Never mind reconciliation or recognition, how about meaningful position, genuine status, and real influence?

I have written about the need to make the Australian monarchy truly Australian. Well, what better way than to agree that the Australian monarch should be an indigenous Australian? This takes the already powerful symbol of The Crown and invests it with new, rich, and significant meaning. In one blow, we acknowledge our debt to an English system of governance while redressing the nonsense of the 'terra nullius' argument used to foist it upon the continent.

We would, symbolically at least, be handing the country back to its original inhabitants and expressing our collective desire to join them, not conquer them. The authority of our governments would now rest, not only upon centuries of English law, but upon tens of thousands of years of Aboriginal settlement.

The enlightened amongst my readers may be troubled by the idea of a monarchy restricted by race. What? And you weren't worried by an idea of a monarchy restricted by family?

I acknowledge there is one serious problem with restricting the monarchy to those of a single race. The fact that 'race' is a wholly indefensible concept which cannot be scientifically defined or proven might, on the face of it, seem to pose a difficulty. But of course, it doesn't. We - we humans, but particularly we Australians - have never had a problem identifying race. And, to give us our due, we've never had a problem accepting that it isn't real. After all, our current definition of an indiginous Australian is 'someone who is accepted as indigenous by the indigenous community'. Wow! Spot the logical flaw, if you can! 

So I propose we do what Australians are very good at doing: ignore problems if we can't do anything about them. Because if we ignore it, it really isn't a problem. 

Ooooh! But consider the terrible consequence of appointing someone who is then challenged to 'prove' their aboriginality! The whole system of government could be thrown into chaos!

Unless, and hear me out on this, we don't legislate that the monarch must be aboriginal; we chose to make it a convention.

That's right. We don't force ourselves to always choose an indigenous monarch, we just do. Repecting the conventions and traditions of parliament is one of the best things about the English system. It's why it works so well. When time came to appoint a new monarch, the government of the day would nominate an appropriate person - indigenous, by convention - and the current monarch would accept the nomination.

And best of all... Nothing changes.

All our traditions, all our structures, all existing laws... it all stays the same. We've got residences for the monarch in our Governor-General's house. We're keeping The Crown; so our laws don't need to change. The process of selecting the monarch is the same as the current process for selecting the Governor-General. We can continue to appoint State Governors (who can fill in as monarch in case of emergency or accident). Nothing changes. We just mooch along. Monarchists are happy because we've still got a monarchy. Republicans are happy because we'll have an Australian head of state. We can all finally be happy that we can happily accept that Aboriginal occupation of the continent is properly acknowledged and respected.