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REPLAY - The Goss: The Queen, the King, and Should Australia Now Become a Republic
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Hey, you guys! How's it going this week?
We went on a recent holiday at Inverloch so I got my dad Ian back on the podcast for another Goss episode.
Today's episode is about this brewing question among Australians: Should Australia now become a Republic?
You see, Australia has been having this difficulty on whether we switch to being a republic than being a Commonwealth.
And now that Queen Elizabeth II has passed, talks about Australia becoming a republic has come around again.
Listen in as we talk about when this movement started, and why we think it's more complicated than just electing a new president.
Join us for another round of great chin-wagging here on the Aussie English podcast!
If you're someone learning Australian English as a second language and you want to improve your pronunciation, reduce your foreign accent and sound more like an Australian when you speak English, check out my content at Aussie English!
And grab my Australian Pronunciation Course here - https://www.aussieenglish.com.au/courses
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Get out of you, Mike, Pete here, and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Ghost episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smithson, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally down under here in Australia or non-locally, overseas in other parts of the world. Okay, and we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Ghost. So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at ozzieenglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time, keep practicing, and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit, I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode, guys. Smack the bird, and let's get into it. What what is it again? Like um, what's that saying? You always see it in films when the monarch dies and the new monarch is there.
SPEAKER_01The queen is dead, God live the king.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Or yeah, long live the long live the king.
SPEAKER_01God live the king. God live the king. I've only just one sip of beer. It's already getting messy. Pineapple and dragon fruit smoothie. How good is it? Gave me this shit. There was no warning involved.
SPEAKER_00It's six percent. I panicked. It's good, it's good. I found this, so this is Little Creatures, which is a brewery down here in Geelong, right? It is, yeah. Um, so yeah, big blender. This beer is single batch, so it's a one-off, I guess.
SPEAKER_01One off, never to be seen again, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Pineapples, dragon fruit smoothies.
SPEAKER_01It does taste like dragon fruit. It's pretty good. For those with Asian heritage or have travelled in Asia.
SPEAKER_00Dragon fruit is so good. I know it's good. Oh my god. Is this it's the one that's like bright pink, right? It looks like the eggs of a dragon. Yes. Like something out of Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, I guess, now. But yeah, you they grow on cacti looking things. I don't know if it is actually a cactus or if it's a succulent kind of plant, but it looks like a cactus, and you they get to like three or four meters high and the fruit just grow off the side of the plant. You can buy the the cacti or what yeah, the the plants at nurseries locally. I've got one outside. Although it's tiny, it's about 20 centimetres high. So it's gonna be 20 years before you cut fruit on it. I thought I saw it and I was like, oh man, how epic will it be to have dragon fruit? And then I was like, this is gonna take so long. Yeah, exactly. Your grandchildren will get one off it. I know. Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the queen is dead. Long live the king.
SPEAKER_00Wow, yeah. So, um, how does it feel for you? Because she's been the monarch your entire life. Well, and yours, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, but I mean, you know, you've been around twice as long as I have, or nearly as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she was um she was crowned four years before I was born. So yeah. And she was actually queen for most most of a year before that, before the actual coronation. Because the coronation is just a um a ceremonial thing. The you know King Charles III became King Charles III the second his mother died by natural inheritance. There is no declaration. There's a whole lot of formal stuff that has to go to have that recognized, but it's instantaneous according to the you know the inheritance of the monarchy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, and she was what, early twenties when she became the queen?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. She was she was 25, I think, by the time she was crazy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because she reigned for 70 years. The craziest thing was I looked this up because I was like, shit, 70 years. There can't be many other many other, if any, monarchs uh that that um have have reigned that long. But yeah, it was um Louis XIV. Louis XIV, 72 years, I think. Insanity. And I I guess yeah, it was because he was such a young kid.
SPEAKER_01Well, he was a child when he uh assumed the throne of France.
SPEAKER_00But imagine that was the 1600s, 1700s. I think that was he was crowned at the end of the 17th century and into the uh eighteenth century, obviously, and you're like, how the hell did the guy live so long back then?
SPEAKER_01Well, lots of people did though, and that's one of those weird things that um when you study um genealogy or family history, you realise that the um exp age expectancy is totally biased by uh two things. Firstly, infant mortality, yeah, whereas yeah, up until the early 20th century, lots of children, yeah, like you know, significant proportion of people died before the age of five. Dragging the average down. And men working in manual labour um had a much lower life expectancy. But it's sort of like if you got to 50, you could live till your nineties. There were just aren't you? Exactly. There were nearly as many people who, you know, once they reached old age, got to really old age three or four hundred years ago.
SPEAKER_00Surely it must have been a pretty shit version of old age too, because you would imagine your body uh would be so broken down, rich or poor.
