Foreign Minister Penny Wong has hardly ‘recognised’ Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital. She cannot. That remains the sole prerogative of the Israeli government.

If Minister Wong had prudently first phoned her Jerusalem-based counterpart, she would have realised her gratuitous announcement was timed to appear on a Jewish holy day and in the middle of an election. Rather than insulting a friend and giving comfort to terrorists, she would have learned the only sensible thing to do was to say nothing.

Instead of insulting Israel, Minister Wong and the political class could learn two things from the Israelis. First, how to manage water efficiently in an arid land. Israel did, increasing agricultural productivity by a remarkable 1600 per cent since 1950. Second, how to defend the nation, even when surrounded by enemies.

Making a three-days-late submission on the National Anti-Corruption Commission legislation, I argued it breached the constitutional separation of powers. The bill seeks to endow NAAC, a purely executive agency, with functions vested exclusively in the courts and parliament.

It was Montesquieu who identified the fact that by inadvertently adopting what he describedas the separation of powers, the English had discovered the best way to control the abuse of power by governments.

Time being limited, I decided to incorporate my recent Spectator Australia piece, ‘Pulling the wings off butterflies’. (The welcome corollary may be more subscriptions, albeit taxpayer funded.) I also referred to Chris Merritt’s important work on this, the basis of a recent interview on ADHTV.

Liz Truss’s days in Number 10 were always numbered. Despite what one of the world’s leading geologists, Ian Plimer, warns is the ‘biggest scientific fraud in history’, she continues to worship at the altar of the global warming religion. This was even when it was obvious that because of it, Britons were doomed to live with impossibly expensive and unreliable energy in the coming winter. But instead of following Donald Trump’s exiting the Paris Climate Accords, she decided to borrow billions more to keep the affected populace quiet.

That she has been forced to resign demonstrates the superiority of Westminster over the US system. Hamilton’s creation, this is the result of the exaggeration of the role of the King as a single-person executive in the Declaration of Independence.

It was precisely the American victory in the war of independence which hastened the end of the first version of the constitutional monarchy established in the 1688 Glorious Revolution.

The second version, which I like to describe as ‘Constitutional Monarchy Mark II’, is our Westminster system.

Under it, the Crown has two roles which the US system cannot provide. And after three decades, this is what Australia’s fake republicans have proved totally incapable of replicating. These are, first, providing stable leadership above politics, as we have just seen in the glorious and long reign of Her Late Majesty. The second is as the reserve constitutional guardian.

So, relish the fact that the King has already invited Rishi Sunak who clearly enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons to form a new government.

Meanwhile, the US establishment – supported by most of the Australian commentariat – not only made a disastrous error in choosing Joe Biden as their preferred presidential candidate, but they also did anything to get him in, even unconstitutionally.

The recent revelations by Senator Grassley of the FBI’s alleged suppression of evidence of Biden’s involvement in his son’s corrupt dealings with foreign governments, including Beijing’s, would bring down any Westminster government. But it won’t bring down Biden. And if it did, the system ensures the US would be stuck with a possibly even worse successor.

Among the biggest issues facing Australia is surely ensuring that never again can our political leaders behave with impunity as the petty dictators they were during Covid. As this column argued at the time, not only were Australians effectively put under house arrest, jobs cancelled, businesses (almost only small ones) destroyed, education interrupted, the country put into massive debt, people unlawfully arrested, even fired on with rubber bullets, insufficiently tested vaccines imposed even on non-vulnerable children, there was a cruel and sadistic refusal to allow families to see dying parents.

Nor can this be justified by claiming it was worth the benefit. With all the advantages of a remote island nation, we could have done far better.

Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, an organisation I convene, is, as Tony Abbott maintains, the ‘fiercest defender’ of the constitution. This surely means more than just our federal compact. As Bolingbroke declared in the 18th century: ‘By constitution, we mean,… that assembly of laws, institutions and customs according to which the community has agreed to be governed.’ This concept of a sovereign people was grossly violated during Covid.

In consultations with the Albanese government over the increasingly discredited three-decade-old plan to replace our crowned republic with a politicians’s republic, ACM’s delegation argued that the government’s constitutional priority should rather be to ensure that the collapse of checks and balances on the exercise of government power during Covid is never again repeated.

This will be an important theme of ACM’s 23rd National Conference on Wednesday, 9 November at 2 pm at 280 Pitt Street Sydney. For that we’ll be relying on special contributions from Tony Abbott and Alan Jones.

In addition, John Howard has granted an exclusive interview on his role as 25th prime minister when he offered what could not have been a fairer opportunity for the Australian people to determine their constitutional future.

As to the crucial role of the Crown as Reserve Constitutional Guardian, Lt Col. Peter O’Brien will provide an expert briefing. He is the author of an authorative book, Villain or Victim, defending the Reserve Powers and Sir John Kerr. The cost of attendance at this conference, which will be streamed on ADHTV, has been cut to the bone – $20, concessions, $10. Eventbrite registration can be easily reached on ACM’s Facebook page, ACMnorepublic.