Personification of The State
Further information: The CrownToday the sovereign is regarded as the legal personality of the Australian state, which is therefore referred to as Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Australia. For example, if a lawsuit is filed against the Commonwealth government, the respondent is formally described as Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Australia, or simply Regina. Likewise, in a case in which a party sues both the state of Queensland and the federal government, the respondents would formally be called Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Queensland and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Australia.
As such, all state lands are called Crown land, state owned buildings and equipment are called Crown held property, and the copyright for all government publications is called Crown copyright. In this role, the monarch is also the locus of oaths of allegiance; many employees of the Crown are required by law to recite this oath before taking their posts, such as all members of the Commonwealth parliament, all members of the state and territorial parliaments, as well as all magistrates, judges and justices of the peace. This is in reciprocation to the sovereign's Coronation Oath, wherein he or she promises "to govern the Peoples of... Australia... according to their respective laws and customs". Previously, new appointees to Cabinet would also swear an oath that included allegiance to the monarch before taking their post. This oath was never written in law, however, and would only take the form of what the prime minister of the time suggested to the governor-general. In December 2007, Kevin Rudd did not swear allegiance to the sovereign when sworn in by the Governor-General, making him the first prime minister not to do so; however, he (like all other Members of Parliament) did swear allegiance to the Queen, as required by law, when sworn-in by the Governor-General as newly-elected parliamentarians. Similarly, the Oath of Citizenship contained a statement of allegiance to the reigning monarch until 1994, when a pledge of allegiance to Australia and its values was introduced. The High Court found, in 2002, though, that allegiance to the Queen of Australia was the "fundamental criterion of membership" in the Australian body politic, from a constitutional, rather than statutory, point of view.
Read more about this topic: Monarchy Of Australia
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