Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The House meets today to mark the end of an era, the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the end of her historic reign. I convey my condolences to Her Majesty's family and friends for their deep personal loss of an obviously dearly loved matriarch. Death is a difficult thing for human beings to grapple with at the best of times, but it must be particularly hard to grapple with as public attention intrudes on personal grief.

Watching the public proceedings in the United Kingdom following her death, I was reminded of that great US historian Barbara Tuchman's account, in The Guns of August, of the funeral procession of Her Majesty's great-grandfather, King Edward VII, in 1910. It was, Tuchman noted, 'the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place'. Amongst the representatives of the 70 nations in attendance, there were nine kings, five heirs apparent, 40 imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens and 'a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries'. Tuchman wrote:

The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

It did mark the end of an era. The arrival of the First World War in Europe, soon after this spectacle, radically changed the continent and the world.

As Her Majesty's funeral cortege made its way through London 112 years later, Big Ben tolled on a world radically changed again. While the spectre of war has once again returned to the continent, much else has changed again during the 70 years since the Queen was coronated at Westminster Abbey. When Her Majesty the Queen was coronated, in June 1953, the world was just starting to recover from the damages and the bloodshed of World War II. Australia looked very different to what it does today. Three-quarters of Australia's then population of nine million people turned out to see her first tour of Australia. It was the equivalent of nearly 19 million Australians turning out to see her today—unimaginable. It was a different time.

It was just four years before her coronation that the Chifley government passed the Nationality and Citizenship Act and anyone born or naturalised in Australia became an Australian citizen rather than a British subject. At the time of Australia's first citizenship ceremony, where seven European men from across the nation received Australian citizenship, nine out of 10 Australians were born locally and people from the United Kingdom comprised more than half of our limited migrant stock. The White Australia policy, in operation since Federation, would not start to be substantially unwound until 1966 and would not be completely dismantled until the Whitlam government. Today, around 30 per cent of people living in Australia were born overseas, only 15 per cent of whom were born in the United Kingdom. First Nations people didn't have a universal right to vote in Australian federal elections until nearly 10 years after Her Majesty ascended the throne, in 1962. It would be another 30 years after that before the High Court overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and recognised the precolonial land interests of First Nations Australians in the 1992 Mabo decision. We will soon sow further change as our nation pursues the implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, voice, treaty and truth.

The collective identity of those living in this country has been constantly evolving through the actions of its changing inhabitants for centuries. We have changed so much for the better. But, while so much changed, Her Majesty remained. As Prime Minister Albanese said, 'Her Majesty was a rare and reassuring constant amidst rapid change.' We've seen, this week, the way that national symbols matter, how powerful they can be. We've seen it in the way so many people in the United Kingdom flocked to pay tribute to the passing of their monarch and the way their country has united in this moment. In Australia, Her Majesty was held in high personal regard by many Australians. She took on the throne at just 25 years of age, thrust into the unenviable role as a constitutional monarch. She was dedicated to duty as she conceived it. She sought to leave the institutions she worked within in better shape than when she'd inherited them. This is an example that all of us in this place can learn from.

The Australian public's continuing high regard for Her Majesty in the face of the dramatic change our nation has experienced over the last 70 years is extraordinary and a tribute to her service. It is also a source of wry frustration for republicans like myself. Republicans can only express our opposition to the continuance of the institution of hereditary monarchy in Australia, not to Her Majesty's extraordinary life of service. She was one of a kind, and her passing marks the end of an era. May she rest in peace.

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