Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

Never again will Australians see the like of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, seven months and two days. She was the longest serving monarch in the history of Great Britain. Across her reign, there were 16 different Australian prime ministers. The durability of her popularity was more consistent than that of contemporary Australian political leaders.

The longevity of her reign alone elevates her to the dais of history, but it doesn't sufficiently, I think, explain her contribution to Australia and her significance for Australians. Here, and right around the world, there has been a grief which has been universal and democratic in nature. Citizens who take little interest in politics have stopped to watch the melancholic pageantry of the Queen's funeral. The grief in Australians—the sense of our irrevocable loss, our awareness of permanent change—is not explained simply by the longevity of her reign.

You see, I think Australians understand that Elizabeth II provided continuity and certainty in a rapidly changing and divided world. She respected her role as head of state as constitutional and non-partisan; she didn't see herself as a serving Prime Minister with real power. A link through the ages to modern Australia, from the Second World War to 2022, she uniquely joined our past to our present. In 1926, the year she was born, Gandhi was still in jail for inciting rebellion against the British Empire for Indian independence. The memory of Gallipoli was not even 11 years old. Joan Sutherland was to be born seven months later, and Phar Lap was yet to win the Melbourne Cup. Right now, there are fewer than 50,000 Australians who are older than 95, which means Her Majesty's life has spanned the lives of more than 25 million Australians. From the Blitz to Afghanistan, from the White Australia policy to the multicultural Australia of today, from Australian women in the kitchen to Australian women in the parliament and every other forum in the nation, she has presided over and been present at our change.

I was fortunate enough to meet Her Majesty in 2011 on her final visit to Australia. I was struck by her modesty—how entirely engaged she was with every person she met, from schoolchildren to veterans to politicians. The fact that a person such as myself may be a committed believer in an Australian head of state should not prevent us from recognising the greatness inherent in the person of Elizabeth Windsor—her selflessness, calm, stoicism and unflagging commitment to public duty. In fact, some of the most excellent and fitting tributes in recent days have been from Australian republicans. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese remembered the words the Queen used after the September 11 attacks, that 'grief is the price we pay for love'. Former prime minister Paul Keating expertly located the Queen's broader cultural relevance in a century where the self was 'privatised' and the public good 'broadly neglected'. He noted:

Queen Elizabeth understood this and instinctively attached herself to the public good against what she recognised as a tidal wave of private interest and private reward. And she did this for a lifetime. Never deviating.

The quiet Queen never embraced partisanship, which allowed her to be the constitutional monarch for all, regardless of creed, colour or conviction—a head of state for all. This silence should not be mistaken for disinterest but rather is an acute wisdom that the role of head of state is to unite, even as nations change and governments change direction. Such purposeful unity enabled the diverse nations of our Commonwealth the time and space to evolve national identity. History salutes strong leaders who accumulate power, but leaders who disperse power are infinitely rarer. In recent weeks, we've lost two of that rarer kind in former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and, now, the Queen. Australians should just pause for a moment and reflect that the Queen oversaw the transformation of the British Empire into a multicultural Commonwealth of more than one billion people. In this great room of Australia where we gather, we should all take a moment to reflect on the particular grandeur of this great woman and Queen. May she rest in peace. The Queen was a figure of constancy, not a partisan nor an activist, and that is at the heart of the public's affection for her.

The supreme irony is that the Queen is the exemplar of the type of personality—humble, dutiful, thoughtful and abiding—that Australians would want in an Australian head of state. The Queen never embraced partisanship, which allowed her to be a monarch for all. She never ignored the realities of shifting social norms. She did indeed acknowledge after the 1999 referendum that it had been clear for some time that, in her own words, 'many Australians' wanted to see constitutional change. She stressed, though, that the future of the monarchy in Australia was for the Australian people alone to decide, while reassuring us that, whatever happened, it would not change her family's 'deep affection for Australia and Australians everywhere'. That discussion will happen in other times. That change will happen in other times. But, with Her Majesty's indulgence, we take a breath to reflect on the end of the second Elizabethan era and with it the profound loss of a great woman.

See this speech in context