These honourary titles, meaning a peerage is not part of the package...ie, does not include a seat in the upper chamber...and that Knights and Dames are not peers...

And that the Monarchy, Australia being a constitutional Monarchy...

And that the order, Knight (or Dame) is the Order of Australia.....

In other words, what do you have against honouring Australians?

But they do get the hereditary right to sleep with Australian brides on their wedding night.

I have met a few Australian brides, they take care of that perq well before the wedding night...

You know why there are no unicorns in Australia? The spiders got em.

Oh, and, um, some sort of joke about promiscuity.

Nothing, unless it's a title awarded by a prime minister and/or based off having a public position as opposed to merit.

I fancy it's kind of like giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize.

While they don't actually get a peerage, the titles are evocative of that system. They are archaic titles from a bygone era, and we already have a system of honours that replace them.

what do you have against honouring Australians?

Hello first giant-sized strawman I've seen on the new SE.

It's not like there's Australian of the Year or National Living Treasures.

Nice to see America doesn't have a monopoly on retardation.

Let this be a prime example that we should NOT send convicts and prisoners to colonize space.

Space should only be accessible to people who get like 500 on their IQ test... or really really hot women.

There's a couple of great responses here

Wait, Australia is still beholden to the English crown and all that nonsense?

I think most of the English speaking countries are except the US.

The Anglosphere minus the US is otherwise known as the Dominion. I think Canada severed all political ties to the monarchy a few years ago.

Hrm. this website says otherwise. Canada severed something transatlantic a few years ago, but I can't recall what.

There's a few other tidbits in there about the various parcels of land she's got the royal nod on.

A telegraph cable?

Gosh no...that won't fly.

It's not beholden to the English crown. The woman who happens to be Queen of England also is Queen of Australia. She doesn't have much political power, only ceremonial power. She's our head of state, but there's nothing that the English political system can do to force our hand. Her only political role is handled by an Australian representative (governor general), who has the power to dissolve parliament in certain situations.

Mostly she's in the situation where she doesn't try to tell us what to do, and we don't tell her to fuck off. Apathy is a large reason why we haven't split yet - as soon as a pom starts trying to meddle with us politically, the apathetic middle will join the voices for republicanism.

So, in short, beholden to the Australian crown, which just happens to sit on the same head as the English crown. And less of a beholding, more of a tip of the hat.

All very edgy and "fuck-off" attitude, but at the end of the day you've still got a foreigner as your head of state which is a pretty fucked up situation, so I think you may be rationalising the status quo.

We do have a foreigner as head of state, and I'd prefer it otherwise. But it's still important to note that there is no political power in the role. People get confused because the US head of state and head of government are the same person - in most developed countries, this is not the case.

Turn the question on its head: apart from the foreignness of the Queen, exactly what is the problem here. What can she do that would be against our interest, should she so choose to?

Don't worry, I'm just fucking with you. I'm British so I know how the whole thing works - the Queen doesn't have any actual power, but she does have influence. I don't feel any loyalty to the Royalty thing myself, but the system seems to work well enough. There's much less power invested in any one person in a British-style Parliamentary democracy. Unlike a president, a prime-minister can be removed during their term, and they have to take into account the soft-influence of the head of state, who's job is to provide a steadying influence. I'm not saying that it's better than a Presidential system, but I'm certainly not saying it's worse either.

And as the foreigner thing, I'm told that the reason the Australian people voted in referendum to retain the English monarch because they didn't want their own elected politicians to be able to dish out the Head of State role like a party favour. Which is possibly the greatest "Fuck you" to Politicians I have ever heard.

Well, the 'presedential' system in the US is fucked up beyond all recognition. The electoral college system is a terrible way to do democracy. I'd take westminster parliamentary systems any day of the week over the US system.

Re: australians voting for retention of the monarchy, it was a clever political plot by the incumbent monarchist. There's a large swathe of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" feeling, which is why I say that if the queen meddles, it 'becomes broke', therefore in need of fixing. Anyway, what Howard did was make the referendum a two-question one, the second question being a prepending of a stupid stanza to the constitution. It was particularly unliked by the kinds of people who want a republic. Anyway, the pollies in favour of the republic had to run a campaign saying "say yes on both questions", because this is the general public we're talking about, and you can't trust enough of them to remember "yes on this one, no on that one". It was quite a savvy bit of divide and conquer.

I'm sure if the Queen started meddling, the British politics, the constitutional monarchy here would be considered broken too. But perhaps that's what I mean about her not having any actual power, but a lot of influence. When all you have is influence, you have to use it far more circumspectly than you would true power.

So an influential, but technically powerless Head of State isn't a bad thing, although it does depend on the person, and on having somebody who nobody hates too much.

I wonder if those life-term American High Court judges were intended to be the same thing. Have somebody who can't be kicked out, so they don't have to be partisan and sneaky to keep their jobs. Doesn't seem to work out that way though.

Anyway. I wouldn't be unhappy to quit the monarchy thing while we're ahead, and certainly before any of her libidinous children take over. It would be difficult to take Charles seriously.

I was going to put a line in my original statement, that underneath the beer and surfing, the Australians are a pretty conservative people. But then I realised I could say that about any people in the world. Well, minus the beer and surfing, but you know what I mean. So I guess on average the Human Race is just pretty conservative.

Ceremonial power is still power. It just seems very silly to me that the Royal Family is anything more than just a family of rich twats who hang on to their titles out of cultural tradition or something. Is it like that in other European countries? Except France, I suppose.

Functionally, the Royals are a tourist and entertainment resource. In the UK, they also provide monies (the royal estates provide more money to the country than they take out), but for the most part their role is tourism in the UK (by far the most popular tourist attraction in Europe for visitn Americans, for example) and elsewhere it's entertainment, like any other celebrity (foo is visiting the country, go see them!). And like any other celebrity, most people just don't care.

Listen up my international colleagues, the sun never sets on the British Empire. Now, I'm not saying that Australia and the United States of America are multi-century sociological experiments conceived by the Royal Society to examine what sort of culture would be developed by criminals and religious extremists respectively. But ...

Interestingly, the sun (almost) never sets on France. Not the French Empire, but France. Overseas territories of France are considered part of the countries rather than, erm, overseas territories like the British do - so there are bits of France-the-country-not-the-empire in the Pacific. Apparently France spans 11 timezones... almost enough to be unsunset on.

C'est vrai, mais quelle heure est-il à Agincourt?

People always forget the Americas had penal colonies too.