Home Australia’s Flag Australian Constitution Article Index Audio Resources Contact Us
Your Will Be Done (p4 of 10)
A booklet by Arthur A Chresby
(Research Analyst in Constitutional Law, and formerly Federal Member for Griffith in the House of Representatives.)
(3) WHAT IS THE LEGAL FUNCTION AND DUTY OF A MINISTER OF THE CROWN?
Over the years you have been encouraged to believe, quite incorrectly, that:-
Ministers of the Crown are the government.
Legally they are not.
The party with the greatest support in Parliament has the right to become the government and to appoint its own Ministers to govern the State or Commonwealth.
Legally this is not so.
Ministers of the Crown are responsible to Parliament and, through Parliament, to the People.
Legally this is not so.
The Ministers of the Crown, or government, have been elected with a mandate from the People; a mandate to carry out the entire policy and platform of the party (platforms which the majority of electors have never seen, let alone studied).
Legally this is quite false.
Not one of the above beliefs could withstand constitutional challenge in the Courts. They are wholly and solely political party propaganda without one scintilla of Constitutional and legal truth. They are party political practices developed to suit political parties and have no legal connection with the Commonwealth and State Constitutions. They are falsely called "conventions of the constitution"
Ministers of the Crown ARE NOT and LEGALLY NEVER CAN BE the government, for, as will be shown in later Chapters, the TRUE LEGAL GOVERNMENT is non-elective, residing in perpetuity in the institution of the Monarchy and is exercised, for the Monarchy, by the Governor-General in the Commonwealth, and State Governors in the States. That is precisely, and legally, what the words "Governor-General" and "Governor" mean:
ONE WHO LEGALLY GOVERNS
Ministers of the Crown are not legally nor constitutionally responsible to the Houses of the Parliament nor to the people. They are solely responsible to the Queen through the offices of Governor-General and or State Governors, as the case may be.
Consequently, Ministers of the Crown can have no mandate of any kind from the people, neither can the political party which claims, quite legally wrongly, to appoint them. Any such claims are pure party propaganda with no legal basis whatever.
Irrespective of whether they be Federal or State Ministers of the Crown they have precisely ONE LEGAL FUNCTION and one LEGAL DUTY:-
(a) Their legal function is to administer departments of State on behalf of the Queen and in accordance with parliamentary legislation relating to their specific department.
(b) For this legal function they are paid salaries out of Crown revenue and, like other departmental officers, they are paid servants of the Crown, excepting that other paid public servants are generally secure in their appointment until retirement whilst Ministers are wholly dependent upon the Monarchy (through its Representatives) and can be dismissed at will by that Monarchy.
(c) The legal DUTY of the Ministers of the Crown is that, by virtue of being Ministers, they become AUTOMATICALLY honorary advisors, to the Queen through Her Representatives.
(d) As honorary advisors they AUTOMATICALLY are Members of the Executive Council (State or Federal) which is set up by the Constitutions to give advice to the Queen, or legal government of the Commonwealth or the State.
As already stressed above, Ministers of the Crown are the paid legal servants of the permanent government, and their legal responsibility is directly, and can only be, to that legal government and to no one else.
On the other hand, the permanent legal government or Monarchy IS WHOLLY AND SOLELY LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE, AND TO NO ONE ELSE. But this vital knowledge has, for party political purposes, been carefully kept from the Australian People. This is why the People do not realise, and have no real knowledge of, the full significance of what the institution of the Monarchy legally means in their daily lives. This will be explained in further Chapters.
A Prime Minister, or Premier, or Minister, who claims to speak as the government, without first stating that he "is authorised by Her Majesty's Government"- Commonwealth or State as the case may be- is, whether he realises it or not, making a legally false claim.
Under Commonwealth and State Constitutions ALL MINISTERS of the Crown STAND EQUAL TO EACH OTHER IN LAW, none is subordinate to the other, all are equal before Her Majesty. Thus, in cold hard legal law, no Prime Minister or State Premier has any legal power of control over the other ministers, unless a specific Act of Parliament gives him that control for specific purposes AND ONLY for that purpose.
The correct legal role of a Minister of the Crown is that he can only speak as a Minister of State in relation to his department. He speaks as the paid public head administrator of his department and in no other capacity.
Under the non-legal practices of party politics, Ministers are in consistent breach of their true legal role when they claim to speak for "the government" or as "my government".
This Book is reprinted in memory of the author, Arthur A. Chresby in appreciation for his 53 years of research and study into constitutional law.
Due acknowledgement should be given when quoting from material on this Site
Continued…