MONARCHY SHOWS BENEFITS

Among the extraordinary benefits which they said would flow from a republic would be that it would be ofgreat benefit to our trade! (For a list of the extraordinary claims put forward for the referendum campaign, see Sir David Smith's paper to the Samuel Griffith Society in 1998,A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Referendum, Volume 10, www.samuelgriffith.org.au) It seems that the boot may be well and truly on the other foot. The Sunday Telegraph, 22 March 2004 reported that the coming marriage of Danish Crown Prince Frederik to Mary Donaldson would be of benefit to Australian tourism, trade and cultural exchange. In fact, it said, the coming marriage had already `sparked a culinary-led export boom! And every year, when the UN reports on the best countries to live in for a whole range of reasons, constitutional monarchies lead. In the latest, the first five were all constitutional monarchies! But there are still those who wish to turn Australia into a republic. The Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee, which is wrestling with the problem of how to get one -and not whether it would be an improvement or how much it will cost-has announced it will report on 3 August, 2004. We can be sure of one thing-they will not recommend a referendum, at least in the near future. All realist republicans know that a referendum on any of their models-and they have a lot of those-would be lost.