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.
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