SPEAKER_01So I I actually think it's probably the reverse. Yeah, um, I think at the moment now we you know, if I live to a hundred, I'm going to be in severe pain and have a whole lot of bits and pieces falling apart. You'll be fucked. Because yeah, but but I'll be artificially kept alive. Artificially in a sense that medical medical science will keep me alive. I think I think people who lived to their in their 90s 200, 300 years ago were probably one of the very small people. The only ones left were fit. Who were fit. And because anybody who had anything wrong with them died before that.
SPEAKER_00Your teeth would be fucked, you'd you'd have surely you would have, you know, like Well now.
SPEAKER_01If you're a king, you're probably not going to have as big a problem because you'll be eating high quality food, you will, yeah, for better or for worse, and often for worse, you will have had medical people around you keeping you well, bleeding you and doing all sorts of horrible enemies, and that's it. But but yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, I I I read one the other day. Somebody was talking about uh an ancient cure for malaria was to um slice open your abdomen, pull your intestines out, wash them in salt water, and then put them back. Now, it was probably a cure for malaria because nobody died of malaria after having that done to them. Yeah, we'll just disembowel you, you'll be sweet after that. Yeah, I will sew you up again, you'll be fine. Now, obviously, a few people survived, but everybody else who died, it was blamed on the malaria.
SPEAKER_00I mean, imagine surviving that.
SPEAKER_01I know, I know, and this is pre-anesthetics or anything.
SPEAKER_00How would you survive that? You feel like anytime I watch these TV shows, and again, I would take that with a grain of salt and dockos and everything like that, because they're probably not that accurate. But you see, anyone back in the day, like I'm watching something at the moment um about Rome on Netflix, it's about you know caligula and everything. And it if someone stabs you in the stomach, you're effectively fucked. You're dead. Yeah, like it's just a slow death. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You it's a the because you've probably ruptured something in there.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna die of peritonitis unless unless they hit an artery, when which case you're gonna die of internal bleeding. Yeah. Yeah, you're probably not gonna die of just bleeding to death quickly. You'll die of peritonitis because you'll have opened up your at your intestines to your insides.
SPEAKER_00Well, and it must have been such a weird uh like yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine running around as a soldier or whatever back then and just being totally paranoid about wounds to the stomach, I guess. Like, I mean wounds to your head, please. Yeah, yeah, your head, your chest, or your stomach is really the death zone. If you get them anywhere else, as long as it doesn't hit an artery, you're probably gonna survive it. It's a flesh wound. Whereas today, you you could stab someone tens of times in the stomach and not kill them because they get medical treatment and they're they're sweet. You know, you hear that all the time about people in jail that get stabbed like 40 times or whatever, and they're just like, uh nah, flesh wound, you know, we're sweet. But yeah, I don't know how we got onto that topic.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Yeah, long live the king.
SPEAKER_00Long lived king. Yeah, so did uh I mean it's we Australia's relationship with the royal family has always really, really confused me because uh you meet people who just don't give a shit, people much like ourselves, and then you peep meet people who are more avid supporters of the monarch um and the royal family than many Brits, you know, and you're just like, what are you smoking? Like, I can't imagine being I mean, I guess they're the head of state, right, for Australia, I guess, right? And we have we do have a closer history. They are by our constitution, we do have a closer history with them, but I can't imagine being, you know, say as as loyal or passionate about the Prime Minister of Great Britain, you know, giving giving a shit.
SPEAKER_01But you see, the but the thing is that the Prime Minister of Great Britain um actually has nothing to do with Australia. Yeah, but the Queen might as well. But the Queen the Queen has always had that head of state. Well, for the monarch, the Queen for the last 70 years, has always been our head of state. And I understand why some people, particularly those people who come from a British heritage, who will have that, you know, um appreciation for the royal family. Um, yeah, I have nothing against the royal family in particular, you know, individuals aside, the royal family in general, Prince Andrew. Well, I'm not gonna go into individuals. Um but yeah, the royal family as an institution, I have nothing particularly against, um, but I have nothing for them either. I just think it is a complete anomaly now that Australia is now 121 years old, and as a as a constitutional democracy, yeah, um, and yet we still have uh effectively the monarch of another country as our head of state. It's a huge anomaly, and hence the Republican movement. Uh but um I have no real problem with the royal family as an institution. Uh really? I kind of do, don't you?
SPEAKER_00Like in terms of the it's just it's so it feels to me like it is such a modernly unnatural way to run a country, and I guess most countries aren't being run by royal families. But at the same time, for it to even be around still when it is so redundant, it seems just so it just feels like a wank, right? Like it's kind of like you you're keeping alive this tradition that was unfair and just I don't know, somewhat disgusting in the past. Like I get I guess you did it. You you did it because it was probably the the best way of running a country a thousand years ago and ensuring its survival, but it was incredibly unfair, and the average person in the country probably didn't you know really benefit from it at all. If anything, they probably suffered. And it was so arbitrary, right? It was just whoever took power and was the strongest was the king or queen or whatever.
