Excerpts from a speech by Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia, made to a Joint Sitting of Parliament in 1960
The Commonwealth is an institution based around the primacy of the Mother Country to defend and support the other components of the British Empire. However, with the fall of Great Britain to fascism and tyranny, the Mother Country is no longer a force to defend our rights and dignity. Thus, it is with a heavy heart - and make no mistake, for the Monarchy and the Commonwealth have always been close to my heart, and I am saddened, as are all Australians, that this is a necessary action - that
I must announce that Australia will withdraw from the Commonwealth until such time that Democracy and Rule of Law return to Great Britain.
I urge all other Commonwealth nations to do the same; to the nation of Canada, to New Zealand, to South Africa, and to the Commonwealth nations of the Caribbean, I must remind you that the fascist government of Great Britain is tyrannical and undemocratic, and does not represent the ideals that the Commonwealth was founded on.
Thus we urge you, the free peoples of the Commonwealth, to take the necessary step and declare that the Commonwealth of Nations will be defunct, and that Great Britain and their Bonapartist puppetmasters will have no authority over us, legal or otherwise, until such time that Great Britain returns to democracy.
To:
Great Britain
From:
Australia
We are formally withdrawing from the British Commonwealth of Nations. Your abandonment of democracy and the ideals of the enlightened British Empire of old are a disgrace to your former subject nations, and, as such, we are withdrawing from the Commonwealth until such time as Great Britain returns to democratic rule.
To:
All Other Commonwealth Nations
From:
Australia
We urge all democratic nations in the Commonwealth to throw off their ties to the organisation. We are free democracies, and we should not be at the legal beck and call of the fascists who have despoiled the Mother Country, less so their French puppetmasters. We urge you to throw off the chains of the Commonwealth until such time as proper government returns to Great Britain and our ties with a free, democratic Mother Country can be restored.