The tenth anniversary of the failed republic referendum has provoked a celebratory address by John Howard, and some cheerleading for the direct election model from Age op-ed writer Ray Cassin.
As Mark picked up some months ago, any plans to kick the debate off again were apparently delayed becuase of concerns that Australians would regard it as a massive distraction when they’re worried about their jobs.
Given, fingers crossed, we may have seen the worst of the economic conditions, should the government again think about running a plebiscite on the threshold question simultaneously with the next election? And, regardless of the exact timing, is it possible to reach a position that both direct-election supporters and the hardcore minimalists can agree on? Are the Greg Cravens of the world ever going to do anything other than actively fight any direct-election model – and, if they do, does that doom us to rerun 1999 in reverse?
“Should the government again think about running a plebiscite on the threshold question simultaneously with the next election?”
If you really want the thing to succeed, wait until after HM leaves the throne — whenever that may be. Particularly among the older generation, there’s still a remarkable amount of affection for Lizzie. The monarchist supporter base will collapse when she departs.
At a minimum, what is needed is that most direct election supporters and most supporters of other models can all agree that their preferred option has been given a fair go through a staged process of consultations and plebiscites, and that those whose preferred option(s) aren’t chosen through this process will accept the outcome and support, or at least acquiesce in, the chosen option in the final referendum.
Having said that, if some kind of agreement can be reached on what powers and functions a republican head of state should have, how this position articulates with other parts of the political system, and whether and how the HOS’ powers and functions can be codified, this could obviate the most serious (in my view, the only serious) objection to a direct election model.
My answer to both the first and second parts of this question is “probably not”. I don’t see how the arguments of conservative republicans like Craven would gain any traction with constituencies who weren’t already responsive to the general conservative arguments of the monarchists.
The other, very interesting and important thing which has happened since 1999 is that many of the leading monarchists are no longer constitutional conservatives or minimalists tout court – I particularly have in mind the anti-federalist shift of noted Coalition monarchists like John Howard and Tony Abbott.
Paulus, given the royal family’s history that could be another 20 years…
And given the advance of heroic medical technologies and the resources available to the British Crown, that 20 years may simply be the precursor to the next 20 years, and the 20 years after that…
Also by way of response to Paulus, proposals for constitutional change can easily fall prey to “pluralist stagnation” even if a large majority agree that the status quo should be replaced, as we saw in 1999 and as Robert has pointed to in the opening post. I was once an employee and office-bearer of a political party which still had in its constitution a rule which was the source of much internal conflict and grief, and which most members agreed should be replaced, yet which remained in place until the party itself went out of business because people couldn’t agree on what to replace it with.
I am a Monarchist simply because I have yet to be convinced that changing our current governance arrangements will make for better governance or save the taxpayer money. That said, I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what happens to the Royals.
Can someone outline briefly why anyone on the left should care who the titular head of state is?
Just wondering.
For better or worse, we have a PM. Whether he is called President or the GG is called it, or is elected or sortitioned or appointed or nominated by Rupert Murdoch …
I just can’t work up any interest in whatever it is a republic entails. Will this reduce GHGs? Contribute to global equity? Local equity? Improve any public service? It’s hard to see.
Now, if the proposal were for a socialist republic, that I could get excited about. As soon as that arises, count me interested.
Robert, if it’s 20 years, so be it. This is hardly an issue of desperate urgency. Indeed, if republicans go for a new referendum/plebiscite too soon, one of the arguments the monarchists will use is, “Hey, Australian people, you already voted on this only 10 years ago, but the republicans just don’t respect the choice you made …”
This post is bringing back memories of the day of the referendum. I was on driving duties, taking some elderly family members and friends of the family around at different times of the day to vote, at various locations in Adelaide. What surprised me was that everywhere I turned up there was a grey army of volunteers handing out ACM material. I really don’t think they were motivated by the constitutional sophistry of David Flint, or the internal wranglings of the republicans. It was something more basic and heartfelt than that.
I believe we should wait for that generation, and their Queen, to pass on. (And then, if I’m still around myself, I will happily vote for the republic.)
One option is not to call the republican head of state ‘President’. Then hoi polloi won’t get to braying about how a president otherwise than directly elected is not a real president.
Also, the debate might be a bit more rational if the Constitution was more widely and better understood. Republic referendum after the education revolution succeeds?
