Doormat Australia is too timid to ditch King Charles

What the hell just happened, Australia? Get a grip, we can't keep grovelling like this. Can't we ever bring the curtain down on the 1954 Royal Tour?

As soon as news emerged of the Balmoral bereavement, sensible persons hit the brace position. It would be a rocky week or two. But it's been more extreme than my darkest dreams. Loonier than my silliest satires.

Before the royal coffin had even completed its own royal tour, our manifestly unsuitable new King was already having another jape at the old colony's expense. In Daily Telegraph, he was "planning a visit to Australia in one of his first moves as monarch".

He has a standing invitation from Albanese. Who's not about to be outdone by the fanatical royalist Scott Morrison. Whenever Charles does next intrude on our Canberra turf, remind me to go out and get arrested. Indeed, won't you please join me.

But it's not so much the Murdoch press that has failed us. It's our supposedly "centre" or "leftish" mainstream media. ABC, Guardian Australia, The Conversation and Sydney Morning Herald .

Here's what they could have said:

For many years, wise leaders and pundits have concurred, hush, be patient. Wait until the Queen dies. Well, she finally did, folks. Of course, we now urge a prompt transition to a local head of state.

Instead, their cloying message was:

Hush, keep being patient, can't you see the Queen just died?

Whereupon they sent forth a tsunami of nauseating Palace propaganda and simpering Royalist bilge.

In this post-Elizabeth climate of fake "republican debate", I shouldn't single out any one commentator. Instead, let me just eyeball two. On their better days, either one can do a lot better.

Consider this breath-taking insight, from the Herald's Peter Hartcher, "Albanese won't race to a republic referendum".

Earth to Hartcher: Timid Albanese already kicked that can, so far down the road, it's no longer possible to discern can or road. Plus, Albo rarely "races" at anything much. As Hartcher himself writes, he's "working towards creating a working group to begin planning a republic referendum".

I guess you could shoehorn a few more qualifiers or get-out-of-jail cards into that sentence. But let's get real.

Albanese looks scarcely more likely to deliver an Australian head of state than Morrison. By his own words, his constitutional priority is, look-over-there at an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The head of state must wait.

Meantime, his forelock-tugging priorities are glorifying the Queen, bringing the King to Australia, suspending Parliament, having a day of mourning, and stamping the King onto our coins. Following British tradition.

When would we get our own head of state? On Hartcher's timetable, about never. The Queen, he insists, didn't make us the "[prime ministerial] coup capital of the western world". So what? What's that got to do with the anxious apron-strings that still bind us to her Palace?

For 121 years, Australia has been sucking up to these British royals. Whatever Palace fibs John Howard is invited to repeat on ABC Insiders, the fingerprints of Elizabeth and Charles are on The Dismissal. And now comes this fresh tidal wave of grovelling.

Burbles Hartcher in response, Australia faces "deeply serious" problems, so the head of state must remain a "second-order issue". Peter, you could advance these nanny cautions any old time. There's never a right time.

Hartcher's cautionary companion is John Warhurst in The Conversation.

Claiming the Australian Republic Movement's preferred model is a "creative" starting point. No, it's not. It's bollocks. Their clunky head of state elected from 11 commonwealth-state nominees would never get up.

A second republican referendum, Warhurst concludes, is "at best five to ten years away…when Charles will be close to 80". Gee, as quick as that, lucky us.

Back in 1999, Howard had sabotaged the first republican referendum. He campaigned for the Queen, not for an Australian head of state. He stitched up the constitutional convention, headed by an avowed monarchist. By way of reward, the Queen brought him into her highly restricted "Order of Merit".

Back in 2022, as even the Australian Republic Movement concedes, and as other polls confirm, the general proposition of a "republic" barely wins a voter majority.

Which implies, any new head-of-state referendum could easily fall over once again. Unless, so I claim, the prime minister and opposition leader converge on a prior deal.

I don't see them agreeing on an elected head of state. What's in it for them? Their constituents don't seem mad keen on an "elected president" either.

I'd be very surprised if any head-of-state progress emerged under Albanese and Dutton. The former seems timid. The latter is opposed.

So, Australia looks set to waste more long years over futile "republican debates" and dodgy "republican models". Although a commonwealth is fine - even America has them.

The essential (and difficult enough) step towards a grown-up nation is simply this: Ditch the Palace. That is, legislation to unyoke our governor-general from an unwelcome King and his Palace courtiers.

Some might look askance at continuing with a governor-general role. Morrison's bungled choice of David Hurley has become a dead man walking. Same happened to Howard's poorly chosen Peter Hollingworth.

Determined leaders could turn that argument on its head. The more reason, they'd say, for a parliamentary sign-off on the head of state. Less autocratic, than the prime minister having their own private pick. But more respectful of prime ministerial powers, than an elected head of state.

Yep, strange as it seem, why don't we try for a simpler form of the 1999 proposition? Which might just about have got up at the time, but for Howard's perfidy, and the republicans fracturing.

We could have ourselves a head of state (or governor-general) without the 19^th century Palace ties, but with the (prime minister's) nominee requiring endorsement by a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting.

This, I know, wouldn't sort out our six state governors, who doggedly report back to the Palace. Or our stubbornly British national flag. Or, our stubbornly British national day. After 121 years as a royal doormat, maybe we gotta start somewhere, to get anywhere at all.