Wednesday, 28 May 2003

Australia's Governor-General resigned over the weekend, and it was front-page news in the local papers; in fact, it was the only news on pages one, two, three and four. Last week the family of the woman who accused Peter Hollingsworth of rape withdrew the court case against him, conceding that it would be almost impossible to pursue the case with the victim (who was also the only witness) dead. (She committed suicide when it became apparent that the press would learn of the story.) Hollingsworth continues to face accusations that he didn't do enough to protect children from pedophile priests during his tenure as Archbishop of the Anglican Church, but he does so now as a private citizen—not as the Australian head of state.

I mentioned earlier that Hollingsworth was in trouble, and have since learned a bit more about the position of Governor-General. There simply isn't anything like the role in the United States, where the Head of State and the Head of Government are one and the same; Australia, Canada and other ex-colonies of the British Empire (I think) have a separate role for the ceremonial leader, versus the hands-on leader who busies himself with running the country. In Australia (until now) the Prime Minister simply chose the Governor-General, with no input from Parliament or any other body: The closest analogy I can make would be if President Bush unilaterally decided who would wear the Miss America crown, and if Miss America were less a beauty queen and more an actual monarch.

It would also appear that the Australian Constitution is more a patchwork than its American counterpart, having been updated at various times to make Australia more independent from the British Crown; Australia's equivalent to the Supreme Court was actually a British court until fairly recent times, and the ongoing scandal with Hollingsworth raised a lot of interesting Constitutional questions. If the Governor-General had not resigned, it would have been very difficult to remove him—and at several points in the affair it became necessary to consult with Queen Elizabeth on what to do next about the man who was technically her representative. (The Queen discreetly said it was Australia's affair and Prime Minister John Howard's decision… perhaps realizing that any other course of action would likely end her reign over Australia. In a 1999 referendum a bare 54% of Australians voted to retain their country's ties to the British crown.)

The whole affair is a black eye for John Howard, who did no background checks at all before elevating a former Anglican archbishop to be Australia's head of state (and who was warned that appointing a person so closely tied to the Anglican Church created some awkward church-state separation issues.) Howard is a staunch monarchist, I'm told, so potentially this is an issue that the Opposition could use against him—although the Opposition here is, if anything, in even greater disarray than America's Democrats—and at the very least the Prime Minister will have to do some serious vetting and consulting before appointing the next Governor-General of Australia.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 9:38 am. comments.