WA Gets Ready to Modernise Royal Succession
Friday 28 February 2014 @ 9.33 a.m. | Legal Research
Western Australia has introduced the Succession to the Crown Bill 2014 into its Legislative Assembly on the 25 February 2014. Effectively, the bill sets out to request the Parliament of the Commonwealth to enact an Act to change the law relating to royal succession and royal marriages.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
On 28 October 2011, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Perth, Western Australia, the heads of government of the sixteen Commonwealth realms that share Elizabeth II as head of state had announced that they would introduce legislation in all sixteen countries to end the system of male preference primogeniture and the disqualification of persons married to Catholic spouses in the succession to the Crown. For the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia to legislate for this, it must first receive the consent of its six states. The Western Australia bill does exactly this.
Background to the British Laws
The new Acts will be an attempt by the British Monarchy to strengthen and modernise monarchical rule. The Act, once approved by all 16 Realms of the British Monarchy, will allow a first-born daughter of the Duke of Cambridge to become Queen, even if she had a younger brother, while Roman Catholics would no longer be banned from marrying heirs to the throne.
Lord Janvrin declared that the move will:
“strengthen one of the fundamental national values – that sense of fairness…It does so in a way that takes account of the change in modern realities without prejudicing some of the other important parts of our constitutional framework.”
This would be a historic movement for women’s right as it would in essence abolish male precedence in the order of succession to the throne. The change comes at another important juncture in the modern monarchy, the 60th anniversary in February of the succession of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne. What remains unchanged in the succession rules is the requirement that the monarch be a Protestant, not a “Papist” as the Act of Settlement provided, and “in communion” with the Church of England.
Western Australia joins New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland and Tasmania in having introduced and assented laws regarding Royal succession in Australia.
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