SPEAKER_01I don't think your average sort of peasant farmer um or labourer uh three or four hundred years ago or longer ago, or even two hundred years ago, would have been any better off in a um a Republican style democracy where there was no royal family. True. Because I think it would have been corrupt and it still would have been money going to the city. Exactly. And it's just that those people would have been elected by the elite. Yes. Now, of course, you know, parliaments around in democracies are elected by every adult in the country, notionally, uh whether they can actually vote or not is a different story. But um whereas royal families are inherited or you know taken over by power historically, but you know, notionally they're in they just inherit it. Um Charles became king, not because he was worthy of being a king, but because he was the oldest son of a queen.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's the sort of most, for me at least, that's kind of the most I don't know how to describe it, the grossest part about it is that it's just given to a relative um not based on merit or anything like that. And you keep seeing it in again, these documentaries I'm watching at the moment about Rome. And I think an example is Marco Aurelius um handing over uh his, you know, the being the emperor to I've been watching it in is it Commodus his son? I've been watching it in Portuguese, so Cormodul. His name is Cormodu in in Portuguese, but just that this guy was so inept, you know, and the same with like Caligula getting it, and then um you know just always handing it down, this nepotism and it just it always seemed to be oh what I'm worried about is really the country and running the country well, but I'll put all of that at stake to make sure that my lineage is in power. And you're kind of like, well, what do you care about?
SPEAKER_01Do you care about your lineage or do you care about Yeah, and look now there's um you know the you know certainly in European families, the royal families, they don't run countries anymore. They are a titular head of state. They're a head of state with notional powers, uh, but the governments actually run the country. And you know, the in this case now the king will go and open parliament and sign documents to approve of you know, they they appoint the prime minister by signature, but the prime minister is already appointed as the elected leader of the party that forms government.
SPEAKER_00Uh it's so weird though, right? Because it feels like they're just mascots for the country. These rich, wealthy mascots for the country that don't really do anything besides going around and you know high-fiving each other and trying to help the poor. Yeah. And you're kind of like, what is your purpose now? Like you kind of and the annoying thing is because countries are now, at least for the most part, so stable, it's not like you're gonna have that change over. No. It's these people are effectively locked in for life, this family for forever, right? Effectively now as the royal family, and they uh don't do anything besides get, you know, income from their huge land titles and everything, and probably a slice of taxes.
SPEAKER_01Although, yeah, although the um they now certainly Charles, one of the first things he did when he um ascended to the monarchy um was as his mother had done beforehand, um, is signed over the income from the royal estates to the government. Yeah. Um now they still get a salary, and it's quite a considerable salary. I have no idea what it is, but they're no longer, you know, they notionally own the royal estates, but they're not making money out of it. The government makes money out of those estates.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so, you know, that idea of yeah, and certainly that's a very recent thing.
SPEAKER_00Um whose idea do you think that was? Do you think the royal family were like, oh, we should probably do this, or the government put pressure on them?
SPEAKER_01I don't think it would have been the royal family. Yeah, because in the in the end the government can't put pressure on them to do anything. Yeah, that's yeah, the government can, you know, can enact laws, but uh when it affects the royal family, the monarch has to sign off on those.
SPEAKER_00So man. Well, moving on to making Australia a republic or not, how much, at least in your time too, when you were younger, did the royal family impact uh life in Australia? Because there was sort of one key event, and I think that's about really it, right?
