In December, Mr Abbott appeared to have ruled out restoring the honour in an interview with a News Limited newspaper.

But he said that was in response to a specific issue of whether Australia would follow the lead of New Zealand and convert the Companion of the Order of Australia to knighthoods.

"I made a quite specific comment in December. I said that we weren't intending to do what New Zealand has done," he said.

Mr Abbott said he had made the decision in the past few weeks when "pondering" the change at Yarralumla from Dame Quentin to General Cosgrove.

"I don't want to put words in anyone else's mouth," he said.

"But when I broached the subject with them they carefully considered the proposition and both were happy to accept."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-25/pre-eminent-australians-could-be-made-knight-or-dame/5344646

I was told by a few discontented people that the present GG, Quentin Bryce, should have rejected the "honour"... But as a representative of the queen, she does not have any choice... Tony Abbott knew this and chose to bestow his views — which would have spread horror through Aussieland like ebola in Africa had he announced them before the elections — just before the present GG is about to be replace by a truly full-on royalist, who even before getting the job is ACCEPTING THE HONOUR... Is he worth it? who knows... But this is beyond the pale...

So fellow Australian subjects, what is the prime minister thinking? Is he giving the regal rude finger to republicans? Is it just because he’s the boss now, and he can, so there?

The decision to revive knights and dames of the Order of Australia was something even the staunchest of monarchists – John Howard – didn’t dare do, and he was in office for 11 years.

Sure, Tony Abbott was director of Australians for a constitutional monarchy, and he did for a while advance the concept of the Anglosphere as a thing in international relations. He was born in Britain, and he did study at Oxford, and in 2012 he did say that returning to Britain gave him a “sense of belonging”, not only because he was born there but “because our culture was” and his government does say the schools curriculum should pay more attention to western civilisation. But knights and dames?

Yes, these are technically knights and dames of the Order of Australia, which were bestowed until 1986, well after we thought we’d grown up and got rid of imperial gongs when the Whitlam government introduced Australia’s own honours system in 1975.

But the nomenclature is a throwback to a colonial past, it reeks of a system we thought we’d done away with, a system that was never really ours. Surely it says something that Edna Everage is our most famous current dame.

And the rationale behind the move is similarly regressive: the prime minister said the new gongs were needed because the existing ones recognised only “eminent” Australians while the new gongs would recognise “pre-eminent” ones. The method of selection also takes us backwards. The final decisions for other Order of Australia awards is made by the Council for the Order of Australia, on purpose, so they are not the gift of politicians. The new knights and dames of the land will be picked by the prime minister, with the chairman of the Order of Australia council merely consulted.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/tony-abbotts-knights-take-us-back-to-the-dark-ages

-----------------------------

Tony is an idiot and a deceiver... A backward twurp of grand magnitude, but then I knew that. F off Tony. Not Happy, Tony...

Brave innovator Tony Abbott has decided to blaze a trail to the past by restoring imperial baubles to Australia. Sydney bureau chief Ross Jones comments.

How do you spell P-U-K-E? BUNYIP, that’s how. Sir Arthur Sinodinis. Dame Gina Rinehart.

Lord Downer must be squirming in delight.

After mocking Slipper’s revival of Menzian garb to adorn the office of Speaker, Coalition throwbacks have unzipped their forelocks and laid them squarely at the foot of the Crown.

Bob Nobody, AO, is the kind of peer who wears his title behind, the kind of guy who gets in the front seat of a cab. Sarah Whatever, AO, when she is out, is called Sarah.

Sir Bob, on the other hand, gets in the back seat. Dame Sarah is no longer Sarah, she is Dame Sarah and gets the good seats wherever she goes.

This is class warfare from the top.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/back-to-the-future-with-tony-abbott,6313

...

Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart, you'd imagine, would be holding their breath for the announcement that His Grace Tony the Abbott, Duke of Australia, has quietly decided there should be a new title for Lord and Lady Wardens of the Iron and Coal Ports.

The new Bunyip Aristocracy - only four knights or dames a year - seems a trifle limited.

Why, back in 1965 when Sir Robert Menzies, having already received the Order of the Thistle, donned the fabulous gold-embroidered costume and silk-lined cocked hat of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, you could hardly move in the Melbourne Club or one of Abe Saffron's speakeasies in Sydney without bumping into a brace or two of knights, and there were dames a-plenty at the better garden parties of Toorak and Vaucluse.