A small point about direct election. The inhabitants of metropolitan Brisbane have been directly electing the city’s Mayor for several decades, and have yet to elect someone who (leaving aside partisan likes and dislikes) could seriously be regarded as a disgrace or an embarrassment to the office. Certainly, none of Brisbane’s Mayors have attracted the opprobrium that a couple of appointed Governors-General in my lifetime have done. Whatever inferences might be drawn from Brisbane’s experience of electing its mayors for the republic debate, that the voters are not competent to choose is not one of them.
Your marginal punter is inclined to see even the posing of threshold questions as badgering and thus say “no” as a reflex.
Timing is everything on this question.
Minimalism vs direct election is the stone in the shoe of republicans. It is impossible for both sides to be happy because victory for one necessarily entails defeat for the other.
It is better to hope that the minimalists will all die out, which will take forever.
It would be more politic for the direct electionists to bite their collective tongues and accept minimalism. Eventually, the idea of pollies kicking a succession of Sir Les Pattersons upstairs to Yarralumla will stick in the collective craw.
Then the time will be right for a proper republic.
Otherwise…
Welcome to Australia, permanent constitutional monarchy.
Many years ago, I read a post-apocolyse science fiction novel whose name escapes me. (Bear with me, it’s actually relevant.) The society which rose from the ashes had armed forces run by the King’s General, but they had no king.
Perhaps we could consider some similar device as a possible title for our non-president head of state.
I think the drive for a republic is weaker because Britain has never been so unimportant to Australia. That may seem unintuitive, but consider it.
Since there’s no actual change to governance under any proposed republic, the entire issue is one of symbolism and identity. A republic to assert an Australian identity seperate to the empire.
But as migration continues from everywhere else, cultural imports continue to come from the US and all business and economic links go to Asia, what do we need to assert our identity against. Britain is simply too irrelevant to assert ourselves against.
How about ‘Ceasar’. Tried and tested.
Changing to a Republic would be even more symbolic than the Sorry apology, and that has done a lot of good so far hasn’t it.
Apart from the symbolism of it all, can anyone explain exactly how being a republic would improve our governance?
Then you have Denethor from The Lord of the Rings, who is the Steward of Gondor. The King is never expected to return, so the Steward is the de facto monarch.
In some ways, ‘the Steward’ wouldn’t be a bad title for an Australian HOS.
Except, of course, we all know what happened to Denethor. (Ouch!)
It would be better to change the flag than to change Quentin Bryce’s stationary. Just replace the union jack with some form of stylised kangaroo and forget about quasi republican movements because we’ll never to get to vote for the real thing.
Paulus #16, there is no basis to the scurrilous suggestion in the movie that I poked the Steward Denethor in the ribs with my staff.
True.
It was Gandalf the White who poked Denethor in the ribs.
[/Tolkien nerd]
Sorry, just to expand on that last comment. As Wikipedia correctly summarises, “At the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Gandalf faced the Balrog to enable the others to escape. … Gandalf himself died during this ordeal, and his body lay on the peak while his spirit travelled outside of time.
Gandalf was “sent back” as a significantly more powerful figure, Gandalf the White. Gwaihir carried him to Lórien, where he was healed of his injuries and re-clothed in white robes by Galadriel.”
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
“Gandalf himself died”
Gandalf was one of the Ainur and thus immortal. His body was destroyed, but death is Eru’s gift to the Atani, where Men gather in the Halls of Mandos before passing out of Arda entirely.
d
And despite how we might complain that the vote was nobbled the fact is it was voted down. To have a revote on that referendum over and over until the “right” decision is made would make a mockery of democracy.
I don’t like it but we’ll have to live with it until the Queen leaves the throne. Which as others have suggested is probably 20-40 years off.
On the other hand I get the feeling that once Queen Lizzie leaves the throne the decision might be made for us. The UK might decide that enough is enough and the royal family is too expensive.
The digression into LOTR in this thread tells you everything we need to know about the likelyhood of a Republic referendum anytime soon.
Paul Norton@2: “The other, very interesting and important thing which has happened since 1999 is that many of the leading monarchists are no longer constitutional conservatives or minimalists tout court – I particularly have in mind the anti-federalist shift of noted Coalition monarchists like John Howard and Tony Abbott.”
