The role of the Governer-General

 

Hello everyone since the last couple of Wednesday post have been about our Prime Minister and his Deputy, I thought this week we would look at the Governor-General.

The office of Governor-General was established on 1 January 1901 and has been held by 27 people since. All but one have been men, with our only female Governor-General being Quentin Bryce who was sworn in as our 25 Governor-General on 5 September 2008. As the first woman to take up the office she was seen as a pioneer in contemporary Australian society, yet one who had more than forty years of experience in reform, community building and leadership.

The Governor-General is the representative of the monarch of Australia who is King Charles 3^rd and preforms many constitutional, ceremonial and community roles in our political system. Their powers I include summoning, proroguing, and dissolving Parliament, recommending appropriations, assenting to Bills, issuing writs for general elections and appointing and dismissing Ministers. They also submit proposals for referendums, make proclamations and regulations and establishing departments of state and making statutory appointments.

Sounds like a lot but really most of these things are not done daily.

The first Governor-General was the Earl of Hopetoun who had been a governor of Victoria at some point, he was paid the sum of 10,000 pounds an amount that would not increase till 1974. Our current Governor-General is paid $495,000.

Our current Governor-General is David Hurly who was born in Wollongong, New South Wales in 1953 his father was a steelworker and his mother worked in a grocery store.

One thing I remember a Governor-General doing was when Sir John Kerr sacked our Prime Minster Gough Whitlam on the 11 November 1975, I was in year six of school and someone heard about it on the radio and all the teachers were talking about it.