The frenzy is turning to fury. The penny has dropped. The republican movement, with their foreign allies who want to poke their nose in Australian affairs, are beginning to realize that the wedding was not the magic bullet which would persuade Australians to endorse the convoluted , expensive process to achieve, if that is the right word , the Latham republic.
So are republicans trying to rewrite history, or is it that they are not well informed? In the referendum campaign, a leading republican told a distinguished gathering in Sydney that Canada was a republic, so there was no reason for Australia not to follow her.
Sorry Senator, that is not the case!
So when I opened up my Daily Telegraph last Tuesday, I was not too surprised to read the following letter.
"I hate to burst the monarchist bubble of David Flint, wrote Shane Hurford, (letters, Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2005)) but more than half the country voted yes in the republic referendum. It was only the requirement for a majority of states that lost it for the good of the country."
Rosemary Coleman and I wrote the next day pointing out in addition to all states and 72 per cent of electorates voting No, 55 per cent of voters said No. If it had been an election it would have been the mother of all landslides!
But anyway, our resounding No vote, was "orchestrated by his group" claimed Colin Clowes in another letter in that edition. As Lord Deedes wrote in the London Daily Telegraph, he had never seen a vote in democratic country where the media had shown such shameless bias.
That bias, Mr Clowes was absolutely, totally republican!
It did not work-as the late Dick McGarvie, the former governor of Victoria would say, Australians are a wise constitutional people.
On the publication of the preliminary TV ratings of the marriage -they were lower than the actual figure- I sent this tongue- in- cheek letter to The Australian, which was published on 12 April, 2005:-
Sir,
Surely you are mistaken in your report that 1.46 million Australians- on a Saturday night when many are out watched the wedding?
After all hasn’t the ARM been telling all and sundry about a "surge" in their membership?
Surely those media pundits in the press and on TV were right-that Australians are just not interested?
Yours Sincerely
Well! That threw the republicans into frenzy.
Robert Ginn said I was wrong to assume only monarchists watched. That is like saying only terrorists watched 9/11, that only paedophiles watched the Michael Jackson trial, and only papists watched the funeral of the Pope.
But I did not say that Mr Ginn. I pointed out that the media pundits claimed Australians were just not interested.
But what was more interesting were the fascinating admissions published in letters the next day. Raymond Miles said he was watching and no doubt hoping for what he called stuff-ups. And anyway, his fellow Australians were only worshipping at the altar of celebrity!
Marie Mayne said she was only watching out of "simple curiosity". But Brian Wilder said he was watching out of "morbid fascination- the last meaningless pathetic ritual of an era that is almost over" Now most people go to or watch a wedding to wish the couple well. These comments tell you a lot about some republicans.
I wonder how many of the NSW and WA politicians who now want to break the oath they swore on the Bible, were also watching Charles and Diana? Were they watching for the same mean reasons? Having read the reasons why republicans watched the Royal Wedding, my recollection of the psychiatrists comments in one episode of Fawlty Towers came to mind. This was when he and his party came back to the hotel after dinner, and , putting on the light, found Basil Fawlty in his underwear on the floor, wielding a frying pan, and astride a fallen Manuel .One psychiatrist observed, nonchalantly:-
I think there is a thesis there …..
To which his psychiatrist wife replied : No , there is enough there for a whole conference….
Instead of telling us about their shabby reasons for watching the wedding they should explain why we should divert hundreds of millions more from schools and hospitals on their plan to persuade us into accepting Mark Latham’s preferred republican model.
In the meantime, the London correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Bruce Wilson, vitriolic and endless attacks on the Royal Family has obviously attracted a bagful of angry mail. Robin J. Pearce wrote (12/4) that the quicker Wilson is replaced by someone who does not continuously give vent to vindictive personal feelings about Prince Charles the better.
Tired of his vitriolic articles about the Royal Family which had become repetitive and boring, Jan Peasnell asked how long it would be before the Telegraph pensioned him off.
What a bitter and twisted man he is, wrote E. McDonald. It is time he climbed out of the gutter.
And so say all of us.
Until next time,
David Flint