Bunyip aristocracy

Bunyip aristocracy is an Australian term satirising attempts by William Wentworth to establish a system of titles in the colony of New South Wales.

It was coined in 1853 by Daniel Deniehy in what came to be known as the Bunyip Aristocracy speech which he delivered in the Victoria Theatre[1] and on the soapbox at Circular Quay.

The Legislative Council has the hardihood to propose passing this unconstitutional and anti-British measure with only a few days notice, and before it can possibly be considered by the colonists at large.The meeting was addressed by Henry Parkes and other liberals, and the result of the agitation was that the most objectionable clause, to create an hereditary colonial peerage, was struck out.

[4] In response to Wentworth's proposal to create a hereditary peerage in New South Wales, Deniehy's satirical comments included: "Here, we all know the common water mole was transferred into the duck-billed platypus, and in some distant emulation of this degeneration, I suppose we are to be favoured with a bunyip aristocracy.

Among those singled out in his speech by Deniehy was James MacArthur (1798–1867), the son of John MacArthur, who had been nominated to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1839 and was later (1859) elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly (the lower house was only created in 1856):Next came the native aristocrat James MacArthur, he would he supposed, aspire to the coronet of an earl, he would call him the Earl of Camden, and he suggests for his coat of arms a field vert, the heraldic term for green, and emblazoned on this field should be a rum keg[b] of a New South Wales order of chivalry.