Grovel Time

Our British past comes back to haunt us today. Our forelock-tugging subservience to the so-called ‘motherland’. The lead story in The Age is about a new campaign to get a pardon for Breaker Morant and two other Aussie soldiers court-martialled by the British Army during the Boer War. Morant and Peter Handcock were executed by firing squad in 1902. George Witton was released two years later. They were found guilty of shooting Boer prisoners but their trial is now regarded as a rushed ‘kangaroo court’.

Their claims they were following Lord Kitchener’s orders ignored. One of the grounds for posthumous pardons is that they were executed for political rather than legal reasons.

A petition calling for a review has been sent to federal parliament. And last week one was sent to the Queen. How quaint.

Flash forward 100 years and what’s changed in the parent-child relationship between England and Australia? Making big news at the weekend was the announcement that the Queen’s granddaughter, her favourite granddaughter they say, is coming to Melbourne as an official guest for the Melbourne Cup.  Hold the front page. Practice your grovelling curtseys. Royalty is coming.

Her name is Zara Phillips. Zara who?  Offspring of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips – the bloke they nicknamed ‘Fog’ because he was so thick. Zara is about one zillionth in line to the throne. But her Mum’s mum is the queen.

And like the others she’s into the horsey set. Maybe they could have invited Mark’s other daughter. The one he sired in New Zealand to a Kiwi horse woman. I interviewed that mother. She might have something more in common with the Cup seeing that so many New Zealand horses have won it.

You’d think the republic debate had never happened. Although, yes, it is true, the Referendum was defeated ten years ago after John Howard cleverly hijacked the issue and conned the delegates to endorse the wrong question.

It should have been simple: Do you want a republic? Yes or No. Then the follow-up: What sort of republic do you want?  Directly elect a president. A parliamentary appointment. Etcetera.

One of the leaders of the Republican cause was one John Brumby, now Premier of Victoria. But like Kevin Rudd, once in office Brumby lost his passion for the cause.

There he was at Balmoral, bowing and scraping to Her Majesty. He said
 ‘Her Majesty has taken a personal interest in the Black Saturday and Gippsland fires’. She wouldn’t know where Gippsland was. And ‘in fact,’ he said, ‘ my office provided the palace with daily updates in the weeks that followed the fires’.  Pity the people of Kinglake weren’t getting daily updates.

Of course Princess Anne did drop in for the memorial service at Rod Laver Arena. It was an irrelevant low point in an emotional service.

I suggest you read three things today. The  Breaker Morant material in The Age  and columns by Alan Howe and Sally Morell in the Herald Sun.

Is this the Australia you want in 2009?  More than a decade after our Bicentennial?

Monday, October 19, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009