The platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II – an unprecedented event – was celebrated in Britain over a four-day holiday with the Trooping The Colour, an incredible Royal Air Force flyover, four-year-old Prince Louis mugging for the cameras, the National Service of Thanksgiving, the Platinum Jubilee Concert featuring Diana Ross, Duran Duran and Queen, as well as seemingly a million street parties. Britain, as the joke went, was 98 per cent bunting.
In Australia by contrast: tumbleweeds.
Thousands of Britons turn out on the mall in front of Buckingham Palace to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.Credit:Bloomberg
Well, not entirely. While reporters scrambled to actually find Australians who were celebrating the occasion, the new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, lit a beacon and said the two countries were “no longer parent and young upstart”. “We stand as equals. More importantly, we stand as friends.” We can all agree on that.
And on Saturday we honoured the longest reigning monarch in British history by renaming an island. No, it wasn’t some sun-kissed tropical hideaway such as Great Keppel, but Aspen Island, which graces Lake Burley Griffin in the national capital and is home to the Carillon, the modernist-ugly bell tower the Poms gave us to commemorate Canberra’s 50th anniversary. The Queen opened it in 1970, so there was a nice synergy.
But considering Her Majesty’s name already graces an outer metropolitan suburb of Adelaide (which she opened in 1955), hospitals, law courts, lookouts, even a chunk of the Australian Antarctic Territory, renaming a little-known artificial island feels a bit reduced.
At the same time, the previously dead, buried and cremated idea of turning Australia into a republic suddenly disinterred itself from its 1999 grave and shook the dust off itself.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese lit the Commonwealth beacon in Canberra as part of Australia’s low-key celebrations.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The Albanese government appointed an assistant minister for the republic, Matt Thistlewaite, who as he was sworn in joked with Governor General David Hurley “your tenure is safe under us”. Labor immediately flagged that a republic was not on the table for this term, and it had much more important things to deal with, such as a First Nation’s Voice to Parliament. The Queen’s representative is appointed by convention to a five-year term, so Hurley is due to retire in 2024, while the next federal election is not due until 2025.
In fact, Thistlewaite’s position was so low profile that none of Her Majesty’s Parliament House Press Gallery seemed to realise it existed while Labor was in opposition, hence this week’s kerfuffle.