History of Monarchy in Australia - Queen of Australia

Queen of Australia

Elizabeth II is the first monarch to be styled sovereign of Australia. In 1953 the Australian Parliament passed two bills. The first was the Royal Style and Titles Act 1953. This added the word "Australia" to the Queen's titles. In 1973 a further Act removed "Defender of the Faith" from her Australian title. In 1958 Elizabeth amended the letters patent of Queen Victoria which constituted the office of Governor-General.

Until then Australian constitutional documents were signed by the monarch and counter-signed by a British minister of state. But now such documents were to be counter-signed by the Prime Minister of Australia. Further, they were to be sealed with the Royal Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Australia. Queen Victoria's letters patent had ordered a Great Seal for Australia in 1900, but it was never made. On 19 October 1955 Elizabeth, advised by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, issued a warrant for the Seal.

The Royal Powers Act 1953 further secured the Sovereign's new status as Queen of Australia by conferring on her powers that the Constitution did not give her. The Queen could now preside at Federal Executive Councils in person and open the Commonwealth Parliament. Elizabeth II has performed both actions three times each.

On 30 May 1973 the prerogative of appointing Australian ambassadors to nations outside the Commonwealth was transferred to the Governor-General. Likewise the viceroy assumed authority to appoint high commissioners to Commonwealth countries. The line of communication between Sovereign and viceroy became the Australian High Commission in London, in place of the British High Commission in Canberra. When mention of the United Kingdom was removed from the Queen's titles in Australia in the same year, the government of the state of Queensland, concerned that this action was a first step towards declaring Australia to be a republic, sought to declare her "Queen of Australia, Queensland and her Other Realms and Territories", in order to ensure that the Monarchy would at least be entrenched in Queensland.

The action was blocked by the High Court of Australia in the so-called Queen of Queensland case in 1974. However, it highlighted the fact that the relation of the Australian states to the Crown was then independent of the relation of the Commonwealth to the Crown, and this paradox led to the Hannah and the Wran affairs which eventually led to the Australia Act of 1986.