Australia says no to job for Prince William

CANBERRA - He may be second in line to the British throne, but Prince William is considered unsuitable for a vice-regal job in Australia because he has the wrong background.

The author of the new book "The Diana Chronicles", former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, has said William would like to be Australia's next governor-general -- a position his father Prince Charles coveted but was denied in the 1980s.

Prime Minister John Howard, an avowed monarchist who successfully faced down a 1999 referendum vote for Australia to break its ties to London and become a republic, ruled out Prince William as a future governor-general.

"We have for a long time embraced the idea that the person who occupies that post should be in every way an Australian citizen," Howard told Australian radio on Friday.

The governor-general acts as Australia's head of state and commander-in-chief of the nation's defense forces, representing the British monarch in the constitution.

But the job is slightly ambiguous. Monarchists claim the governor-general is Australian head of state, while republicans claim Queen Elizabeth is the true head of state and the governor-general is simply her representative.

Charles, the heir to the throne, showed interest in the job in the 1980s, but was rejected by then Labor prime minister Bob Hawke.

In the first 50 years of Australian independence from Britain after 1901, the job regularly went to British noblemen appointed from London.

When the first Australian-born governor-general, former High Court Chief Justice Isaac Isaacs, was named in 1931, the move was opposed by King George V and created considerable tension between Canberra and Buckingham Palace.

In 1945, the late king's third son, Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Ulster and Baron Culloden, became Australia's first post war governor-general.

When he left in 1947, Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who used to drive trains for a living, declared he wanted a governor-general "without pomp and plumes and social glitter".

Chifley appointed an ex-boilermaker and leftist Labor politician, William McKell, to replace the duke.

Source