Good observation Paul…States’ Rights is now so twentieth century, killed off by the leading “conservative” Little Johnny himself. Real annoyance at pathetic services and infrastructure delivery by the States (NSW take a bow) seems to be taking over in voterland. Maybe republicanism should take a new route and concentrate on abolishing the states – lots of interesting consequences follow.
Cross posted at Becrux
Many of the problems with a model for the republic fall away if we try to preserve the structure that we currently have now with the Queen and the Governor-General and state Governors. There would still be the reserve powers but they would be held by an appointed Governor-General as it is now. The head of state would still need to have their unique powers in the Constitution carefully examined and perhaps curtailed. Section 59 gives our head of state the power to veto legislation. This veto has never been exercised and presumably never will be while we are a constitutional monarchy.
I also think that it would be worth discussing the scope for direct election if we were to have a directly elected head of state. We assume that the head of state has to win an election over the whole of Australia, and this might make the head of state a political rival to the Prime Minister. Another alternative is to limit the election of a particular person into the role of head of state to state-based elections and then rotate around the states in a round-robin. The Commonwealth and the territories could together also take part in the round-robin. If a term in office was for a year each, then every state and the territories will most likely have to vote for the head of state once every 7 years or so. Having a state-based presidential round-robin would dilute the power of an elected head of state. The states may even adopt different methods of nomination and campaign styles.
No.
In the first place, a republic has already been rejected. You don’t get to ask the people, they say no, ask them again, and so on, every decade or so. We made our decision, leave us alone. What if we say no again, will you give up, or lie low for another decade or so and ask us again?
Secondly, if you do want to offer a republic, offer a definite model. Don’t say, “do you want to get rid of the Queen?” and then develop the model. That’s like quitting your job before you’ve looked for another job, or giving notice to your landlord that you’re leaving before you’ve found another house. Don’t leave us in limbo.
Imagine that the country voted to be rid of the monarch, and then took another year or two to decide on the new constitution… now imagine we had a Kerr-Whitlam sort of crisis… it would be a true crisis, as the perceived authority of the Governor General would be nil. Too risky. Even without that, if the new constitution were rejected, what then? It’d take even longer to write up a third one. And so on. n
2010, plebiscite to get rid of the monarch, Aussies vote “bye bye”
2012, referendum on new constitution, Aussies vote “no”
2015, referendum on new constitution #2, Aussies vote “no”
2019… and so on.
Tell us what kind of constitution you want to see, write it up, and we’ll vote on it. Don’t give us this half-arsed non-binding plebiscite nonsense, designed to make up for the lack of any real better alternative republicans can agree on.
Strictly speaking, there is nothing (apart from the horrid expense and lack of constitutional safe-guards) to prevent us from electing the GG now. Parliament could easily pass legislation requiring that the PMs recommendation for GG must be preceded by an election. Whether electing the head of state is a good idea or not is, of course, still open for debate. A true constitutional conservative might note that a head of state with power more closely matches the origins of the Westminster balance than the single party executive rule that we have now, but I might be the only one that pines for the theatre of 19th century politics.
I wonder sometimes if the greatest impediment to a republic is a tendency to massively over-complicate the otherwise straight-forward constitution we have. Even the most minimalist proposal 10 years ago was weighed down in debate over consequences and potential problems. Maybe there is no other way, and perhaps that’s a problem. The simplest way (to me) of replacing the royals is to make the “head of state” the heads of the Commonwealth (ie. a council of the state governors) with the GG remaining as a representative of that body. If you want to directly elect that representative, then, see above, there is nothing stopping it.
The real reason the referendum failed ten years ago ultimately had nothing to do with republic models and everything to do with the republican movement’s failure to explain why a republic was actually necessary as opposed to merely desirable, what practical benefit it would bring the country other than just the feel-good factor of being able to give ourselves a self-congratulatory pat on the back about how “mature” we were, and why it needed to happen right there and then. I’m in agreement with Razor on this one, and I say that as an avowed republican.
Russ @ 27
The proposal that failed 10 years ago was called ‘minimal’ but that had more to do with spin than reality. The Yes/No Pamphlet for the republic 1999 referendum showed that the changes were anything BUT minimal. It was a major re-write of the Constitution and our naturally conservative electorate would have been concerned if it was pointed out to be a radical change. Repeatedly calling the model ‘minimal’ worked to set the public attitude about the proposed changes.
