Mr RUDD (4:40 PM) —That was one of the more curious presentations I have heard in the parliament on a matter of private members business. If you look at the core of it, it basically says that no matter can be raised in this parliament if it is somehow capable of being advanced through one of the committees which form part of the committee structure of the parliament. What I found doubly remarkable about the honourable member's contribution was this: in 10 minutes not one single reference was made to the core proposition, which is whether we should Australianise our oath of allegiance. That is the core business in this proposed motion. It is directly relevant to paragraph 2, subparagraph (c).

When you look at the substance of what is before us, it goes to this point. The honourable member has said that we cannot advance this here because all the matters which are covered within the motion by the honourable member for Watson are already being addressed within the Procedure Committee. There is one huge hole in that argument: not one of the terms of reference actually addressed the content of the oath of allegiance. If the honourable member listens carefully to what he read out in terms of what is currently before his committee, it does not in the faintest respect go to the content of the oath of allegiance and whether it is important in 21st century Australia to give effect to an Australian oath of allegiance to the people of Australia,to the laws of Australiaor whether we continue with current and antiquated processes.

It is worth having a look at that which gives rise to the oath of allegiance, and that is the oath of governance to which the Queen gives assent upon her coronation, and presumably the oath of governance to which King Charles will give assent when he assumes the throne. It goes like this:

This is Elizabeth's oath of governance to the Australian people, which was witnessed by Robert Menzies—the elected Prime Minister of Australia—at her coronation on 2 June 1953, together with many other Australians. He also participated in a second ritual, entitled `the Recognition of Elizabeth as Queen', when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked the following four times, presenting Elizabeth four times to the peoples:

I would submit that, whatever the prosaic content of that particular ceremony as it was conducted in 1953, it is not entirely relevant to the Commonwealth of Australia in the year 2001. Section 42 of the Constitution gives effect to the oath of affirmation which is required of members of this place. It proceeds directly from the oath of governance sworn by the Queen in 1953. It states:

The note to the schedule states that `the name of the King or Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the time being is to be substituted from time to time'. There is a slight problem in the fact that we no longer have a king or queen of Ireland.

The point in this is that the oaths which are used by ministers when they take their oath of office as members of the Executive Council do not require a reference to the Queen. Nor—as referred to by my colleague the member for Watson, most recently in his remarks on this motion—do the oaths which are used in the Australian Citizenship Act contain any reference to the Queen. They were amended in 1994; when subsequently government changed in 1996, we saw no subsequent attempt by the government to reinsert the Queen into that proposal. The proposal alive in this motion is a modest one. It seeks to establish a specific purpose committee, a select committee, to look at this core proposition, in part as to what should be an appropriate oath for modern Australia. Should not we, as members of this place, swear our allegiance to Australia, just as the citizens of this country swear allegiance to Australia, just as the ministers of the Crown of this government also swear their allegiance to Australia? It is time to modernise our oath of allegiance. (Time expired)