Timing is everything in politics.
This week in Canberra a new junior minister, an obscure Australian Labor Party MP named Matt Thistlethwaite, was sworn in by the Queen’s representative, Governor-General David Hurley. His portfolio: Assistant Minister for the Republic.
A minister of the Crown sworn to bring about the demise of the Crown in Australia.
When Australia’s new strongly left-wing prime minister and admiring friend of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Anthony Albanese, announced his government would include a minister dedicated to making Australia a republic, his timing was calculated and deliberate.
Albanese’s appointment is disrespectful, distasteful and poorly judged
The Labor party which has been fervently republican ever since a previous governor-general, Sir John Kerr, famously dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam on Remembrance Day 1975. Albanese was sending a clear message to the Labor faithful that his government embraces Whitlam’s plea to ‘maintain the rage’ against the monarchy.
It was also intended to seize the domestic media agenda to contrast Albanese’s ‘progressive’ government with its ‘reactionary’ centre-right predecessor, and it succeeded.
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