? The Queen is sovereign of each, but as the High Court has found, unanimously, the Australian Crown is a completely separate institution.

When I am sometimes told by the inevitablistes that the UK may well become a republic before Australia, I reply that ‘les cochons peuvent voler’, or whatever the French say for ‘pigs may fly’. (Actually they say : ‘when chicken have teeth’ – ‘quand les poules auront les dents’).

Subject to there being no calamity – and I do not mean that in the tabloid sense, I mean something like a meteor hitting the Earth or nuclear war - the Crown will continue .The system works far too well to experiment with some vague untested replacement, and certainly not with yet another politician.

Whether we will see the subordination of the British (but not the Canadian or Australian) Crown, and the United Kingdom and its people, to the Franco-Germans and their Brussels nomenclatura will depend on the current crew of British politicians - but if they ratify the EU constitution without the clear approval of their people, I confidently predict the people will have their revenge. They may well reverse such an outrage.

But this will not affect Australia in the constitutional sense. History and the law teach us that a subordinate principality can exist within an empire, while the prince is simultaneously the king of a sovereign and free nation. This was the case during the reigns of George I, II, and III. In addition to being Kings of England they were also Electors (Princes) of Hanover, a part of the Holy Roman Empire which that Napoleon so cavalierly abolished. The UK was in no way an inferior entity because of this personal union.The link ended when Victoria ascended the throne - neither the German nor French law would accept the rule of a mere woman.

I am not entitled to a British or foreign passport, unlike so many of my compatriots, including, it is said, some federal MPs, notwithstanding the disqualification this attracts under our constitution. While I regret the way things seem to be going in the UK, this is a matter for the British and not for me to decide. Nevertheless, I remain confident that whatever is done, it will have no constitutional implications for Australia.

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This article was first published in the Australians For Constitutional Monarchy e-newsletter, Hot News on 3 November 2003.



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About the Author

David Flint is a former chairman of the Australian Press Council and the Australian Broadcasting Authority, is author of The Twilight of the Elites, and Malice in Media Land, published by Freedom Publishing. His latest monograph is Her Majesty at 80: Impeccable Service in an Indispensable Office, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Sydney, 2006

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