“The vice-regal operations would greatly benefit from the ‘sunshine of public exposure’… we have every right to know the attitudes and actions made on our behalf by the governor-general herself,” write The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.
“Sam who? Oh, Samantha Mostyn… yes, I’ve seen her on The Drum. Seems like a pleasant person; very bright and on the ball… but that’s about it.”
The PM’s introduction of Ms Moyston as our next governor-general added little to the bare fact of the appointment.
Google later revealed that she was married to a respected Sydney lawyer in Simeon Beckett, and they were the proud parents of a single daughter.
No doubt we’ll get to know the family a little better when she takes over from the virtually invisible former Army general, David Hurley who followed to the letter his riding instructions from PM Scott Morrison: “Don’t make waves”.
Albanese would not have had the temerity – much less the need – to issue such a decree to Ms Mostyn. But then, he doesn’t need to keep secret the appointment of five additional ministries.
I have a particular interest in the Yarralumla announcement, having recently completed the writing of The Hidden Story of Charles Weston – Poet, Artist and Tree Planter and have just signed a publishing agreement with the National Library of Australia.
It tells a very different story of Canberra’s beginnings from that of the American couple, Walter and Marion Burley Griffin.
For it was Weston, rather than the Griffins, who laid the foundation for the creation of the national capital with his planting of some three million trees and shrubs in 1915-1925.
Indeed, when PM Billy Hughes sacked Walter Griffin in 1920 and Weston took formal control, he started virtually from scratch. Even Griffin’s original street plan, which reserved residential development for the north side of the lake had been radically redrawn.
In 1915 Weston had appointed his deputy, John Peace Hobday – who had trained at Windsor Castle – to oversee the development of the Yarralumla property, initially as a hostel for visiting VIPs and later as the official governor-general’s residence. Griffin had planned the G-G residence as a close neighbour to a permanent Parliament House.
Hobday – and his family – returned to the Yarralumla grounds when he became superintendent in the late 1930s. And the current G-G recently permitted us a tour of the various buildings saved and remodelled from that era.
It was a rare privilege and one that, I believe, should be more widely accessible to the Australian public in 2024 than the cloistered attitudes yesteryear.
Indeed, the secret Morrison ministries – to say nothing of the Whitlam sacking – should be warning enough that the vice-regal operations would greatly benefit from the “sunshine of public exposure”. While the governor-general is the monarchy’s representative to Australians, the individual is equally Australians’ conduit to the monarchy. And we have every right to know the attitudes and actions made on our behalf by the G-G herself.
Perhaps the most effective way for her to convey her approach would be through a single address to the National Press Club. Ideally, it would be followed by questions submitted by journalists and selected by the club’s president to avoid the cheap “gotcha” queries beloved by some of the television journos.
Whether self-censored or open slather, the occasion would be no more radical than the recent requirement for public explanation by the governor of the Reserve Bank after each meeting of its board. Moreover, King Charles is hardly likely to object to any measure that would expand the public connection to Buckingham Palace.
And even the most ardent republican would support a measure that stamped an Australian as the de facto head of state.
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