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One of the more unlikely pieces of speculation to emerge from the World Cup concerned the origins of soccer in Brazil. A historian of the game claimed that it had been introduced by the Jesuits. According to the thinking of the Jesuits at St Louis School in Itu, near São Paulo, 'all the muscles [would] work harmoniously, and the moral lessons imbibed from sportsmanship [would] be assimilated by the students.'
It might be 70 years before the new prince becomes king. Take the long view and the absurdity of an independent nation retaining a foreign monarch as its head of state is instantly apparent. But it's absurd now, too, and for the same reasons. Yet until there are political leaders who are willing to treat the republic as a matter of urgency, it will remain in the too-hard basket.
There is no denying that our nation was forged by men and women who settled here from the UK. There is also no denying that men and women from other parts of the world came after them, and that there were countless generations here before them. Until monarchists can reconcile themselves with these facts then the image they hold of Australia is incomplete.
One curate in our parish claimed to dream about the royal family and believed everyone did. Any easy familiarity I had with an idealised royal family collapsed with the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Malcolm Turnbull is persuasive when he says in Australia there are now more Elizabethans than monarchists.
Previously, monarchists and the ambivalent masses alike could argue that the British royal family was effectively benevolent and benign. The banning of The Chaser's royal wedding commentary is a jolt back to reality.
Some advocates of monarchy have jumped on the film The King's Speech as evidence that Australia needs a monarch. Monarchists often argue like this when they want to personalise the constitutional debate by concentrating on a member of the Royal family with attractive features.
Governors-General are appointed under a system that freezes out the Parliament, the Opposition and the people. The controversy over Quentin Bryce's trip to Africa has again revealed the office's vulnerability to partisan politics.
The Governor-General, Major-General Michael Jeffery, is mounting a defence of the place of the British monarchy in the Australian Constitution. On several occasions recently Jeffery has proclaimed a very conservative view of Australian constitutional arrangements.
Sir Gerard Brennan’s address at the launch of Mark McKenna’s This Country: A Reconciled Republic?