SPEAKER_01Um Well, the key event, if you're talking about 1975, sacking of the government. And look, that was notionally agreed to by the Queen, but it was the Governor General who is the Queen's representative, and ironically, is recommended by the Prime Minister to the Queen to you know to appoint them. So they're appointed by the Queen, but the recommendation comes from the Prime Minister at the time. Um, and so yes, there was a um a royal representative who changed the government in this country. It's the only time it's ever happened in Australia. Um other than that, there's other than just yeah, royal visits were always popular when I was a child. Um yeah, the Queen is the Queen came to Australia, I think, 14 times or something. Animals um over that period of time. And yeah, when she first came, it was you know, you'd come out here by ship, the royal yacht, Britannia would bring the fam royal family out, or whoever was coming to Australia. It wasn't just jump on a plane and you arrive here 28 hours ago. That's how long she was yeah, reigning for. Isn't that crazy? I know. And oh wait, she could have been. Didn't even have a private jet. Didn't even have a private jet, no, still don't clebs. Well, the Royal Air Force would fly them, you know. Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_00This would have been like what the the paper and wooden planes back then, the biplanes, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not quite with the the Wright brothers. Um so that was always a big thing, and uh, but other than that, no direct effect. Um and look, the the Republican movement in Australia has gone through its ups and downs. Um it got completely white-anted by John Howard. Do you want to explain what white-anted means? White-anted means you break it down from the inside. Like termites. Yeah, like termites. Um when because there was a big push about 20 years ago to have uh a vote, um, yeah, a referendum, which is a vote to change the constitution. Was this around the millennia? Yeah, it's just it was late. Year 2000, yeah. And um and so there was a big push around then from the Republican movement in Australia to hold a referendum, and John Howard, in his infinite infinite um cynical wisdom He was our ex-prime minister, yeah. He he white-handed it, he broke it down by um saying, Well, he the question he asked, or what he should that he should have asked, is should Australia become a republic? But what he did was say, I'm not gonna ask that question, I'm going to ask the Republican movement to come up with a model and we'll vote on whether we accept that model or not. And of course, the Republican movement isn't an individual organization. And so there were two or three models that came up, and so he set it up that no matter which one of them won, they were never going to beat the no vote. So, um, and you know, and it failed, of course, because you know, it's sort of like, well, do you want um an apple or an orange? I'm gonna choose orange, you have to tell me which sort of apple you're going to have. And then five different people tell me. I want a granny smith, I want to. Instead of putting up an apple against an orange, he put up an orange against three different apples. Yeah. And of course they failed. Um and no even Labour prime ministers after that, who were mostly Republicans, um uh didn't want to challenge that again. They didn't want to waste the money and the reputation, I think, of having that, losing that vote again. I think now there will be a fairly big push by the Republican movement in Australia, whatever that means, uh, to have a referendum in the near future. Near future being within the next three or four years. Um do you think it's just a matter of time? I think it is a matter of time. I don't think there is a uh at the time it appeared, when the in the 1990s, it appeared that about between 60 and 70% of Australians thought that we no longer needed the Queen as our head of state. What that meant was variable, and that was the thing that Howard exploited. Um and I think that would probably still be the same. Um and there was a I think a fair degree of affection for the Queen as a person uh rather than the Queen as the monarch. Yeah. And so that probably bumped up, boosted the monarchy uh vote as well. Uh so it's an opportunity now to look at that and go, I don't think there's anything wrong with Charles. Um really? Yeah, well, I mean, it's in terms of you know, as a king, I don't know that yeah he let's face it, he is the most highly he is the most highly trained king in the history of the world. Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's he's those um lines over the throne for jokes that was like man 72 finally gets job. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Um which is a bit of a yeah an unreasonable because he's actually had a job the entire time. And let's face it, for the last few years, he has effectively been the monarch because the queen's failing health meant that yeah, she met the um the constitutional requirements of being queen, but more and more of her duties were being taken over by her uh offspring, particularly Anne, her daughter, and Charles, who took on most of them.
SPEAKER_00Well, and and she took it very seriously, right? The oath where she was never going to give the throne up whilst alive. No, she did. She was like, This is too dead.
SPEAKER_01The oath is that you do this until you die.
SPEAKER_00That's that I I do have a lot of respect for her, in that I I know I know very little about her and her family and the royal, you know, royalty in in general, but I do know that she worked, you know, incredibly hard. Oh, into her 90s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's she never retired. Like she was going hard the entire in her entire life with no like my grandparents retired shortly. Well, my grandfather, when he was uh an engineer, retired. I remember maybe a few times picking him up from the station after work when I was a tiny kid with my grandmother. And then after that, he he was retired. So for my entire life, and he's about the queen's age, maybe a two bit younger. He's been retired, and she was still obviously smashing out work and showing up and traveling. And you yeah, I can't imagine being the younger you are, the more I feel like you wish you were like a prince, or why wasn't I born into a family that was rich and famous and blah blah blah. And the older you get, you're kind of like fuck.
SPEAKER_01But see, rich and famous, if you're yeah, if you're the heir to somebody else's corporate fortune. And you don't have to do anything. And you don't have to do anything. You're sitting, you know, you're sitting on a Paris Hill. Exactly. Yeah. That's very different from being a member of the royal family because you have constant duties. Charles, for his entire life, has been doing two things. Waiting to be king and every other shitty job that his mother didn't want to do. His mother and father, yeah, when before his father died. Which is going to be interesting to see how much of that he can keep doing as king, because now as the monarch, he has a um a constitutional requirement to not interfere with government. So and whatever interfering means, because he had some fairly sort of left-wing views of around um conservation, um, both of the natural environment, but also building heritage and those sort of things. And he did a lot of work around that.
SPEAKER_00He has to take a neutral position now where he's just like, I'm not talking about it.
SPEAKER_01Other members in the royal family can, but he can't as a as the you know, the Prince of Wales, the you know, the heir. He could come out and yeah, he campaigned very heavily again, you know, against um you know coal and so on and uh in Britain um and was all for um yeah ways of overcoming uh climate change and um conservation of natural environments and all those sort of things, he can't necessarily actively promote those anymore.