I think your proposal in the second paragraph is a good one. The Governor-General is not, however, our head of state. There is no hierarchical relationship between the state Governors and the Governor-General. The Governors and Governor-General represent the Crown independently in their respective states and the Commonwealth. I think you need a layer above the state Governors and Governor-General for the head of state.
You might be able to regularly elevate one of the Governors or Governor-General into the office of head of state from a council like you suggest, but one consequence of that is that you would politicise the office of state governors and the Governor-General as well as the office of the head of state. The political parties would fight to have their candidates and mates installed in these positions. I think it would be better to have the state Governors and GG roles remain neutral, low key and daggy and quite distinct from the role of the head of state. They form a buffer around an elected head of state so that a directly elected ‘president’ would not be able to tamper with the parliaments. The office of an elected head of state would be glamourous and sought after, but powerless and ceremonial. The state Governors and Governor-General would continue with their roles while the head of state can prance around in the media spotlight.
I was a Eureka type Republican,until I realised there is no change to what is wrong in Governance today in Australia.Whoever holds the Office of President will obviously start looking at all the Presidents of the world past and present.Bow me out,I can remember American President’s faces back to JFK via the Teev.And that is enough!.
RobV, I am aware the governors are not the HoS now. My point is to create a circular arrangement. The governors in council fulfill the role of the head of state for all states when in session, but you leave it up to them to not go into session except as necessary (Essentially confined to appointing a representative for one of the states or the commonwealth).
I’m not sure why you’d think the office of GG would be more politicised than now? There is no push to install amenable governors now because the role has been defined (by tradition and the advice of the foreign office, not constitution or law) as being largely ceremonial. There is no reason to suppose the governors in council and their appointees wouldn’t follow the same general rule as the Queen – to follow the advice of the PM or Premier. Unless it was changed. Even under the current system, it is essentially up to each state to determine how they select their governors.
Russ, I think that electing a Governor or GG into their office would give them a feeling that they have some kind of a mandate or endorsement from the public on what ever platform they happened to campaign on. They might still be bound by convention to act only on the advice of the Prime Minister, but I think that over time they might test their boundaries against the PM. It depends on the personalities involved, whether the major political parties regularly face off in these elections for the GG as HoS and whether the authority of a PM is weakened. Conventions do shift over time. An elected GG as HoS has an advantage over the PM in that he/she is not responsible for policy positions and outcomes and if there were to be a conflict, the GG as HoS would most likely try to claim the high moral ground.
Appointed Governors and GGs know who their boss is and would only rarely exercise the reserve powers. Premiers and PMs choose their people carefully but sometimes they make a mistake too.
The model for a republic that I think would work well is very similar to your proposal with a council of state governors including the GG. I think it would be better to have a state-based elected representative in such a council, independent of the governor or GG, and then rotating the presidency (or chair of the council of whatever you want to call it) around the council so that each state has their elected person as HoS for a year each. You still have state governors and the GG. You add a layer above that. The elected HoS effectively replaces the Queen in our Constitution and we make sure that the position is regularly rotated so that no one person makes themselves too comfortable in the role.
The states might have different kinds of elections, and I can imagine the election for NSW being a razzle-dazzle and expensive presidential contest. If someone has spent a lot of money winning an election, they would expect to have something in return for the expense. It would be best to keep the reserve powers away from such an elected HoS. An appointed GG would continue to Assent to bills of parliament without interference, etc. The election can give the HoS public status and fame – it lets them travel the world as the premier Australian and entertain other heads of states and heads of government. After after their year as HoS they can find something else to do.
I think a state-based council with a Rotating Chair (now there’s an image for our Head of State!) could work. I would prefer to keep appointed governors and a GG independent and create a new council of state-elected representatives for that council.
RobV, I think we are largely in agreement. I agree that electing the GG or Governor would give them a mandate. I am torn between that being a good thing, and keeping the present system intact. There are good reasons both ways. One of the points I was making above is that an election of that sort is actually independent of whether the Queen is the HoS or not.
Directly electing a president without giving them any powers seems like a waste of time to me, but perhaps that is what people want, for whatever reason.
