tl;dr: - CEC - "change is good" peddlers in Australia. - CEC says "Our government is doing bad stuff, we have problems, therefore we must change our constitution by removing our titular queen/'crown' to fix the problem of the scumbags in power," which is of course bollocks. - How can any constitution protect against apathetic acquiescing citizens. - Is it possible that any "new" constitution (or constitutional change) "put to us" might be formulated by opportunistic scumbags currently in power, in order to grab more power to themselves? :) Z ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Zenaan Harkness Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2015 08:52:28 +0000 Subject: Look out!!! - was Re: Australia must become a sovereign republic The CEC perpetrates serious misunderstandings in this email, and DANGEROUS proposed actions! The CEC's otherwise un-challenged assumptions must be rebutted, and hopefully understood. Read on if you have time... On 9/10/15, CEC Media Release <cec@cecaust.com.au> wrote:

Visit this link http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2015_09_10_Aus_Sovereign_Republic.html to recommend this to your friends

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia Media Release Thursday, 10 September 2015 Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058 Phone: 1800 636 432 Email: cec@cecaust.com.au Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

Australia must become a sovereign republic

The only way to do that would be to have a referendum changing the foundations of our federal constitution - this is a VERY DANGEROUS thing to do! Gerrit Schorel-Hlavka, Andrew Moyle, Malcolm McClure, Mark McMurtrie and many others have shown that our CURRENT CONSTITUTION is plenty enough for those individuals who know which bits are important and are willing to stand in court (from personal experience, that's a bloody hard thing to do). We have powerful foundations in our federal constitution of Australia, and any referendum at this point will almost certainly TAKE POWER AWAY from the people, power THAT WE ALREADY HAVE if we would only use it. The problem is that the people of Australia DO NOT KNOW the power they hold thanks to our current constitution, and "change at any cost" will result in a WORSE SITUATION for all of us (except temporarily for those who currently hold political power, i.e. politicians, and they should know better since in time new politicians will replace them).

Queen Elizabeth is not a powerless, benign figurehead. She is now the longest-reigning head of Britain’s oligarchical power structure which sits above the institutions of democracy.

She sits sort of above (in some very good ways mind you, at least with respect to her duty to uphold Christian and other common law foundations), but also in some ways she sits NEXT to our institutions of power. And re Australia, she is more titular (sovereign in title) than in the UK.

Her role ensures that democratic power can never touch the network of wealthy families, private banks, corporate boardrooms, elite schools, permanent civil servants and secretive security agencies, reinforced by the system of royal honours, where real power resides in Britain, Australia, and every other state where the Queen is Monarch.

Absolute BOLLOCKS! The tendency for those who don't know any better (such as myself 20 years ago at the first "make us a republic" referendum) is to: 1) Throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. 2) Assume that a referendum will improve things - any change will be better (yeah right!). 3) Assume that good people, who know how to improve things, are the ones who write the proposed options or "referendum questions" at any referendum. These assumptions are FALSE, and BLOODY DANGEROUS - since it is those who currently have some political power, who want MORE power, and want to get that additional power by TAKING it from we the people! Is it you who writes the proposed new foundations to be put to referendum? Is it me? NO - it is not us, therefore why the hell should we think that what is presented is going to be in our interest at all? If the government REALLY wanted to improve things for us - that's almost trivial to do - slash politician wages and pensions, eliminate revenue raising by Police, stop making victimless crimes punishable with jail, and plenty other common sense things, like don't bomb the crap out of countries at the other side of the world of people who think differently to us! It's not that firetruckin difficult!

The only way to bring this power-structure under democratic control is to replace the Queen with a democratic head of state,

Bollocks! The Queen is essentially titular anyway! And: A) She (the "Crown") granted us our respectful and united request for nationhood, with her blessing! B) The naming of our titular sovereign in our federal constitution's Preamble "under the Crown" is an AWESOME thing - this invokes the PROTECTIONS of the crown - Bill of Rights 1688, The Great Charter, ie. the Magna Carta 1215 and 1297. USE THESE AND REJOICE! C) Besides our foundational BILL OF RIGHTS and the great MAGNA CARTA, many other IMPERIAL ACTS are at our disposal - some of these are awesome! Right to Trial by Jury? check! Right to be brought before the Supreme Court and not be held indefinitely "on remand"? Writ of Mandamus, check!! D) Besides these and more wonderful things, the Crown is bound, and similarly we have bound ourselves, in our federal constitution, to the Blessing of Almighty God! This Blessing is better than the rest of the protections of the Crown combined - to learn why this is true is an excellent journey in understanding, and highly recommended! "So why are things so bad?" I hear you ask ... well, there are a bunch of power-hungry, greedy, selfish, self-centered humans who lust for positions in parliament, and so 'we' leave it to them since most of us want to get on with a life, family, creativity, wealth and stability. "Leaving it to them" is a major problem with we Aussies! Also most "of us Aussies" do not know the awesome foundations in our federal constitution - The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900/1901/whatever - tear it down AT YOUR PERIL, fellow Australians!!!

accountable to the people.

