I turned 90 last week, and I thank all the generous gods and a favourable cardiovascular system for the privilege.

What I find as I face the certain outcome of anyone who’s 90 is a concern about what will happen in the future to Australia’s Indigenous people and to its immigrant society, of which I am one. May it grow to be collaborative, sisterly and brotherly, a society in which no one feels rejected. That includes Palestinian kids and Jewish kids – may they never need to ask their parents why the world irrationally hates them? For it is our sweet duty to give children freedom from fear.

Thomas Keneally meets Queen Camilla at Sydney’s Green Square Library in October, 2022. “I admire the present King considerably, and I particularly admire his Queen.”Credit: Getty Images

But if you have an in-house 90-year-old, you know they have a certain tendency to express convictions while they can. And my conviction is this – that my loyalty above all is to the Australian people and the institutions they made, albeit with the occasional appalling misstep. My loyalty is to the human history of Australia which didn’t begin in 1788, but may have been flourishing at Moyjil, a site near Warrnambool, as long ago as 120,000 years.

When we tried to become a republic, people said: Don’t fix it until it’s broken. So I want to tell you that through no one’s fault, certainly not that innocent and constitutionally responsible King’s, it is broke.

I’ve been a so-called subject of the kings and queens of England since childhood. First, of George V, then Edward VIII, then George VI, then Elizabeth II, then Charles. That didn’t kill me, you will rightly say. I am grateful to that institution for the way it consoled British immigrants for the loss of their first nation.

But I must say enough is enough now. I declare on my 90th I am not the subject of the King of England or any other foreign king. I am a citizen in the Commonwealth of Australia, and as long as I........

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