MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia named Sam Mostyn Monday as only the second female governor-general, a largely ceremonial role on behalf of the British monarch who is the country’s head of state.
It is the first Australian appointment since the reign of King Charles III began in 2022 and the first by That of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a center-left Labor Party government that wants to replace the British monarch with an Australian president as head of state.
The businesswoman and gender equality advocate, who became the Australian Football League’s first female commissioner in 2005, was sworn in as Australia’s 28th Governor-General since 1901.
In her first speech in her new role, Mostyn quoted Australia’s first female governor-general Quentin Brycewho described her role in 2013 as “finding a balance between adhering to tradition and protocol and being completely contemporary.”
“I will be an optimistic, modern and visible Governor-General, committed to the service and contribution that all Australians expect and deserve from the holder of this office,” Mostyn said.
Mostyn said she had discussed the role with all five living former governors-general, including Bryce, who was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of a Labor prime minister and served from 2008 to 2014.
Albanian government was elected in 2022 with the aim of organizing a referendum to create an Australian republic with an Australian citizen as head of state.
But he preferred to hold a referendum during the first three-year term of his government to enshrine in the constitution an Indigenous panel that would advise the government on indigenous issues.
That referendum was defeated Last year, and although Albanese has not yet announced plans for a republic referendum, the office of Assistant Minister for the Republic was created to prepare the country for change.
Critics of Mostyn’s appointment highlight her past activism. She had also supported an Australian republic and described Australia Daythe arrival of the first British settlers in Sydney on January 26, 1788, as “Invasion Day,” a term used by some Indigenous leaders.
Mostyn said she met the king in Britain in May and passed on Australia’s best wishes for the health of both he and Kate, Princess of Wales, who are being treated for cancer.
“I am not the first Australian to be struck by the interest and warmth the King feels for this country where he lived and studied as a young man,” Mostyn said, referring to the several months he spent at an Australian boarding school as a teenager in 1966.
Many Labour supporters who want a republic remember the discharged in 1975 of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government by then Governor-General John Kerr.
Mostyn remembers watching television news of the constitutional crisis as a 10-year-old girl in a Canberra hospital, where she was being treated for a broken leg.
Mostyn replaces General David Hurleya former chief of the Australian Defense Force.
The government last week passed legislation to increase the governor-general’s salary to AU$709,000 a year ($473,000) for her five-year term, prompting criticism from some lawmakers that the salary was excessive. Hurley was paid AU$495,000 (330,000) a year, but also received a military pension.