Alas, there has been a lamentable lack of new Australian sirs and dames - let alone Orders of the Thistle - since Gough Whitlam introduced the Australian honours system in 1975, tossing knighthoods and the like aside.

Malcolm Fraser bravely introduced knights and dames of the Order of Australia in 1976, but only 12 chaps and two dames got the metaphorical sword on the shoulder before the Hawke government gave the whole idea the shove 10 years later.

Since then, the blessed have had to be content with the chance at a mere medal and tiny lapel button declaring them an AC or AO or suchlike, with not a gorgeous robe nor a cocked hat in sight. Now even those high honours are to be devalued, though His Grace tried to reassure them that the new knighthoods and damehoods ''will not affect Companions, Officers or Members of the Orders of Australia''. Haw. Try selling that in the members lounge of the finer clubs!

The four knights and dames announced by His Grace Tony the Abbott will pretty clearly ace them all. ''Ah, you have a nice little badge. Very jolly. Sir Peter's the name.''

Triply galling to the newly downgraded, surely, is that the first dame is Quentin Bryce, vice regal for only a few more hours. Dame Quentin mused only recently that she dreamed of the day an Australian child could imagine becoming Australia's first head of state. Good lord, the dame is a republican!

But then, even Sir Robert Menzies once opined that it would be improper for a serving prime minister to accept a knighthood.

David Flint, surely near apoplexy, must be considering an appeal to the Privy Council.

Mr Hawke did away with appeals to the Privy Council in 1986, too, but a bit of a chat between Sir Peter Cosgrove and His Grace could put that to rights in this new age of the bunyip aristocracy, you'd think.

Yes, "this country's goin' to the dogs" shall be r'placed by "this C'untry is going to the corgis"...

Tony Abbott's abrupt decision to bring back imperial honours has driven a wedge through the body politic from the vice-regal office holders, through the rank and file members of all political parties and through the voting public, writes Clint Howitt.

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON AT YARRALUMLA, Tony Abbott had even more reason than usual for his trademark smirk.

His offer to the outgoing Governor General, Quentin Bryce, and to the incoming Peter Cosgrove, of an obsolete title in Australia’s system of honours is one of the most cynical moves we’ve seen from this increasingly arrogant and reactionary government.

It is arrogant, because Abbott had categorically ruled out a return to Imperial Honours as late as December last year. He has now triumphantly and brazenly reinstated them.

After years of denouncing Julia Gillard for lying about the so-called "carbon tax" (actually a carbon price) and making it the centrepiece of his campaign against her, he has now successfully established himself as a serial liar.

It is arrogant because it was another autocratic ‘leader’s call.’  It came without warning, without public consultation. As such, it was an affront to our democratic tradition.

It is arrogant because a British Honours system is irrelevant to the increasing numbers of Australians who have no British heritage.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-revival-of-imperial-honours--abbotts-machiavellian-wedge,6314

'Quick, look over there!'' came the knowing quip from one wag in response to Tony Abbott's revival of the imperial honours system.

The attitude among Liberals around Parliament House the morning after the announcement was interesting. A mix of bemusement and mild contempt, and support. 

But was the restoration of archaic English titles to be conferred by Buckingham Palace really just a diversion? Was it simply a hastily cobbled together stunt designed to distract attention from the government's deeper troubles with Arthur Sinodinos, the furore over George Brandis's divisive Racial Discrimination Act changes, and the stalled roll-back of Labor's Future of Financial Advice reforms?

Don't believe it.

This was, and is, the real Tony. Tory Tony. The same Tony who loves the Crown and used to be chief spokesman for the monarchist movement.

Asked how this sudden reversal to a dumped system re-introduced by the Fraser government in 1970s and ditched again by Labor in the 1980s, fitted in with the promise of a government of ''no surprises'', Abbott did not hesitate.

''I don't think it is any surprise that I am a supporter of the existing system and that I want to enhance the dignity of our existing system and I want to particularly acknowledge and recognise the place of the Governor-General in our system. So, I don't think it is really any surprise,'' he said.

But, even leaving aside that his ''no surprises'' pledge referred expressly to voters' expectations, a quick check with some of Abbott's closest colleagues revealed they had no forewarning either.

‘Is he worth it?’

Read these earlier YD pieces & decide for yourself dear reader

in search of yani ndun ....

muddy boots .....

Cheers.