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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

Does their king have any more hard powers in Canada or Australia than, say, Taylor Swift or some other rich celebrity?

Kind of! There's nothing on paper that says the King can't just decide that democracy is over and dissolve Parliament. Another example is that the King's representation in Canada, the Governor General, unilaterally gets to decide whether or not to give any passed legislation "royal assent." However in practice, they always do and they otherwise never put their thumb on the scale. Doing so would be a constitutional crisis that would likely end our relationship with the Monarchy more formally and put pen to paper that no, you don't actually have any real kingly powers.

The Governor General has in recent times prorogued Parliament when the Prime Minister asked them to. Ie. "This is politically nasty. Let's hit the pause button and come back when things are better and we're not about to be ejected from power..." And that has been politically controversial. Historically the Governor General just says yes because they want to avoid playing a political role at all (ie. preserving this convention that the Monarchy is really just a decoration of our government).

Technically. The king here has as much power as he has in the UK. And, likewise, if ever exercised it’d probably lead to the end of the monarchy.

In practice Taylor Swift might have more.

> if ever exercised it’d probably lead to the end of the monarchy.

If he does something that is openly obviously defying the will of the democratic majority, sure. But there are a lot of ways he can put his thumb on the scale in more subtle situations where the legal course of action is unclear.

For example, if the Queen had refused Boris Johnson's request to prorogue parliament in 2019 -- which was later ruled illegal anyway -- I doubt it would have led to the end of the monarchy.

If by 'their king', you mean 'the king of England'. No, the king of England holds no power in Canada or Australia. However, the king of Canada holds limited power in Canada, and happens to be the same person as the king of England, and it's expected that that will continue as all countries that share that monarch have agreed to the same rules of succession.

Constitutionally, the king of Canada is the commander in chief of its armed forces, provides consent or assent to all laws passed by Parliament, has some immunity from prosecution, and has a pardon power. In actual practice, most of those powers are performed perfunctorily by delegates based on either action by Parliament or by recommendation of ministers determined by the Prime Minister.

In 1975 the British Queen instructed her representative the governor general to dismiss the Australian prime minister, dissolving the Australian parliament.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitution...

In principle this power still exists. Whether Charles could pull off the same trick depends on the political situation on the ground.

I don't think the Queen instructed the Governor General to do that. He made the decision.

I'm old enough to remember it and remember a statement from the palace saying something like "The Queen is watching events in Australia with interest" but I don't think she took an active part.

I quick search reveals this. I don't know this site but if true then some letters seem to confirm the above. She told the GG to obey the Australian Constitution.

https://constitution-unit.com/2020/07/16/palace-letters-show...

This is also relevant, if only to illustrate that the incident had more going on than it appeared on the surface:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the...

The claim that the Queen actually _instructed_ the Govenor General to dismiss the PM isn't widely supported.

It's true that the palace was involved in discussions with the GG to a greater extent than most Australians though was acceptable though.

However this was before the 1986 Australia Act which cleared up the ambiguity around that.

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