Modernised Monarchy wanted

Press, 1 February 1988, Page 8

Modernised Monarchy wanted

NZPA-AAP London There was a strong case for the end of the law of male succession for the British Monarchy and the law that the King and Queen must always be Protestant and never Roman Catholic, the “Sunday Times” newspaper said yesterday. In an editorial titled “Modernise the Monarchy” the paper said the present laws were examples of sexual and religious discrimination.

The “Sunday Times” said the Monarchy occupied a special place in British society and Britons had elected to

treat the Royal family differently. “But where the oddities of the monarchy offend the susceptibilities of an increasing number of people — as the restrictions based on gender and religion surely will — then it is in the interests of the monarchy itself to move to reflect the contemporary mores,” it said. “An independent nation (Australia) on the other side of the globe made up of immigrants from all over the world, for example, might think it strange in the 21st century to have a British monarch as its head of state.

“More important, the British themselves might start to see some of the monarch’s historical anachronisms as increasingly unacceptable,” the “Sunday Times” said.

The editorial backs on to a full-page article by an Australian lawyer, Malcolm Turnbull, wellknown in Britain for his defence of the “Spycatcher” author, Peter Wright.

“Our adherence to the British crown is a preposterous preference for one of our mother countries over all the others,” he writes. Mr Turnbull calls for the forming of an Australian republic at the end

of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. “She is a relic (I mean no disrespect) of the days when Britain was in every sense the centre of our world and, now that it is not, she should not be our Queen,” he wrote.

“If her son wants to do something of significance in Australia’s history, he should make it plain that, whatever the Australians may think, he will not be our King.” Mr Turnbull said that Australia’s location and economic development had • made Australians realise that their only reliable allies were fellow Australians.