Editorial

Australia's Governor-General must resign
Australia's Governor-General has said he will not resign, but resign he must, and without delay.

Rev. Dr Peter Hollingworth is facing an unprecedented barrage of pressure for him to resign as Australia's head of state, following this week's two new rounds of stunning revelations. It is clear now to the Australian public that while he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, he helped cover up the crimes of pedophile priests and actually allowed them to continue working in parish duties where they came in regular contact with altar boys and parishioners' children.

Hollingworth faced a similar situation early last year when it was also patently clear that his attitude to the abhorrent crime of child sexual abuse was one of passive acceptance. Indeed, on television he went as far as to suggest that a 14-year-old girl who had been serially raped by a cleric had been in some way responsible for the outrage. As an ABC journalist succinctly put it, Hollingworth forgot the first law of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. After her abuse and control by the priest, the girl pleaded with Archbishop Hollingworth for the priest not to be allowed to preach, but the good reverend doctor had, incredibly, dismissed her pleas. What sort of man could do that? Certainly not one who should be allowed to hold such high office. He scarcely deserves a job as janitor at the G-G's mansion - not until he shows profound remorse, and not until he has made amends more than the limp apologies such as he has proffered.

Even before the pedophile debacle, one respected commentator suggested Peter Hollingworth should never have "given up his day job", as he suffers from terminal foot-in-mouth disease and seems unaware of his actual legal role in Australian government. He appears to have confused his role with that of our democratically elected representatives (they who consistently confuse their role with that of democratically elected leaders).

Australia has a very silly and archaic method of governance under which the Queen of England's representative is, for reasons completely gibberish to your almanackist, de facto head of state. We appear to be stuck with this anomaly for a while as our conservative Prime Minister, John ("Little Johnny") Howard not long ago presented the people with a Machiavellian referendum on whether the nation should become a republic, offering the public a choice of false alternatives that split the majority republican vote and gave the monarchist minority the ascendancy. (Just as badly, Howard appointed - for the PM appoints the G-G - a churchman to the position of Governor-General, thus muddying the waters around the separation of church and state and exemplifying some old biases that abound in our culture. Imagine if Howard had appointed a head honcho of the Church of Scientology, a Tibetan Lama, a Mormon Bishop or a Pope of my ownChurch of the Sub-Genius. Hey, now there's a job I might go for! I love the G-G's shiny medals and salary!)

Now we are stuck with the likes of Peter Hollingworth, whose de facto power is said to be minimal but whose de jure power is actually quite great. We must not forget that on November 11, 1975 it was a drunken Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, who sacked the elected government of Gough Whitlam in Australia's greatest ever constitutional crisis.

In other developments, the current Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Phillip Aspinall has announced that 157 new cases of sex abuse have come to his attention since he replaced Peter Hollingworth as Brisbane's Archbishop in 2001.

Now even conservative rags are calling for the G-G to step down, vide the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age, whose May 3 editorial sub-headlined boldly, "If the Governor-General does not step down, he should be sacked".

Yesterday, Bishop Hollingworth's hole was dug even deeper as he publicly stated that he had requested the court to lift a suppression order against an accusation of rape that is being made against him in court. The complainant, Rosemarie Anne Jarmyn, has died since starting the action, but it continues. Ironically, I think it likely that Peter Hollingworth will gain more public sympathy from this stunning revelation. I myself, who wishes him to resign, feel such sympathy, as to be falsely accused is a most terrible thing. One must wait till the facts have been revealed before drawing conclusions.

Meanwhile, Johnny Howard is overseas playing lapdog to George Bush and Tony Blair and glorying in having brought down a dictator without suffering as much as a paper cut themselves, glad as hell that he's out of the country and hoping against hope that Hollingworth falls on his own sword before Howard returns home with some of Blair's birthday cake and probably a very embarrassing ten-gallon hat on his bald pate.

One of the most disturbing things to emanate from the Hollingworth controversy now filling the airwaves is the frequent reference by the Governor-General's many supporters to the G-G's acknowledged "error of judgement". Politicians, pundits and priests intone with weighty words about the poor chap's grave mistake. poor fellow. What a hard time he must be having, tsk tsk.

To my mind, acts of pedophilia may indeed be ameliorated by the behaviour and the age of a child, and to deny this is to behave like a puritan ostrich. Furthermore, the age of consent is an arbitrary and culturally specific cut-off point. Having said that, in cases such as those involved in the Hollingworth scandal, and I used the word deliberately, the term "error of judgement" is a sly euphemism for the aiding and abetting of a crime involving the abuse of the power of a strong individual over a weak one. It should be punishable as such, like assault and battery or theft, and those who would protect the perpetrator should be liable to prosecution. Those who protect the protector should at least be mightily ashamed of themselves.

Sexual abuse of minors, to this writer's mind, is up there with the most heinous of crimes. I do not recall those with knowledge of muders and burglaries being reprimanded by judges for their "errors of judgement". It seems to me that they often find themselevs in the same prisons as the murderers and burglars they are protecting, as accomplices after the fact. Hollingworth, we must never forget, not only did not report the pederast priests to the police, he refused (despite the pleas of the injured parties) to remove them from their sinecures and allowed them to continue working amongst boys and girls. Boys and girls who are taught, by well-meaning but misguided parents and a compliant culture, to view these mortal men as demigods.

In many ways, I like Hollingworth, but it's time for him to walk. In this I concur with the great majority of the Australian population. Moreover, I would take it one step further. Despite the Governor-General's avuncular nature, his great wealth and potentate lifestyle, his palatial residence, good looks and vice-regal bearing, why should he not be charged? If there is a law under which he, like the wives and brothers of video-stealing junkies, can be charged as an aider and abetter or accomplice to a crime far worse than pinching an appliance, then let him be face a court as non-elite people do.

Will this happen? In this country, maybe when Hell freezes over.