SPEAKER_00So it would be so interesting to be a fly on the wall and really get a better understanding of what these people are like, but not just what they're like, but whether or not they actually enjoy these jobs or look forward to it. You wonder if he was just like the whole time, like, please, you know, please outlive me, mum. Please, for the love of God, don't make me the care. I just can't be fucked. Yeah, hand it over to William. Yeah, I can't imagine Yeah, I well, yeah, I just can't imagine what it would be like having that kind of a job because you think from the outside, man, it just must be all luxury and amazing. But I reckon that must be so monotonous and boring.
SPEAKER_01But I I think the other the other side of that though is that for all of his adult life, he has effectively been the the hand of the queen, in a sense that you know that he was already doing a whole lot of that. So now it's just he does that with go do this job I don't like get out of here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I'm playing with the corgies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, now he's allowed to, yeah, um, you know, so do those things of his own accord. So yeah, it's it's gonna be an interesting one to see what happens. I also have a soft spot for Charles in a sense that he's been manipulated by being the heir uh for his entire life. He was tap out at any time, dude. He can tap out at any time. But you know but at the same time, if you've if you've grown up and the only thing you know and the only thing that you uh your ambition is to be the king, not because you want to be king, but because you want to serve your country. Um but then he's he was manipulated into marrying somebody he didn't love. Yeah. Um not only that, she was manipulated into getting married. The woman he did love was married, manipulated into getting married, and he was sent off overseas. He was in the navy at the time, and his family and his uncle, who was the head of the navy, manipulated it so that he ended up you know being over in the Caribbean and they married off his the woman he was in love with to somebody else. Spoiler, he's with her now. And it's one of the great love stories in you know the 20th and 21st century that he's been in love with this woman since they were teenagers or young adults, and they're still together, despite the fact that they were both married off to other people, um, and now he's you know he's been with her for his entire life.
SPEAKER_00Rockin' a hard place, yeah. Well, and he's had to um father a child that is most likely not his as well, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, well, yeah, we could question that.
SPEAKER_00But uh mate, look at that.
SPEAKER_01Google I I absolutely agree with you.
SPEAKER_00Google Prince Harry with that he's one DNA test that's never going to be done. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Google Prince Harry and Harry's mother's bodyguard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Harry's mother's bodyguard, and uh tell me they do not look like father and son. But you know, it's neither here nor there, ultimately. I'm so amazed that something hasn't been like all you would need to do is follow both of those guys around, wait for them to throw out a Starbucks cup, and then just run the DNA test on each of them.
SPEAKER_01They're never gonna no nobody is ever going to believe that that has been done. So God. Yeah, anyway, yeah. Um, but yeah, going back to the Republican movement, one of the challenges I think that we have in the Republican movement in Australia is that I think I honestly believe that the majority, and it might only be a small majority in Australia, um, of people believe that we should you know drop the royal family as our you know heads of state. Um, but we have the extremist Republicans whose version of this, the way they push it, is to say, you know, Charles is a complete ratbag, he's a complete waste of time. We should this is our opportunity, he'll never be a good king. We this is our opportunity to get away from it. And by the way, all the royal family are completely hopeless. And it's that's never going to win people over. People who are sitting on the fence are going to be offended by that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's not about individuals. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01It should be saying about Australia's constitution needs to be changed so that we don't have the royal family of another country as the as our head of state. Um it's got nothing to do with whether they are legitimate, yeah, whether the royals are legitimate people or anything else. It's just And then there is the argument about what sort of republic should we be. Um the what the interesting thing is, the one version of a republic that we haven't ever examined in Australia is why do we need a head of state at all?
SPEAKER_00As opposed to just having what?
SPEAKER_01Prime Minister.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The Prime Minister is the elected head of He might as well be, right? Yeah, but but why do we need a head of state? If the argument is how we get a head of state, just don't have one. There is no there's no governmental reason other than you need somebody to swear them in. You actually don't. Yeah, the effectively you have the the head of the electoral commission swears in the prime minister because they're the people who hold the election.
SPEAKER_00So do you think we would end up with a president if the Republican Party the Republican Party, the Republican movement ended up winning?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we will, um, because I don't think anybody would find the no head of state as a you know palatable option.
SPEAKER_00What would that mean though?
SPEAKER_01Then it'll be how do we how do we get a president elected, created. We just need to follow the American version of the United States. Oh yeah, that'd really that's really work for them. Um we have like the electorate. There was never a there was an electoral college, what is it called again? No. The electoral college, yes. Don't uh don't get me started on that. Um there's there was never an intention, certainly in the Republican movement that was pushing in the 1990s, there was never an intention to have the president of the country as another level of government, which is what it is in the United States. Above what a prime minister is. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you're looking at the equivalent of the king, that in the they're effectively rubber stamping things that government wants to do. Um they're representing the country from a ceremonial point of view, um but they are not an arm of government. They don't have veto over laws, they don't get to create laws, they don't do any of that sort of stuff. Whereas in the United States and and other some other countries that have an elected president, the president is effectively the single head of the highest level of government.
