CANBERRA has been enveloped in a mist of optimism this week with the celebration of the signing, exactly 800 years ago on Monday at the island of Runnymede in the Thames, of the Magna Carta.

Even the normally restrained High Court is decorated with a colourful series of panels paying tribute to a document which told us no one is above the law.

Australia was in the limelight for the commemorations when speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, went on air at five minutes past midnight UK time on Monday, June 15, to speak about the significance of the famous document. That made her the first person in the world to talk it up on the actual date.

Notably, Canberra is home to one of just two copies of the Magna Carta outside Britain – the other one is in Washington DC. Both are originals of the 1297 Magna Carta,

Ours was bought for Australia in 1952 at the reasonable price of £12,500 by Sir Robert Menzies, who attracted heavy criticism for this purchase, later mitigated by the fact that the Americans paid many millions of dollars for theirs.

The highlight of the celebrations was in the Great Hall of Parliament House, where children from Boggabri Primary School who had travelled 700 km for the occasion, mingled with senior parliamentarians and ambassadors to pay tribute to a vellum document that continues to symbolise our right to justice.

Mrs Bishop gave an informative speech that placed the Magna Carta in context as a symbol of both tradition and progress. While some of the concepts were not brand-new, its ideas had travelled to the American colony of Virginia, to Normandy and France and it resurfaced just as the Stuart kings attempted to asssert absolute rule.

We discovered that the Magna Carta hinted at Freedom of Trade, permission for widows to remarry, trial by jury or at least by one’s peers, and of course the central notion that even the mightiest are subject to the law. It was the ancestor of the Western tradition and though they may be some who decry our cultural dependence on the Westminster system, Mrs Bishop, said, “We are Ozminster, we have made things our way.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott followed in the same vein, describing it as “the most important constitutional document of all time”, even though it had been repudiated by the King and Pope just nine weeks after it was first signed. Oliver Cromwell called it a gust of hot air but Edward VII claimed that it was a part of common law. Long-serving federal Labor politician Clyde Cameron, he said, had ridiculed Menzies’ purchase of the document but later referred to it as “priceless.”

Mr Abbott expressed the hope that the Boggabri children who were about to be presented with coins created by the Royal Australian Mint expressly for this occasion, would carry this moment in their memories.

Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten surprised everyone with a rip-snorting declamatory speech in which he described the authors of the Magna Carta flatteringly as “troublemakers.” He drew a picture of King John, so unpopular that there has never been another one so-named since him, and the fractious barons whose feudal grievances had ironically echoed down the ages because of the document they signed.

“We salute the Magna Carta as a flickering candle and a guiding star,” said Mr Shorten.

Royal Australian Mint CEO Ross MacDiarmid spoke of the changing technology over the Mint’s 50 years of producing coins, mentioning recent experiments with colour as in the Gallipoli coin and the unusual decision made to produce the Magna Carta coin in the rectangular shape of the document itself, complete with antique writing on the reverse.

It remained only for the President of the Australian Senate, Senator Stephen Parry, to invite the children to receive their coins and enjoy a slice of thoroughly modern Magna Carta cake.