The Dominions are so far from the UK. So honouring people locally makes some sense, especially as part of a strategy of gradually breaking away. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp shows the badge worn by Queen Elizabeth when she hands out the Order of Australia. So much for the award being a part of the breaking away. However this stamp was issued as a the traditional Queen’s birthday stamp in a year with a lefty government so there probably a subtle message there.
Todays stamp is issue A353, a 33 cent stamp issued by Australia on April 22nd, 1985. It was a single stamp issue. The same stamp was re-issued in 2013 with a new date but the same now low denomination, I suspect backdoor sneering by a new lefty government. Mine is the original. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.
In the early 1970s, Australia had a new left Labour government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. He had won office by trying to expand Labour’s constituency from its traditional support among the trade union movement to the more centrist suburban voter. He won a slight majority but it left Whitlam with opposition on the left as well as the right. One of his tasks was the establishment of the Order Of Australia. He modeled it on the Order of Canada, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/04/01/canada-creates-an-order-of-canada-to-further-seperate-from-the-british-queen-but-has-her-hand-it-out/ . As with that, the Queen quickly acquiesced to the new award but then made sure the annual Honours list passed through her Governor General and so was handed out under her auspices. The Governor General at the time John Kerr soon proved controversial.
John Kerr, appointed at the advise of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, had a similar background. He was a young Labour activist who worked in a shipyard before going to law School and becoming a QC, a senior barrister. As he aged he too saw Labour needed to expand and his politics gradually moved right. The opposition had enough power in the Senate to block spending bills and began doing so in 1975. They hoped to force an early election while the Whitlam’s government was beset by scandals. Instead Whitlam proposed to dismiss a few Senators and have new elections only in those constituencies. To do this he had to propose this ceremonially to John Kerr, as the Queen’s representative in Australia. This was thought to be a rubber stamp but Kerr thought this wrong. After consulting the Chief Justice to confirm he had the power, Kerr dissolved Whitlam’s Labour government and appointed the Liberal party leader as a caretaker Prime Minister until there could be full elections. The Liberal Party then won in a landslide.
Labour activists saw this as a coup and hounded John Kerr relentlessly. He resigned early as Governor General and moved to London. There he spent most days at Gentlemen’s clubs looking ever the worse for wear. He died in 1981 of a brain tumor but his death wasn’t announced until after he was buried to allow for an undisturbed funeral.
Later left wing governments have tried to make the award more Australian. For example they have discontinued naming people Knight or Dame. They also have expanded the criteria to include not just those who served Australia but mankind generally. It is a staple of Australian comedy to mock counterjumper’s efforts to receive the Order of Australia. That in itself though sounds quite British.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the Queen on her many birthdays. She is now quite old and her official birthday and actual birthday are separate, so she gets two a year. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting