Our media has been full of praise for King Charles and his handling of President Trump on the recent state visit. His mention of AUKUS has been hailed as a great moment for Australia.

On the contrary, the King’s visit merely underlined our strange constitutional arrangements, essentially a Clayton’s monarchy [or, as the advertisements said, “the drink you have when you’re not having a drink”].

Queen Victoria could not have said it better. Addressing the US Congress, King Charles referred to Australia as “a country of which I am also immensely proud to serve as Sovereign.”

None of the other fourteen countries which, along with the United Kingdom, retain Charles as head of state were mentioned, not, I suspect, a matter of great concern for the citizens of Canada, Papua New Guinea or Jamaica.

Charles was in Washington as an emissary of the British government, and his trip was reported with bated breath as an attempt to restore the ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. What it underlined for me was that we are a country without an effective head of state, although the........

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