The Crown has a duty of care to the people, and that duty of care HAS BEEN MET in the VERY FOUNDATIONS of our federal constitution! Learn these foundations and enjoy the fruits! We ought be thankful to the Crown, for providing to every one of us Australians such an awesome foundation! It was hard won for sure - some tough negotiating back and forth between our Aussie delegates (our founding fathers), and the Crown, and the British Parliament - but we got there, we got our nation and we kept the protections of the Crown, and we got the protections of the Blessing of Almighty God. Just because we might have a bunch of crooks who've taken power in our parliament today, does not mean we have a fundamentally broken system! We have a fundamentally good system, with some bad (selfish and compromised) people! As Malcolm has said many times - better to have bad people in a good system, than good people in a bad system - the bad system will deteriorate MUCH QUICKER! Our current constitutional monarchy system has withstood over 100 years of internal attacks and opportunists.

It is past time Australia did this, and finally became an independent sovereign nation.

Warning, this is what those in power want. Every few years they try again to turn us into a republic! So what should we want? The Crown HAS satisfied its duty of care to the people - this might sound strange, but in fact it is true. What is also true is that our state (i.e. our state and federal parliaments) have a duty of care to us as well - and on this front there are many failures. Finally and MOST IMPORTANTLY, it is also true that WE, the people, have a duty of care to our state (i.e. our state and federal, and also local for that matter, parliaments) - we the people have THOROUGHLY FAILED in our duty of care to our own state/ our system of government, our constitutional monarchy and the protection of our federal constitution! Absorb that, and know why we have problems. No matter what "system" we have, if we, the people, fail to satisfy our duty of care to our own bloody state, then we deserve the problems we get and no constitution in the world will ever do it for us! Sure, blame the government, blame the Crown and blame our constitution - but in the case of us here in Australia, blaming anything outside of ourselves won't help a bit, and a new constitution will not only NOT solve the problem, it almost certainly will create a WORSE PROBLEM, and the protections of the Crown, and the Blessing of Almighty God, are protections we should NEVER GIVE UP. NOTE CAREFULLY - even the SMALLEST CHANGE to the Preamble of our federal constitution, will allow the LAWYERS and POLITICIANS and JUDGES to reinterpret all the rest of our constitution, name us a republic and/ or a secular state and remove the protections of the BLESSING OF ALMIGHTY GOD. Let me repeat, whether you are religious or not, never give up the protections of the Blessing of Almighty God, as invoked by our founding fathers in our federal constitution. Give up these protections at your peril.

Here are the facts about the Queen’s power. In “The Real British Empire”, published in the CEC’s October-November 2011 New Citizen newspaper, the CEC reported a partial list of the Queen’s actual powers, sourced from Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage. Among her so-called Royal Prerogative powers, the Queen: * alone declares war at her pleasure;

And corrupt Australian politicians play lap dog to USA and Britain (/the Queen/ whatever)!

* is commander-in-chief, and may choose and appoint all commanders and officers by land, sea, and air;

Just as the president of the USA is commander-in-chief of the combined military forces of the USA. Just as there is some possibly analogous situation in Australia which no-one knows for sure but if we read our constitution we'd probably find out about.

* may convoke, adjourn, remove, and dissolve Parliament;

British parliament. And perhaps via the governor general, the parliament of Australia. I don't know the details here. But do note, when (if) we the people finally learn to express our will of the people, for example oh that's right, establishing our nationhood as states federating in a commonwealth under the Crown and by the Blessing of Almighty God, then the Queen/Crown has been known to assent to said will of the people. But bloody hell mate, we have to speak up. And we need to speak in relative unity. If we can't unite in any demand of our politicians, for example to slash politician wages, how the hell do we think we'll ever get a better deal at a referendum scripted and orchestrated by those same politicians? Dream on...

* may dismiss the prime minister and choose his or her replacement;

That sounds specific to UK, but whatever.

* alone may conclude treaties.

Certainly here in Australia we sign to treaties by our own parliament's sovereign right and authority.

