In the wake of the prosecution of David McBride something has emerged about our Constitution that should give every Australian cause for serious concern, this being that the oath taken by both our armed forces and our parliamentarians is one which obliges them solely to be loyal to a foreign monarch, not to the Australian people.

During pre-trial hearings the Crown prosecutor successfully argued that in taking the oath of enlistment a solider becomes obliged to serve only the Crown and not the public interest. And because the oath for the armed forces is identical in its essentials to the oath parliamentarians are obliged to take under the Australian Constitution, the court’s acceptance of the Crown prosecutor’s interpretation of the oath of enlistment has uncovered something about the basis of Australia’s Constitution that makes it untenable. Untenable, that is, if we want to continue in the assumption that we live in a democracy where executive governments are responsible first and foremost to those who elect them and are accountable to the parliament.

More shocking than a mere statement that an Australian soldier’s sole loyalty is to a foreign monarch is the fact that the court appears to have thus far accepted an interpretation that implies it is lawful for anyone swearing such an oath not just to fail to serve the public interest but to actively work against it. In the soldier’s case the logical extension of the oath thus interpreted is that, if ordered to do so by the Crown, a soldier must without any further consideration turn his or her weapons on the people. And the same goes for parliamentarians; if the Crown so orders, they too – apparently without consequence in justice – can fashion any laws they make so that they are contrary to the public interest. Indeed Australian parliaments have done so quite frequently over the last 20 years by........

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