The British taxpayer has once again received a windfall profit from the Royal Family. This is in addition to tourist income which the Royal Family attracts to the UK.
The profit this year is in the vicinity of Aus $330 million, ₤160 Million.
Until 1760, the costs of the Crown were paid from the Crown estate and certain other hereditary revenues.
From that time the practice developed of a Sovereign agreeing to hand over these revenues during his or her reign to the Parliament in return for a Civil List, which is today supplemented by certain grants.
It has to be stressed that The Queen is not paid a salary or personal allowance.
The British Crown is funded for Head of State expenditure, and this is not The Queen’s personal income. This amount funds staff, buildings including the building housing the Commonwealth secretariat, travel requested by the British Government etc. Since 2001, this has fallen in real terms by 3%.
This year the sum expended was ₤40 million, only a portion of the revenue from the Crown Estate.
This expenditure averages at about 66 pence per head of the British population per annum, A$1.36 per annum.
For each Australian the cost was A$0.00 last year.
…ill informed attack by Marxist journalist…
These facts should be well known.
But the former editor of Living Marxism, Mick Hume, has just launched a stinging but ill informed attack about this on The Queen in, of all places The Times, now owned by Rupert Murdoch (“Can't pay for your palace? Then get out,” 1 July, 2008.
Living Marxism was put out of business through a large and I think unfair libel award to a major TV network.
He now works for The Times.
Hume’s attack on The Queen was carried in The Australian’s “Cut in Paste”.
(That "must read" column was an innovation Tom Switzer introduced to The Australian when he was brought in to help save the paper in the days when it was stuck in the predictably politically correct journalism which dominated all the “quality” media. Having saved the paper’s opinion page from the mediocrity into which it had fallen, he turned it into the most influential page in the nation’s daily news cycle. Tom Switzer has moved on to become a senior advisor to Dr. Brendan Nelson.)
But back to Mr. Hume. He seems a pleasant enough man, but give him a pen, and will he will aim at what he sees as the class enemy.
Surely a Marxist would be sufficiently embarrassed by the excesses of Marxist leaders that he would think twice about attacking the Sovereign who has been guided throughout her life by a desire to do her duty to her people.
To repeat the facts, The Queen receives no personal income from the British government. The British Crown is reimbursed for Head of State matters. Nor is The Queen paid as Head of The Commonwealth, nor Queen of Australia, nor indeed as Queen of Canada or Queen of New Zealand.
Incidentally, the British accounts do not include security costs or the armed forces' ceremonial duties. This seems a more correct approach than the Australian one.
There is a limit to what one can apportion every activity from funds which appear in other budgets. We do not for example apportion security for ministers as part of the costs of maintaining them.
When the latest taxpayer funded attempt to find a republic took place, the 2003-2004 Senate Inquiry, we were not told the real costs of the wages, travel, building use , communication and security for this pointless exercise.
And as Harold Schmauze has demonstrated, security costs concerning the visit of a US president must have been massaged in comparison with Royal Visits. (“Accounting anomalies exposed,” 25 June 2008).
Can we just have the facts, and honesty, when it comes to Royal accounts?