SPEAKER_00What if we had our own monarch? Yeah, just elect a queen. Yeah, or king. Or king. It's funny how natural it is to just keep saying queen.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I I did it deliberately because it shouldn't have to be uh it should be.
SPEAKER_00Who do you reckon if we had to do that and Australia had to vote on on a family and a person at the head of that family to run the country, if it was just opened up tomorrow and and you know, besides obviously being able to nominate yourself, who do you think as a family or a person would get the most votes?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, see, I uh I don't know because once you're if you're creating a monarchy effectively, then effectively you get one vote. Because after that, assuming it's an inherited monarchy, then it as opposed to if we have a popular vote for president, yeah, um you get it every four years or you get it every and I think it would have to be a longer term. I think it would have to be something like eight years, yeah, so that it is not in the cycle of normal elections, so that it is removed from the election process.
SPEAKER_00But if we got a king or a queen or a you know a raw family, who out of all the popular families in the country, who do you reckon would end up being?
SPEAKER_01Nobody would ever vote. Barnesy. No, nobody yeah, Jimmy Barnes would be around. Jimmy Barnes would be good as a king. But again, depends on what you want. He wasn't he wasn't born in Australia. Yes, he's an Australian citizen.
SPEAKER_00But instead of calling him instead of calling him king, what title do you reckon he'd get? Do you reckon old mate? Old mate, Barnesy. How good would that be? Old mate. Barnesy and his mate Farnsy can be the vice king. And what's her name? The wife. Yeah, the wife would be what's her name or what's her face or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, old mate and what's her name. What's her face? No, but I uh more seriously, because I don't think that, you know, obviously that was a never gonna happen, a facetious discussion. But um I think in terms of if we were to have a president I know who I would want as president of this country at the moment, whether or not they would be they probably wouldn't accept, I've say they because I'm keeping agenda non-specific at the moment. Yeah, whether they would even accept of you done. Um whether they well, I was just turns out the person's actually non-binary point for the discussion. Oh, this person is particularly binary, I'm sure, but Clive Palmer. No, no, um Pat Dodson.
SPEAKER_00Pat Dodson, I know the name, but I can't. He's an indigenous guy, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And you know, professor at a university and you know he's the one who actually at the moment has uh he's a senator as well, and he has a um specific representation of indigenous views as a senator. It's not a portfolio, but it's a sort of super portfolio. Um and uh I think he would be brilliant, not only you know, recognizing indigenous, and that would be the first the first person you create as a president or a you know, man. Imagine doing that. It would have to be an indigenous person. You would hope so, and and if you do that, you want somebody who's Cassie Freeman. Yeah, well put her in general. Exactly, but uh respected for their views on the world, yeah, their intellect, their contribution over a long period of time. Um he would be brilliant.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that'd be interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so and I'm sure there are hundreds of other indigenous people that and non-indigenous people that would fit those same criteria if you remove the indigenous criteria. Paul Hogan. Um Paul Hogan, well, maybe not. Hogs Hagues.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a lot of lot of people you do.
SPEAKER_01And the thing is that you don't you don't want it to be a celebrity in a sense. Now, famous people, whether they're famous because of their political contributions or their business contributions or whether they're sports people or whatever, are already going to be celebrities, but you don't want it necessarily to be the you know the popular vote just because you can get it. Delta Goodrum. Yeah, she's one of the most popular people in Australia, but is she going to be president? Probably not, with all respect to Delta.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that you have to go around and find the person in Australia who least wants to be the president, and that's the person that has to be the president.
SPEAKER_01Agree, but that depends on the role and and that whole argument of do we have another layer of government or do we just have a you know a head of state, the equivalent to the monarch, um, which is my pref preference. If we're going to have a president, and we only call it a president because that's the obvious thing to call it, um if we're going to have a president, then we don't want to be an extra layer of government. I also don't think they should be elected because as soon as they're elected by popular vote.
SPEAKER_00You mean so have it like a prime minister here in Australia where it's the party gets elected and then they sort it out?
