MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia named Sam Mostyn Monday as the only female governor-general, a largely ceremonial role representing the British monarch, who is the country’s head of state.
It is the first Australian appointment since the start of King Charles III’s reign in 2022 and the first by the centre-left Labor Party government under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, which 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 Bryce, who described her role in 2013 as “finding a balance between observing 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.
The Albanian government was elected in 2022 and called for a referendum to create an Australian republic with an Australian citizen as head of state.
But he preferred to hold a referendum in the first three-year term of his government to include an indigenous panel in the constitution that would advise the government on indigenous issues.
That referendum was rejected last year and although Albanese has not yet announced plans for a republic referendum, an assistant republic minister position has been created to prepare the country for change.
Critics of Mostyn’s appointment emphasize her past activism. She had also supported an Australian republic and described Australia Day, the arrival of the first British settlers on the site of 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 several months he spent as a teenager at an Australian boarding school in 1966.
Many Labor Party supporters who want a republic remember how Governor General John Kerr dismissed the government of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975.
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 Hurley, a former chief of the Australian Defence Force.
The government last week passed legislation to increase the governor-general’s salary to 709,000 Australian dollars a year ($473,000) for her five-year term, drawing 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.
