Out with the old

By the 1840's the British East India Company controlled of much of India; that country was in effect a company nation. However in a development which alarmed Britain, in 1857 the mercenary Sepoy troops used by the British East India Company rebelled against the English.

Life, law and governance became bad, thus following the rebellion the British government cancelled the charter of the British East India Company. In a dramatic move it took over management of India, making it a British Raj after around two hundred and sixty years of occupation.

Queen Victoria became the Empress of India, which remained a British colony until 1947 when the work of various national movements inspired by Mahatma Ghandi's concept of peaceful protest, led ultimately to the Indian Independence Act 1947.

This created two independent dominions, India and Pakistan.

Indiaremained a Dominion of the Crown until 26 January 1950, when the Constitution of India came into force, establishing the Republic of India.

Pakistanremained a dominion until 1956, when it adopted its first republican constitution. In 1971, East Pakistan declared independence as the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

This era saw tumultuous occupation by a power initially motivated by the need to gain the special products of India. The particular special product which Australia had in abundance was space – space to house the huge number of convicts overcrowding England's gaols.

In settling Australia, England not only gained the space it needed including the traditional lands of our indigenes; it also gave us something incredibly valuable - the potential to develop a completely new ethos in the shape of the 'Aussie'.

Now, the time has come when that Aussie wishes to continue developing into a completely independent, self-ruling being, without any mandatory constitutional ties to the British monarch. I believe that this can be done without too much disruption to our existing democracy by retaining some of the concepts developed over the hundreds of strife-torn years which led to our present prized Westminster system of government.

My first proposal is that we retain the valuable abstract idea of the crown, which revolves around complete 'disinterest', but not 'un-interest', so that a firm, yet nebulous, overarching authority remains.

I would favour "The Crown" or "The Federation" to express this notion, rather than slightly authoritarian sounding titles such as "Government", "Republic", or "Dominion".

My next suggestion is that only an Australian national, either of indigenous or our collective migrant background, be appointed the supreme head of this body.