Russ, I don’t know if this helps at all, but Section 59 does give the HoS some powers:
I think this power to veto should be tempered with a bee-sting clause, so that if an elected president did ever exercise the power to disallow an Act of parliament, then that act would automatically result in the resignation of that president from office. Such a power would be as annoying as a bee-sting and perhaps even fatal for an allergic PM in some situations. With a bee-sting clause, any deadlock between an elected president and the PM would be automatically cleared. Without a bee-sting clause a HoS could sting repeatedly like a Queen Bee – and that would be a real threat to our system of government. An elected president is not likely to exercise such a power to veto if it means they are immediately kicked out of office. With Section 59, the PM would be wise to treat the president with some respect.
I think many people would like to see a person in the media and perhaps in person who is our face to the rest of the world as our head of state. It’s like with the gossip magazines and celebrities. It has to be personal to be real to many people.
Wouldn’t an annual rotation of HoS mean that no one would ever know who the HoS was?
I’m happy to come out on this and state what others apparently do not want to do which is that I voted against the republic on offer last time around. It is an issue of democratic sovereignty resting with citizens and not with parliaments. At the affective level I accept no-one as my better when it comes to choosing a head of state. To put the matter more bluntly – I will not accept that fornicated brains like Steve Fielding or ‘Ironbar’ Tuckey are better positioned to make a choice on the matter of an Australian head of state. My estimate (and I no longer have the numbers to show this) was that a good third of the potential republican vote last time voted no because it rejected the indirect model.
So, we are stuck with the perverse situation of a constutional monarchy which is, in my view, preferable to a half assed republic.
PDAA @ 17
No thanks. The union jack is one of the most striking and nicest flags around. It’s an honour that we share it.
Anthony Nolan it’s not a question of politcians being better positioned on choosing a HOS. It’s just that a president elected by popular vote would be unacceptable to 50% of the electorate. I for one could never accept a president I voted against and the typical riposte of ‘too bad that’s democracy’ just doesn’t cut it!
Peter. I know. In the meantime we are stuck with a member of the droolingly degererate German/English ruling classes as our head of state. You obviously find that acceptable. I don’t. That 50% of Australian’s who can’t live with a majority decision that runs against their grain for a four year term, and you claim to be one of them, don’t deserve to think of themselves as democratic equals. I presume this is because they think that they are better than others. Why don’t you enlighten me? What is the problem with someone else’s candidate getting up?
Russell, well we already have an Australian of the Year and I admit they haven’t been receiving that much publicity lately. Mick Dodson is Australian of the Year for 2009. Perhaps with a state-based election preceding their year in office at least they will be well known in their home state and the rest of the country would at least have seen them before.
With a term of one year and a rotating chair for a presidential council you could also overlap each term by six months before and after. That way a HoS would have something of a six month apprenticeship to learn the ropes and they could spend the six months after their time in office winding down and helping out the new HoS if needed or visiting schools and the like. Another advantage of this year in office approach is that you alternate each year by gender. One year a man is HoS and the next year the HoS could be a woman. With a six month overlap before and after each term in office there will always be one man and one woman as the top role models. We could also adopt the Queen’s Birthday (in June) as the day when a retiring Hos is replaced by an apprentice HoS (my language use here is crude, but I hope it conveys the ideas okay).
So, we wouldn’t be able to demarcate eras of time by a long serving elected HoS like we can with the reigns of British monarchs. But there is still some kind of a precedence for a yearly term for a HoS.
I think 4 or 5 years is better. Why couldn’t the person be chosen by agreement between the PM and the Leader of the Largest Opposition Party? Then it would be someone more or less acceptable to most people.
The Queen as our head of state. In the 21st century, no less.
When are we going to get rid ourselves of the stench of the first fleet?
In the 40s, as far as I could judge, I was the lone republican in the school. At the time of the referendum, very few of my acquaintances were not republican, but to be brutally frank, almost none had a clue when it came to the technical realities of what was being proposed. Direct versus indirect election was about as far as their understanding went.
Monarchists were no better informed. It was a case of both sides convincing themselves they were right, but neither side relying on much more than reassuring emotional catchcries. After the results came in, and even Victoria failed to vote as it ’should’, republicans consoled themselves with the myth that Howard had played dirty tricks, while monarchists deluded themselves into believing most Australians wanted to hang on to a monarchy.
Being deluded doesn’t harm the monarchists’ cause too much, because they don’t have to come up with a coherent effective alternative. Republican ‘intellectuals’ however, face a far more demanding challenge. And if their fumbling, stumbling wanderings from 2000 are any indication, the current Queen will be long gone before they have a sound proposal ready to present to voters. I’m sure they are capable of drafting a plebiscite proposal. Any half competent primary school student could manage that — but it’s merely a psychological boost for a badly battered band of bunglers. An actual referendum proposal is a tad harder, and since their last effort was so flawed I’d have been embarrassed if it were mine as a high school student, I can’t imagine them coming up with anything decent in the immediate future.
