Call this a geriatric rant if you wish, but at 90, I’ve decided enough is enough

22 hours ago 1

Opinion

October 17, 2025 — 3.30pm

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.”

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 I, 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 respect other Australians, all the others, I remain a citizen in good standing.

We know Australia is very old, and that members of our species have been here at least 65,000 years. These were people as modern as our ancestors were at that time. From the discoveries at Lake Mungo in NSW made by a dear friend of mine, the geologist Jim Bowler – who, by the way, is not responsible for what I say today – I feel a certain reverence and allegiance to Mungo Man and Lady and to ancient Australia generally. But I consciously and with full intent withhold my loyalty from the House of Windsor. I do not acknowledge the King of England as my head of state, even though his true kingdom, Britain, will remain close to Australia’s heart.

I urge other Australians of like mind to do the same thing on their big date, to make their constitutional situation clear to government. I wish the King and his genial wife every happiness, and a long life and a triumphant career. I wish I could send the monarch the stone engraving of “VR” (that is, Victoria Regina) in the courthouse in remote Wilcannia. We now know, through the Mabo decision of the High Court in 1992, that it wasn’t VR’s land really, though she had no sense of that. It was the country of the Baakandji people of the Darling River anyhow.

Who had never ceded sovereignty.

There are some delusions that people have over our sovereignty, and the way it resides in the British Crown. Australia, when young, needed Britain’s foreign policy and naval might to protect it. That was when the Constitution was created, placing the monarchy at the core of our loyalties and affections, as a more than willing sweetener for continued military and naval protection. In that period, D.H. Lawrence famously wrote, Australia “looks like a land no man has ever loved”. Aboriginal and Torres Islander people did not count in his worldview in the early 1920s, when Lawrence published that sentiment.

Mutthi Mutthi elder Dave Edwards was present when Mungo Man’s remains, along with more than 100 other ancient ancestors, were taken back to Country in 2017.

Mungo Man and Mungo Lady lived on the Willandra Lakes 42,000 years ago when the ancestors of Australian immigrants were still enduring the Ice Age in Europe. That’s 42 thousand years ago! That’s over 20 times older than Abraham, 30 times older than the biblical Moses.

Britain, by now, is another country with its own primary interests and its own foreign policy and trade. At the same time, Mungo Man speaks to us of oneness with this earth, this continent and the magical place it has been – not as someone’s colony but in and of itself.

I do not recognise that I owe any allegiance to amiable King Charles, who always says the issue is up to us. The monarch has inherited the role as our head of state and tells us its future is up to us. “Isn’t he a nice man?” someone will ask. Yes, he is, decidedly, and a conscientious man, too. There are very many nice British men in the world. Does that mean that I have to swear allegiance to them or recognise them as my sovereign? I admire the present King considerably, and I particularly admire his Queen. But I bet they know that it is an absurdity to believe that they who represent Britain, and do so amiably, don’t also understand that countries simply grow up and make their own systems. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But it is broke. It is contradictory of who we are.

We have a cricket crisis: the noble Pat Cummins is in doubt as our captain for the opening of the Ashes. Why not call on the English captain to be ours as well? At the level of the state, that’s what we ask Carolus Rex – Charles, our King – to do. An impossible job, of course. Because, we have a head of state who cannot speak for our government or our nation in any realistic form on God’s great earth. For the monarchy is required to represent and speak for the government in Westminster, even if its policy is directly against Australia’s interest. And so we have a head of state who is not the head of state, really, not in a fundamental and deep sense that Charles is the King of England.

There’s an Australian myth that you must hate the royals to be a republican. Do you need to hate your parents before you leave home? Is finding one’s own space a betrayal of the house you grew up in? No, you can carry familial love with you as you travel off. It is not necessary to renounce the parents you leave behind.

I’m far from alone among Australians in believing we no longer owe allegiance to the monarchy. So, is it fair to the monarchy to go on pretending to a loyalty we no longer feel, forcing the King to take on this unnatural posture. This is the mind-bending issue by which we live 15,000 kilometres from our head of state, who can’t speak for our state anyhow, without letting down his true government, that of Great Britain, and of Britain’s own parliament.

I would be as scared as anyone about installing someone with the powers of an American president. Let’s just say, that is NOT the sort of presidency I would propose. I am not talking, either, of some inappropriate racist twitch against the English immigrants who have come to this country, done great service to it, and caused it to achieve glory. But we would no longer belong to the Commonwealth, the arguers say. Yes we would, as fully as we wanted, since a majority in the Commonwealth, 36 nations, are republics.

But I claim the problem is in no way the British or their monarchy. I have met the current Queen of England and she is clearly a friendly person with a genuine interest in writing and books. I am sorry she suffered such worry over her spouse’s health. As I say, the King of England has always said that a Republic is up to us Australians. He has said so frequently and his word is trustworthy.

But I do hereby renounce all pretence of my own allegiance to the monarchy. Australia at its best is not a matter of dynasties but a matter of eons! I can no longer be seen to live with the delusion inherent in having the British monarch as our head of state. Yes, he is charming and he is benign, but that’s not the point. The point is that our head of state should be an Australian – a la Pat Cummins. Let us applaud the King and Queen of Great Britain but play under our own captain. The British themselves would not accept an Australian as a head of state, and it is time we declared at that level who we are, at last.

I ask you finally, if this material in any way offends you, the reader, write it off as a geriatric rant.

Thomas Keneally is an Australian novelist, playwright and essayist.