A rock of stability and assurance amid the raging rapids

The perennial appeal of Elizabeth II speaks not only to her unwavering sense of duty and strength of personal character, but also to the intrinsic merits of constitutional monarchy. By David Furse-Roberts.

On Friday 9 September, Australians awoke to the sad news that the sun had finally set on the 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II. It was at once an occasion for mourning and gratitude. A sense of profound sadness that the Queen who had graced our public life since Winston Churchill occupied Downing Street was no longer with us. The one constant amid the quicksands of life was shockingly no more. In our shared grief, we could nonetheless be grateful for a Queen who had reigned over Britain and the Commonwealth with such poise and dedication. Ever true to her 21st Birthday pledge, she served her people with dignity, grace and distinction to the very end.  In the raging rapids of realpolitik, the gentle yet reassuring presence of Elizabeth II represented a rock of stability.

The perennial appeal of Elizabeth II speaks not only to her unwavering sense of duty and strength of personal character, but also to the intrinsic merits of constitutional monarchy. Evolving through centuries of practise and refinement, the system of government Australia was fortunate to inherit from Britain offers both continuity with the past and the mechanisms for orderly change. In a constitutional monarchy such as Australia, Britain, Norway or Japan, the Crown can transition seamlessly from one sovereign to the next, providing historical continuity, while the day-to-day ebb and flow of parliamentary government moves forward. Paradoxically, in a constitutional monarchy, the power of the sovereign lies not so much in the powers they possess, but in the powers denied to others.

The Crown and monarchy eminently appealed to both the British and democratic instincts of Robert Menzies, Australia’s first Prime Minister to serve under the reign of Elizabeth II. For Menzies, the Crown represented the great fountainhead of British institutions and traditions including the Established Churches of England and Scotland, the judiciary and the English Common Law, the executive arms of government, the Privy Council and the whole Westminster system of Parliamentary democracy.

Through the British Empire and then the Commonwealth, the Crown also provided a global network between different countries around the world which shared a common British heritage. Although many such countries eventually became republics, they still honoured the British monarch as head of the Commonwealth.

To affirm the supreme status of the Crown in Australia meanwhile, the Menzies government enacted the Royal Style and Titles Act (1953) which declared Her Majesty to be ‘Elizabeth the Second, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Australia and her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith’.

Despite originating from a pre-democratic age, the ever-adaptable monarchy was esteemed by Menzies as the great bulwark of modern democracy. As an impartial umpire detached from the cut and thrust of partisan politics, a modern constitutional monarchy provided the necessary space for a robust democracy to thrive and flourish without undue interference.

The fact that the monarchy was able to survive Britain’s gradual evolution to a mature democracy since the 1688 Glorious Revolution was testament to its adjustability to the modern age. In Britain’s historical journey from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, Menzies observed that ‘as the powers of the people, through Parliament, have come to be paramount, so have the powers of the Crown diminished’. Even from developments in his own lifetime, Menzies remarked on how King George V ‘accommodated himself to the new democracy and the new Commonwealth’ of the interwar years as the 1931 Statute of Westminster established legislative equality for the self-governing dominions of the British Empire.

As John Nethercote appreciated, the attachment of Menzies to the Crown and monarchy was not only formal and professional but also deeply personal, a fact brought home when Queen Elizabeth personally bestowed an Order of Australia on a wheelchair-bound Menzies at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1977. Born in the twilight of Queen Victoria’s reign and growing up in the reign of Edward VII, his public career in State and Federal politics spanned the reign of four more monarchs including George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II. He was perhaps the only Prime Minister of Australia, and only one of the few in the Empire/Commonwealth, to enjoy a close relationship with the Royal family which dated from his first visit to London in 1935, for King George V’s jubilee celebrations, and lasted until the silver jubilee celebrations of Elizabeth II in 1977.

One of the high points in Menzies’ personal relationship with the monarchy was the warm rapport he enjoyed with King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, during the tumultuous years of World War II. At first hand, he appreciated the encouragement the King and Queen gave to the ordinary people of Britain with their comforting presence in the besieged streets of London. Paying tribute to George VI in February 1952, Menzies told parliament that the departed King had brought the Crown ‘closer to the people’ and in the bitter crisis of war, ‘served us all so well [as] ruler, and leader, and friend’.

By hosting regular royal visits to Australia, Menzies was able to not only continue his warm personal relations with the monarchy but endear the Crown to the Australian public. Under the post-war Menzies government, royal visits became more frequent than before the war and this helped make the monarchy more personal and less distant to ordinary Australians.

Accompanied by her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit Australian shores in early 1954. Touring the country for two months, she was seen by an estimated three in four Australians. Royal visits by the Duke of Edinburgh followed in 1956 and 1965, and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1958. The Queen herself visited Australia once more during Menzies’ Prime Ministership in 1963 where she made the Prime Minister a Knight of the Thistle. Menzies enjoyed these occasions immensely but was conscious of not ‘overdoing’ royal visits for fear of provoking boredom or cynicism amongst the Australian public.

Following his retirement from office in 1966, Menzies’ support for the Crown and monarchy remained steadfast. Representing ‘this history of centuries’, the Crown for Menzies remained a ‘focal point, a centre of gravity, without which no nation can survive’. In constitutional monarchies such as Australia, the Queen was seen as ‘the fountain of honour, the protector of the law and the centre of a Parliamentary system’.

Not surprisingly, Menzies was sceptical about the merits of Australia becoming a republic and remained unconvinced by the arguments advanced by Australian republicans in the late 1960s. He maintained that the apolitical office of the Crown gave it a natural superiority over both executive and non-executive presidencies where periodic elections would serve invariably to politicise the office of President. He also questioned the claims of republicans that a president would be necessarily ‘closer to the people’ than a monarch, with the office of presidency merely substituting one form of pomp and officialdom for another.

While Menzies acknowledged the success of the American republic, he appreciated the unique historical context in which it had emerged. The republic of the United States was the product of a popular Revolution against an autocratic monarch, whereas Australia on the other hand had ‘inherited a system of Responsible Government and then a Constitutional Monarchy in the true sense’. With the advantage of these nineteenth and twentieth century developments, Menzies in his time did not see Australian democracy as standing to benefit from any future transition to a republic.

With Australia likely to revisit the republic debate after mourning the Queen’s passing, it is timely to appreciate not only the remarkable Queen that Elizabeth II was, but also the enduring value of Australia’s constitutional inheritance.