SPEAKER_01Or that we have an independent panel of people who choose. Yeah. You know, after the party's won. Yeah, well, but an independent panel whose role it is that it's not about yes, you might have representatives of government and the opposition and an independent and whatever, but you'd also have business people um so on. A panel of people decide. Um and Australian citizens can nominate people, and you might have to have a petition that said, I've got 20,000 votes to say Pat Dodson and I have to have Pat Dodson's agreement, um, and that so he goes into the pile. Um we could then you know have a handful of those people, and then they go, Yeah, Pat's the best person. Um because as soon as we have an elected, so if anybody then nominates to be uh president and we and then we have an election, what's it gonna be? It's automatic that by definition is politics. And then you will have people competing. I want to be president because anybody who answers that question should be automatically disqualified, as you inferred in the beginning. Um so it shouldn't be a a personality election. I think it should be a sort of an independent appointment in one way or another. Much like yeah, most people don't don't even know who the governor's general have been in the past before they become governor general. A few of them have been relatively famous people, um, often the military people are well known because they're senior military people, um, but most of the others are just good, hardworking service people for a long time, and the Prime Minister says, Yeah, we think that person is the right person. Uh David Hurley. David Hurley had a long history in the military, I believe. But others haven't. So uh whereas often it had been, uh I think the last, I'm trying to remember, the last non-Australian to be uh Governor General of Australia was probably Lord Casey, particularly. You look at me as if no, he lived in Australia for a long time. But yeah, anyway, it's uh it's an interesting idea of how you get around the arguments that are really detailed. Uh and the only way you can do that is to ask that one question is should Australia become a republic? And you define what republic is, but you don't define how a head of state is part of because that's a a secondary question. Um and as soon as we do that again, we're screwed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know. It it's just really funny because I did I think the royal family probably was more popular with the Queen as the head of it than it will be with the King, King Charles as the head of it, because the Queen just seemed to be much more likable and sort of like your old nana. But she'd been an institution. Yeah, and she'd been around the entire time.
SPEAKER_01Charles has been around that whole time that she's been Queen. He was at her coronation, he was three years old, but yeah, he was at her coronation, so he has been there as the Prince of Wales, the person who would you know who will hen inherit the crown for 70 years. So we've known him, but he was also always the the son.
SPEAKER_00But it just seems dis he seems disingenuous and unlikable. I don't know. It comes across in the media. All the interactions that I guess they probably just highlight the negative. Of course they do. But you never really saw the Queen being an arsehole to people or being rude, or and it seems like every other day there's video footage of Charles coming out of him just being a douchebag. But they're they're um I don't know what I would be like under those same circumstances circumstances. They're highly selected, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because if you look at the broad footage and the footage that came out after the Queen had died, and you know, up to the the funeral, there were many occasions where he travelled from he was at Balmoral when she died, he travelled from Scotland down to London and you know, crowds outside Buckingham Palace when he drove in, he got out of the car and walked around shaking people's hands and talking to them. Um the Queen probably would have done that as well, but but that's yeah, you just sort of think, no, he didn't go. This is this is at a time when you look at it and go, he's mourning his mother's death, ignoring everything else. He's now the king of the country that he has expected to be king for the last 70 years, and yet he says, I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna talk to the people who are here, mourning my mother as well.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, so you fair enough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think there are some really good things, but nobody they showed that, but then they go, Oh, yeah, he's flippant to somebody, he waves his hand at somebody and they go, Oh, what did he actually say to him? Yeah, and a lot of that is yeah, the the royal the queen has always been the I hesitate to use the obvious, she's been the queen of the royal family from the public point of view. She could never do any wrong. Yeah. Whereas every other member of her family is targeted. The only way they ever got into the media was were they getting married or did they do something wrong?
SPEAKER_00I can't wait to no longer hear about it, to be honest. Like, it seems like our tabloids and those magazines, the women magazines that are always at the supermarket. That's a whole different topic talking about the raw family and movie stars. But they got nothing else to talk about.
SPEAKER_01Royal family and movie stars.
SPEAKER_00Just over it, yeah. Celebrities. Anything else you want to mention about the Queen or the King before we wrap up this episode? We can just keep going. One of my favourite stories, I saw I heard one of these stories from some knight or something that knew the Queen and was friends with her, but he was like a an old military, you know, dude in the UK, and apparently he used to go up to um was it Balmoral, you were saying, in Scotland and and go hiking with her. He was one of her guards. Was it okay? So yeah, she would go hiking with him, and apparently they were out one time and this American couple were hiking in the same place, and walked up to them and um started chatting to them, but didn't recognise them, and was chatting to the guy, and he was like, Oh yeah, I've met the queen.
SPEAKER_01You know, they're well that was actually the queen who threw that line. She they said uh oh the history is you must know the queen, uh you must have met the queen. And the queen said, No, I've never met her, but he has important. He's met her a lot. And he played along with it, yeah, yeah. And then they took photos. They got they got the queen to take selfies of this the couple with this guy, and then he took one of the queen with them. And her line was her line was I would just love to be a fly on the wall when they take it home and somebody recognises me in the photograph.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, see, that's why I don't know, those sorts of stories coming out, and I guess you know, people are only gonna share the positive when when she's passed, but made me think, oh man, I would love to have known this person.