We’re fortunate few monarchists understood how poorly constructed the 2000 proposal was, or the outcome would have been even more discouraging. We might even have lost the vote [Heaven forbid] in the A.C.T!
Anthony, I don’t find it acceptable thats why I voted yes in 99! I believe in the primacy of parliament because I feel a group can better represent the whole community than an indivdual supported by half or even less in FPTP. Who represents the rest of us? At least parliament as an oppostion! Make parliament supreme and reduce the pres to the status of a minor public official or better still don’t have one at all!
Its a very simple question: do we want a republic with an Australian Head of State? Yes or No.
The main reason that the previous referendum was orchestrated to fail was the “political complications and subterfuge” that infected and poisoned the issue.
The ‘National Times’ editorial reminds us of/is in tune with what Beazley proposed after ‘99:
So, ideally Australia would democratically choose to remove the Crown from being Oz’s head of state before we were asked to choose which model.
If that strategy is properly implemented I don’t know where that leaves the would-be epic stoush between the direct-electionists and the appointeeists. You can’t accuse the other side of being spoilers once the main objective has been achieved, now can you?
Anyway, Robert, keeping that in mind, what does the bolded part here mean: “Are the Greg Cravens of the world ever going to do anything other than actively fight any direct-election model – and, if they do, does that doom us to rerun 1999 in reverse”
Are you concerned about the stronger appointeeists hurting the overall republican cause before the public vote, or are you saying that opposing direct electionism is the worst possible thing once the nation has already chosen?
What I mean is if the Beazley multi-election strategy (which is still in the ALP platform?) is implemented, not the ‘National Times’ one-election strategy.
Dreary as it might sound, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
I don’t trust any of our politicians to come up with a model that doesn’t give them more power, and, given the way they abuse power now, that’s utterly unacceptable.
Besides, I’m rather looking forward to the chaos that will ensue when Charles the Ears becomes King.
Didn’t Charles marry a divorcee?
Tssk @ 22 makes a good point.
Of course if the Poms eliminate the Crown of the United Kingdom and Ireland, then that first clause of our constitution becomes meaningless, as no such thing would exist.
In effect we would become a republic.
If Britain eliminated the Crown of the etc etc then, of course Prince Charles would become a commoner, Mr C Windsor.
So those who reckon the present system of an overseas Monnick and a local GG is not broken and need not be changed, would actually have to argue to have someone appointed, and get the constitution amended to reflect that.
Now let me see….How about….?
WHEREAS the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, not to mention the ACT and the NT, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, Allah, Buddah, or the Cosmic Muffin have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the Empire of Japan, or the Kingdom of Thailand, or the Kingdom of Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain, and under the Constitution hereby established:
That would allow us to pick and choose amongst a range of candidates, get the best monick and of course if the system was not really broke, and did not really need fixing would be the nearest thing the monickists could get to Nirvana surely.
And that is not really even a reductio ad absurdem since it actually would allow us to at least select a candidate from amongst a panel of possible monicks rather than at present have no choice at all. Under the present system we have someone who talks to the trees and wanted to become a tampon inside hi mistress of the time.
I am a republican – as if one could not guess.
Presidents are elected. Why? Why not just take a random name from the electoral roll every five years or so and appoint them as HoS?
It would be utterly democratic and would be much cheaper to conduct than an election campaign every few years.
A decision to change the rules for succession for the British monarchy may be made public in little more than three weeks time, at the next CHOGM meeting. The changes may be minimal this time but an effect would be the knowledge that the rules for succession can be changed.
Peterc @ 45,
Its a simplistic question with many possible answers in the fine print. What kind of republic, how do we get there, and so on. A “blank cheque” question is more likely to de defeated by a cautious and conservative electorate if the details have not been discussed.
The House of Representatives has hastily set up an enquiry into the machinery of referendums. They might try to change the rules for providing information about a referendum proposal, perhaps to trick enough people into voting for change without them realising it. They are rushing through the inquiry, so I suspect they had their answers ready-written. There may be a vote on the republic in the next few years. I think that a deceptive blank cheque strategy to sneak in a republic (with a crappy half-baked model) would backfire really badly on the republican movement.
