With King Charles and Queen Camilla’s pending arrival in Australia, I have a guilty admission to make. The older I’ve become, the more fondness I have for our constitutional monarchy. It’s not because I have a particular devotion to the United Kingdom, or the colonial superpower it once was. My ancestors were mostly Irish, and one tour those lands 15 years ago was enough to shatter any illusions I had about the benevolence of the colonial masters across the Irish Sea. That’s before I even consider the British Empire’s impact on peoples in India, Africa and of course here in Australia.
Beyond those whose lands were stolen and whose cultures were destroyed, colonial Australia has always been a divided land. My grandparents here in Australia could recall job advertisements in newspapers openly stating ‘Irish Catholics need not apply’. While that discrimination has largely disappeared in today’s society (or perhaps more accurately, been focused on other groups), the Crown still stands symbolically over many historical wounds that are yet to be generally acknowledged, let alone healed.
What attracts me to the monarchy is not its presence in history, but more what I’d describe as its existence outside of the present.
In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the main characters seek out the person who is the Ruler of the Universe. It turns out that he lives in an isolated shack in the middle of nowhere. Every so often, some officious people come to him to ask him some questions, and then leave once he gives them his answers. He doesn’t recall them (he doesn’t seem to believe in the past), and he doesn’t even seem sure that there’s a universe outside his shack at all. Nevertheless, after a conversation with this ruler, the main characters conclude that the universe is ‘in pretty good hands’.
There’s a part of me that yearns for ‘man-or-woman-in-a-shack-ocracy’, the idea of power being completely disconnected from personal privilege. Imagine a decision-maker with no personal stake in any outcomes, such that there was no way that donors or lobbyists could bring financial or political pressure on them. What kind of outcomes might be possible in that environment? What new approaches to pressing issues like climate change or wealth inequality might be considered? Perhaps our ruler-in-a-shack-without-any-investment-properties could even find a fair way to approach housing policy.
Monarchs, of course, are not at all disconnected from privilege or influence. But one advantage that monarchs have