SPEAKER_01Well, she allegedly had a really cheeky sense of humour in private. But but I think she also and look we were gonna wind this up, but you've wound me up again. Um I think there's there's another side of Charles, and not to do with Charles as the person, but Charles as the institution, that he has been allowed to be much more public than his mother. The Queen made herself a very she was publicly out there, but she was a very private person. Yeah, there was all these protocols around even people, yeah, we should do the the lineup and she'd go and shake hands and have a chat with people, and there was always this protocol that you never spoke about what you talked about with the Queen. Um, that she would never have an opinion about anything publicly. Yeah. Whereas Charles, for his entire life, has always been out in the public, having his opinion out there, for better or for worse. And it's going to be interesting to see how that goes now that he's king as to whether he's quite still gotta shut up. Yeah, yeah. And uh the whole idea of you know, you go and shake the hand of the queen or the king, and anything you say uh won't be you know will never become public. One story I really like, you're talking about those you know, odd stories about the queen and her sense of humour. Um, and I remember the um centenary cricket test match between England and Australia, celebrating a hundred years since the first ever test match, and this is in 1977. And the Queen came out um to she I think she was there for the second day of the test match. So she wasn't there for the opening, but she was there for the second day. And at lunch, and for those of you who don't understand test cricket, test cricket goes for five days, and they have two breaks in a day. They have a lunch break and a tea break. Lunch is after the first two hours, and then tea is after the fourth hour. And so during the lunch hour uh lunch break, they had the uh Australian team and the English team line up, and the Queen went along and shook their hands and had a chat with them or whatever. And Australia's opening fast bowler, um, and you know, we can have this discussion about uh cricketers later on. Um Dennis Lilly, who was probably the most famous cricketer in the world at the time, certainly non-English cricketer, um, he brought his autograph book out and asked her to sign the autograph. And she shushed him and she sh and she just said, I'm not allowed to sign autographs in public. And he put it back in his pocket and nothing further was said. And uh and I remember him talking about this years later, and he said, and uh a couple of weeks later I got a letter saying, I'm very sorry, Dennis, I would have loved to have given you this, but if I sign one autograph, um here is an autograph book opened with my royal stamp and my signature on the first page for you. And you sort of think there and go, She sort of gets it, like you know, and that's the pressure that somebody is on under those circumstances where you think, yeah, she's got hundreds of public appearances a year, and you're going and you're shaking hands or whatever. You can't she couldn't have signed Dennis Lilly's autograph book because every person after that would have had an autograph book, and the and then it's not the shake of hands, it's it takes not five seconds but two minutes every time.
SPEAKER_00Well, I remember we went to the um atheist conference, right? Yeah. Back in two thousand and ten and met Richard Dawkins. And I remember lining up. I remember lining up though to have my book signed. Yeah. And there were probably a thousand people lined up, literally. Like It was straight after the conference had finished for the day or whatever, and he was just sitting there and um he signed every single book. Yes. And you're just like, My God. How many signatures is it? He was there for hours. He was literally there for hours, and he would have a chat with each person.
SPEAKER_01The irony is that these are it's not like he was selling his books at the conference, so he's not making any money.
SPEAKER_00Well, there probably were somewhere, but yeah. I didn't see them, but yeah, yeah. Yeah, so but I I remember thinking that and being like, Jeez.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, imagine if you were the Queen doing signatures, you'd be like And there's some people I I I know I've seen um uh and yeah, I I harp on about yeah, it's a Canadian TV show on one of their stars, but I've seen Do you want to tell everyone what show it is so they can go check it out? Heartland. And the main Amber Marsha shouldn't be giving you money. She should. I I should be her Australian publicist. But I remember seeing a uh video of her and because she's a horsey sort of person anyway, and she plays a now a young woman, but a girl originally. It'd be weird if she was really bugging horses. It would be season seven. Well she started off playing a 15-year-old when she was 18, and it's 16 seasons later. But um But I remember seeing a few years ago a video of her at a um a public event. It might have been a rodeo or a show, you know, somewhere, and she was, you know, out riding horses and things, um, doing, you know, and MCing, I think, the event. And at the end of the sh show, she was sitting on her horse at the side of the thing with people lined up. And you could in the initial shot you could see about 20 people lined up um to have a chat and get her signature. And then the person who was taking the video panned around, and the entire stadium, the circle around the stadium, was lined up with people waiting there, and at the bottom they said, and she waited and talked to every person.
SPEAKER_00Kind of I can't imagine the sense of responsibility you have. Like I imagine that it gets tiring after a while. But she makes nothing out of that. Yeah. Well, she does. She gets goodwill from her bands, too.
SPEAKER_01She gets goodwill. And yes, people will go to her website and buy her merchandise and stuff, but in the end, it's not like she's charging ten dollars a person or whatever, she'll just sit there for hours. It's the long game, Dad.
SPEAKER_00It's the long game. Every single one of those people is probably worth a hundred bucks. Yeah. Anyway, anything else to add or are you all done? No, I'm done.
SPEAKER_01Once we get to Amber Marshall, we're finished.
SPEAKER_00All right, well, thanks for indulging us, guys. Hopefully, you got something out of this episode, if nothing more than just a little bit of entertainment. Yeah. See ya. Yeah, see you later.