In practice, the British Prime Minister exercises these powers in the UK; in Australia they are exercised by the Governor-General under the advice of the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, they are her powers, and the British PM consults with her closely, in weekly face-to-face meetings and daily communications conveyed in her red boxes; Australia’s PM consults almost as closely with the Governor-General.

Unlike the US president, for comparison, her powers are not defined, and therefore limited, by a written constitution—the British “constitution” is an unwritten system of feudalistic conventions and precedents. Australia does have a written constitution, but the Queen’s powers are largely undefined and untouched, which is acknowledged in the “reserve powers” clause in the list of powers of her Governor-General. (One power of the Queen that is defined in the Australian constitution is her power to overrule any law passed by the Australian parliament within 12 months of its passage.) Australian constitutional law expert Ann Twomey called this disguised but very real power of the Queen in Australia’s system the chameleon Crown, which “takes great care to protect itself by blending into its background so carefully that its presence is barely perceptible”. (The Chameleon Crown: The Queen and Her Australian Governors, by Ann Twomey).

The Chameleon Crown - ok, haven't heard that one before. That can also be described as "historically significantly neutered Crown". A rose is a rose...

Take probably the most awesome of her powers, the power to declare war. This is not a power of the US president, who is ostensibly the most powerful person in the world. The British PM can declare war without consulting parliament, as Tony Blair did on Iraq in 2003, because the PM uses the Queen’s power to do so. The Australian PM can similarly declare war without the democratic accountability of consulting parliament, under our British-crafted system.

The current UK Labour Party leadership campaign has produced a revealing insight into just how undemocratic the British Crown system is. London’s 31 August 2015 Telegraph newspaper launched an hysterical attack on front-runner Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting that the elected parliament should have a veto over the Crown’s Royal Prerogative powers. Corbyn reportedly said, “The Royal Prerogative should be subject to Parliamentary vote and veto if necessary. The Queen hands her powers to the Prime Minister and he can then exercise them. It’s a very convenient way of bypassing Parliament. Also, orders in council are a very convenient way of bypassing Parliament.”

Whereas most Britons, and Australians, would assume that parliament already does have the final say, the hysterical reaction to Corbyn’s modest proposal proved emphatically otherwise, and indeed, just how much the Queen’s position is dependent on not being accountable to the elected parliament. The Telegraph quoted historian (and Tony Blair’s biographer) Sir Anthony Seldon telling LBC radio: “It’s hard to know what would be left of the monarchy. The fact that Jeremy

Corbyn is saying that, would be seen as an assault on the monarchy. It would be crossing the Rubicon. He would be the first Labour leader who started talking about a reduction in the role of the monarchy. It would be very serious.”

What is more serious is that an unelected hereditary monarch has that much power over elected institutions. That power is enshrined

Historically, "benevolent dictatorships" are also one of the most stable forms of societal structure - yes it requires ongoing benevolence of the monarch/dictator though, of course, yet exactly the same thing must be said of our "democratic" parliament - our Australian federal parliament is pretty non-benevolent these days, with incredibly feathered nests, declarations of war around the world, pervasive spying on its own population, and an endless litany of enforced victimless crimes...

in the system of hereditary monarchy, which the Crown will kill, and has killed, to protect. Princess Diana was the last great threat to the House of Windsor’s control of the British Crown, her openness leading to scandalous insights into how the Monarchy really functioned. Australian-based investigator John Morgan concluded, from his forensic investigation of her death, that the Queen, whose first duty is to the continuation of the Monarchy, ordered her assassination and the subsequent cover-up. (Visit this link http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2015_02_19_Royal_Scandal.html)

In a true republic, sovereignty comes from the people. Abraham Lincoln expressed this principle most profoundly at the end of his 1863 Gettysburg Address, when he called on his fellow citizens to ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.

Oh right, America/ USA is a wonderful example of democracy today! </sarcasm>

It is time that Australians see through the carefully stage-managed PR campaign around the Queen, and resolve to become, finally, an independent sovereign nation. The CEC has been committed to that cause since its inception—join us.

Authorised: Robert Barwick‚ 595 Sydney Rd‚ Coburg‚ Vic 3058

No. Firetrucking. Way. I didn't realise the CEC had sold out common sense. Watch out people - the road to hell is paved with good intentions, like diluting our local tribe with an endless parade of sympathy-snatching refugees from illegal wars perpetrated by our own government no less. I hope we Aussies can wake up. I really really hope so. Good luck Australia, Zenaan