Going Gaga for Queen Elizabeth

CANBERRA—Queen Elizabeth II begins this week her 16th official tour of Australia, competing with Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey as the biggest celebrity visitor down under in the past year as her fame outweighs her political relevance in a country where she is officially the head of state.

Arriving late Wednesday in the capital Canberra, where she will meet Prime Minister Julia Gillard—who publicly supports Australia's becoming a republic—the queen will take trips to Brisbane and Melbourne before traveling to Perth to open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
"The queen's visit now is less a factor in politics than it is popular entertainment," Richard Stanton, senior lecturer in political communication at University of Sydney, said. "She is seen today by a generation in the same way Lady Gaga is seen."

Still, it's hard to picture the queen's hand-waving and flower-show excursions inspiring the hysteria that celebrities do. Lady Gaga, for instance, was granted honorary citizenship to Sydney when she flew in for a single concert in July, and Oprah Winfrey's visit last December was celebrated with a giant "O" installed on the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

The queen's visit isn't expected to reignite a debate over cutting the links that make her Australia's head of state—as much as Australia's Republican Movement wishes otherwise. The lobby plans receptions in each of the major cities the 85-year-old queen plans to visit to push for a constitutional change making Australia a republic, with an elected president as head of state.

Support in Australia for the constitutional change is falling despite weakening cultural and economic ties to the U.K. China is now Australia's top trading partner, with the U.K. at No. 10 last year.

Australians overwhelmingly voted against becoming a republic in 1999, and while a poll two years later showed 52% favored the change, since then the trend has been down: to 45% in 2007 and 41% earlier this year, according to a Newspoll survey ahead of the royal wedding of the Queen's grandson Prince William and Kate Middleton.

A representative for the queen was unreachable for comment on the subject, though the queen herself has previously said that she wouldn't oppose Australia's becoming a republic.

And while the ruling Labor party is pro-Republican, it's not exactly firebrand. "I support Australia becoming a republic, but I have said that realistically that will only occur when the current monarch's reign ends," Defense Minister Stephen Smith said in an interview ahead of the queen's visit. "It is a sensible thing for Australia to become a republic, that is an inevitable process. I have never seen or envisaged that occurring in advance of the current monarch's reign ceasing."

The conservative coalition led by Tony Abbott is wholly against the country's becoming a republic. His office said he wouldn't support it even in the event of a change in monarch.

Australia's relationship with Buckingham Palace hasn't always been so easy-going. In 1975 the queen's then-representative in Australia, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, forced a near political coup when in an unprecedented act he used his royal powers to dismiss Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his entire government over a financing crisis. That left a bitter taste and began a significant change in Australian political culture away from the U.K. and the royal family.

"There was a strong perception that the monarchy had played a role and that Sir John was doing the bidding of the royal family," Mr. Stanton said.

Still, the governor general—now Quentin Bryce—remains in place, continuing a system of governance that dates back to the first colony in 1788. She consults with and represents the monarch on matters from the royal image on stamps and coins to ceremonial colors for military units.

This royal trip isn't expected to be a news maker, unlike the tour by then-Princess Elizabeth in 1952; it was while en route to Australia via Kenya she learned her father had died, making her queen. Nor is it likely to match the 1868 visit by her ancestor Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria, who was shot in Sydney by an Irishman named Henry James O'Farrell. He recovered quickly, and a hospital in the city was named in his honor. (On this visit, the queen has chosen to skip Sydney.)

But any royal visit will deliver some ceremony—perhaps an argument for the royalist side in the constitutional debate. "It's nice to have a bit of color instead of the dullness of republicanism," said ardent monarchist John Armfield, a 50-year-old barrister who lives on Sydney's North Shore.

There also may be a couple of constitutional developments during the queen's trip, such as changes to the centuries-old rules governing royal succession. British Prime Minister David Cameron is seeking the consent of 15 Commonwealth nations in Perth to allow the first-born women in the royal line to ascend to the throne ahead of their brothers (Queen Elizabeth's father George VI had only daughters) and for those in the line of succession to be allowed to marry a Catholic without forfeiting their claim.

But such maneuvers won't interest the likes of John Warhust, deputy chairman of the Republican Movement and a professor of political science at Australian National University. "It's bizarre that Australia in this day and age still has a foreign head of state," he said. "There's no doubt that we're up against a brick wall at the moment. The events of this year have us lacking a bit of momentum."
—Geoffrey Rogow in Sydney contributed to this article.