The member for Kennedy said he would like to see King Charles III removed from Australian coins and replaced by Indigenous warrior Tubba Tre or Kokoda Track soldier Ralph Honner.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 When we come into this place, we take an oath of allegiance to a foreign monarch. I object
00:10 to taking allegiance and I have never, ever agreed to give allegiance to a foreign monarch.
00:15 I say my allegiance is to the sovereignty of the Australian people. When you get on
00:22 a Kwanus aeroplane, like I did yesterday, they say they've got cookies. It might seem
00:28 petty and ridiculous, but I said, 'What's that?' You get my point. They were biscuits.
00:38 You say it doesn't matter, it's silly and it's irrelevant. No, I don't think it is.
00:44 How do you explain that when Australia is two weeks away from being invaded, our army
00:50 is in the Libyan desert? What the hell is it doing in the Libyan desert? Or protecting
00:56 a port that had no ships in it? It's because we were doing what we were told by the big
01:03 boys overseas. We were not acting in the Australian interest. I don't know of any country on earth
01:11 except New Zealand that has a foreign monarch on their coin.
01:17 Either we grow up and become Australians, or the only two countries on earth that have
01:25 no support levels for agriculture are Australia and New Zealand. The only other one that reduced
01:33 dramatically was Canada. You just can't look at that and say the colonial smock marks are
01:39 flashing neon lights here. What other country in the world intends by 2030 to get all of
01:48 its electricity from China? What's wrong here? All of our petrol comes from overseas. It
01:55 doesn't have to. It should all be Australian, but it doesn't.
02:01 No matter where you look, you can see the signs that this is a country that really hasn't
02:08 grown up. You say, 'Should Ralph Honna be on our coin?' Ralph Honna, the man whose battalion
02:18 in 1939 saved Australia from invasion at enormous cost to themselves—780 went up at Kokoda
02:26 and only 128 at Rollcall two and a half months later—should he be on the coin? Or should
02:35 this person be on the coin, a person who lives in England?
02:39 But also, just to take a little bit of countenance here, he is on our coin as our monarch. I
02:48 don't want to be told what to do by some person who has got their hereditary. I constantly
02:55 quote Diana's brother on how that particular family got on the throne. I don't have time
03:02 to go there today. I would like to see Tubbatrop on our coins. He was the great leader of the
03:11 Kolkadoons, where they held the British intruders at bay for over 20 years. Should he be on
03:19 our coin, a man who fought to stop the intrusion into his country? Should Ralph Honna be on
03:26 the coin? Or should some little fellow from England, who, as far as I can make out, has
03:31 never worked in his life, never had a job in his life, never has done anything to recommend
03:38 him for the position?
03:39 Just to remind the member for Kennedy, understanding Orders 88, to not speak disrespectfully about
03:45 the monarch. The member may continue.
03:49 Mr Speaker, I take your point and I won't continue down that vein, because it really
03:55 didn't matter whether it was a lovely and wonderful person in that position or not.
04:01 Either you believe that all people are born free and equal or you don't. If you put a
04:07 monarch on your coin, it means you don't.
04:12 Every country on earth that I know of has in their constitution the sovereignty of their
04:18 people, whether it's France or the United States or wherever—Japan—they all have
04:23 it in their constitution. We have in our constitution that we should swear our allegiance to a foreign
04:30 monarch.
04:31 For those of you who read history books—I don't want to get carried away with myself,
04:38 but I did have a moderately best-selling history of Australia—if you read history books,
04:47 you really should have democracy. It's really wonderful that the Americans start off their
04:56 constitution the way they do.
04:59 [End of Audio] Duration: 2 minutes 40 seconds
05:00 PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT http://www.verbalink.com/2013/05/03/world/3.jpg
05:01 http://www.verbalink.com/2013/05/03/world/3.jpg
05:02 http://www.verbalink.com/2013/05/03/world/3.jpg
05:03 http://www.verbalink.com/2013/05/03/world/3.jpg