Moreover, it’s an unconstitutional question. Somewhere behind the question would have to be itemised all the amendments required to remove the monarch and the monarchy from the fabric of the constitution.
The monarch is mentioned dozens of times in the Constitution. It would be absurd simply to assign all of those powers over to an elected president. Therefore, the amended constitution would require some intricate redrafting.
And the more intricate the redrafting the more alarmed your marginal punter becomes when faced with the Yes/No question in her local state school.
Far easier to mount a revolution and to start again.
The Parliament to appoint an el Presidente. He/She can open flower shows. Elect one and he will assume he has some power.
Power to keep on residing with the people: we keep ownership of the Constitution. In Yankistan politicians can change the constitution. Don’t want that here.
We don’t need no stink’n powerful presidents.
I fear that direct electionism is based on a very arrogant premise: that it would be great if the president retained the right to publicy rebuke the government of the day.
That, and the implied subversion of our existing partisan institutions, that’s what it’s all about. It’s having a Clover Moore or a Peter Andren as head of state.
Of course people who want this will tell us that this freedom-of-conscience needn’t stop the prez from following the letter of the law, it wouldn’t be a power grab to have his/her excellency merely speak their mind, as the reserve powers (if they still exist) would be codified… Oh, and if we elect an ex-Liberal like Clover then how on earth is this some kind of Leftish plot, Nickws?
My response would be that direct electionism is really just spurious anti-establishment politics. It’s so vague & gutfeeling driven as to be beyond Left or Right. It’s the urbane equivalent of those RARA folk who say dumb populist things like, “Why can’t we have a parliament of Independent MPs?”
That’s why there would be a footnote on the ballot directing everybody to that simple edit of the constitution from ‘99 where ‘the Monarch and ministers in council’ or such as been replaced with the least effort. (If there is then a new plebiscite to introduce a different version of the presidency then that ballot would include the new amendments. We’d have a very brief 1st republic, maybe even one where the 2nd republic was backdated to take effect at the same time as the 1st… The lawyers could figure it out easily.)
Katz @ 53,
I agree completely with you:
Perhaps the ‘evil clown republicans’ have already anticipated this. It is worth taking a look at the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and their Inquiry into the machinery of referendums. It isn’t a big read, it was very hastily set up and has only received 32 written submissions. This Inquiry is looking directly at modifying the Yes/No Pamphlet for a referendum and it seems that they would like to both create a body to sanitise the Yes/No Pamphlet and turn it into some kind of an advertising document, as well as providing public funds for a mass media campaign to “educate” the public about an impending referendum vote.
I think it would be very divisive in society if they did make major marketing modifications to the machinery of referendums and such a strategy to get the republic over the line could fire people up and generate public mayhem. I am totally opposed to changes made at this time to the machinery of referendums. I don’t trust these politicians. What did you say about it being easier to start a revolution rather than distributing the Yes/No Pamphlets with all the changes to the constitution listed verbatim?
Basically, you can not expect the next referendum on the republic to be accompanied with a Yes/No Pamphlet as it was in the past. It could be supported with a very expensive (funded by taxpayers, of course) and sophisticated marketing. The Inquiry has not yet closed.
It is on topic so I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it here. I think you could have a council for head of state with a rotating chair who we take to be our head of state for a particular calendar year. The council for head of state would be filled with a person from each state (and the territories) after that person had won a state-based direct election. Each person there would serve for one year as our head of state. All the states would have to vote about once every 7 years.
The point I was wanting to make is that you could do this with almost no changes to the text of the constitution. You could add a new section at the end of the constitution that spells out the process for selecting our head of state. You would still refer to our head of state as the “Queen”.
The second covering clause could be interpreted (I think anyway) that whatever rules for succession to the Crown are, our head of state will follow those rules:
Since the Statute of Westminster 1931 (ratified in 1942 to take effect from 3 September 1939) the Crown is divisible and there is such a thing as the Crown in right of the Commonwealth (an Australian Crown) and a Crown in right of [enter state name here], etc.
