Like many conservatives, I am profoundly unhappy about the appointment of Ms Sam Mostyn as Governor-General of Australia. In fact, I am more than unhappy: I reject it, but not for the reasons that other conservatives have given. Their concern is that she is an advocate for a lot of left-wing policies and will carry on advocating them when she takes office and exercise some malign influence from behind the throne. Ms Mostyn certainly has views and opinions on many subjects that I do not support. They include an extremist attitude on climate change, so-called gender equality, the wonders of ‘diversity’ and her proposition that governments should ‘put a gender lens on every single policy outcome (and) every Budget measure’. She was also a policy adviser to Paul Keating and the Treasurer and has advised the ‘Teal’ independents whose naive policies are everything that conservatives like me, and probably half the Australian population, reject. And when the high priests of social welfare describe her as ‘warm and engaging’ you can see her general disposition on changing society.

But what characterises all of those issues is that they are legitimate issues of public debate. They are all part of the sideshow. I could not care less about her views on any of them, all of which give rise to debate and argument. I can even overlook her foolish lamentations that she was ‘untethered’ by the rejection of the Aboriginal Voice, that Australia was not ‘big enough’ to support it and that ‘the Captain Cook story’ should not be taught in schools.

I am happy to have these issues argued out, with strong views being put by both sides of the argument. And there should be no objection to Ms Mostyn being on one side of all of them. Her views on these issues simply fall into the melting pot of opinion to be argued out. As Sir Paul Hasluck once said in a lecture: ‘the Governor-General can be expected to talk with frankness and friendliness, to question, discuss, suggest and counsel’.

Where I disagree with her and profoundly – to the extent of rejecting her appointment – is not on her right to hold views on any of those sideshow issues or argue for them, but on two issues that are far more fundamental and which go to the very root of Australia’s existence, nationhood and legitimacy. Those two issues are her conviction that Australia was invaded and her support of and open advocacy for Australia becoming a republic.

Take the first one. Ms Mostyn has on several occasions argued that Australia was invaded and, consequently, all that such a conviction implies: that the original settlement of Australia was invalid; that it contaminated our existence as a nation from the day of its foundation; that it taints our achievements since then; that we are the inheritors of that invasion and the illegality that came with it; that we are as guilty of those original sins as we were on 26 January, 1788; and that we should rename Australia Day as Invasion Day and announce it to the world like a badge of honour.

Why is this so fundamental that holding such convictions disqualifies her for appointment? Conservatives have an obligation to support institutions and those appointed to administer them. But those who make these appointments – in this case the Prime Minister – have a higher responsibility to ensure that whoever is appointed will represent the nation and will in fact be the nation, for the Governor-General is the embodiment of the nation itself. Thus, when the Prime Minister says, ‘Here is your Governor-General’, he is in reality, as well as in form and in constitutional propriety, saying, ‘Here is your nation.’ But Albanese’s appointment of Ms Mostyn negates the whole principle that the Governor-General is the embodiment of the nation. It is absurd and illogical that you can have a Governor-General who not only believes but espouses the view that the nation she personifies is illegal and illegitimate. Indeed, the very basis of the nation is its sovereignty. So, in presenting Ms Mostyn as the new Governor-General, Albanese has not declared, ‘Here is your nation,’ but rather,‘Here is a different nation from the one you thought you had and one in which our titular head of state does not believe.’

Take the second disqualification that Ms Mostyn so obviously has; her open advocacy that Australia should be a republic. Australia is not a republic and to argue that it should become one is again a complete denial of her appointment and the role she is supposed to fill – that role being to support and be an advocate for the proper and lawful constitutional foundation of Australia. The Republic is a legitimate policy to argue for, even if so many of us are opposed to it, but it is not legitimate for the Governor-General to argue for it.

These are the two fundamental flaws in Ms Mostyn’s appointment that disqualify her. She simply cannot honestly say to the Australian people that she is the Governor-General of an illegally founded and illegitimate state and she cannot be the head of a constitutional structure she wants to abolish.

Ms Mostyn is entitled to her views and to advocate for them, but not as Governor-General. Yet Albanese, knowing full well her convictions that are inimical to these two fundamental principles, has appointed her. Not only is her appointment illogical but it has corrupted our nation and is clearly contrary to the declaration in the Australia Act 1986 that Australia is ‘a sovereign, independent and federal nation’. How can it be sovereign when its sovereignty has now been so debased both by the person who is supposed to be its head and by the person who appointed her?

If elected, the Coalition should invite Ms Mostyn to take her oath of office again, but this time to Australia as a sovereign nation under its present constitution which she should swear to preserve.