We could ask the other Commonwealth realms (after the changes have been accepted by referendum for a new section on how to elect our HoS) to accept our new democratic rules for succession to the Australian Crown. If the other Commonwealth realms agreed, then the process for succession will transfer to the rules in the new section of the Constitution – and we would not have to change ANYTHING that is already in the Constitution as it is now. We would only need to add a new section by referendum on how we elect our HoS. And we would have an elected HoS. This would be a “Crowned Republic” with the emphasis on the ‘republic’. That’s one reason why I think it would be important to make the term in office is very short and to ensure that a different person from a different state is our HoS from year to year.
We don’t want some presidential dynasty starting up. I suppose you could chararcterise the George W. Bush Presidency in part as an experiment in initiating US presidential dynasties. It didn’t seem to work too well though…
Another point about this model is that we keep the Constitution largely as it is and we keep the Governor-General as well. The elected HoS from this approach will not be able to exercise the reserve powers.
I have written a lot of posts about various aspects of this new Copernican model on my blog.
So you still think the Republic model for the referendum in 1999 was minimal?
In a nutshell, 1999 was defeated by an alliance of monarchists who want the status quo forever, and various others, mainly direct electionists, who didn’t like the proposed model and were prepared to kill it on the basis that they would have another go with their preferred model later.
I am still concerned that this time around (assuming that there is a this time around) we’ll get a direct election model of some kind, and you’ll get an alliance of monarchists, conservative republicans who think that direct election is a direct route to dictatorship either of the President or the High Court, and still probably some direct electionists who are peeved because their particular model didn’t get up.
If you are going to buy a car that you know you are going to be stuck with for a very long time, any old model just won’t do. Most people would want to think through exactly what they need from their model before they would commit to one or the other. I don’t think that we have had a full debate about what we want from a republic in Australia.
We haven’t really compiled a public list of requirements for the republic yet. If there is a list of requirements, lets see it and take a good look at the points on the list. You could probably build a table with these requirements and tabulate how each of the proposed models meets the requirements. You would do something like that for well planned engineering projects, so why not with the model for a republic. The republic we set up will last for hundreds of years if we do a good job. Instead we seem to have narrow interests deciding on the kind of republic we will have, stifling debate and planning a way to get it passed without having an open public debate about the requirements for the model itself. The process is not open and honest.
Robert M,
I couldn’t have put the evil consequences of the direst election of a President any better.
A direct election in a state only is very different from a direct election Australia-wide. A person who wins an election in a state-based election to be our head of state for a year can not claim a popular mandate. They will have no legitimacy to rival the Prime Minister. You could even make the argument that a person elected in a state to be HoS for a limited time should rightly be associated with the Senate rather than the House of Representatives. If parliament were to sit and an elected HoS was to attend then we could make it customary that they sit with the Senate. We could make it so that the HoS could not formally confront the PM in parliament on political matters. If a HoS pushed an issue with the PM of the day in an informal or social setting it would be with very poor manners.
A direct election model along the lines of what ARM is proposing would be dangerous. I would not want to see a nation-wide election for the HoS. At the same time, polls show an overwhelming support for direct election of our HoS, even among monarchists. If options for selecting the HoS were to be put in a plebiscite it is highly likely that direct election will be the most popular choice. Given that, I think we can still design a direct election model that is safe. A key aspect of that, I think anyway, is to limit the scope for the direct election of a HoS to a particular state only.
Again, with the Copernican models the HoS will not have the reserve powers. They could not threaten the PM with dismissal. We would still have an appointed Governor-General who will continue to act only on advice of the Prime Minister, except of course in the unusual situation (such as when Jack Lang was dismissed and in 1975) when the reserve powers are exercised. When the reserve powers are exercised, it has been followed immediately with a general election. In both cases, the government that was dismissed lost the following election. That was the democratic decision of the people on the affair. The reserve powers are more like a reset button on a computer, rather than a virus. In any case, with the Copernican models the elected head of state will not be able to exercise the reserve powers.
This doesn’t overcome the problem of the office of Governor General. The GG is mentioned more often in the Constitution than the monarch.
Under your arrangement, we’d have these elected “monarchs” who would still be faced with the task of ratifying the appointment of a GG. The whole thing appears to be incredibly clumsy.
Moreover, there still remains the question of the reserve powers of the GG and the monarch. Under your arrangement both these mini-monarchs AND the GG could exercise reserve powers. Potentially disastrous.
And there still remains the infamous Section 59…
Katz @ 63,
The elected “monarchs” would take the place of the Queen in our Constitution and you would expect them to follow long-standing conventions for how the monarchs have acted in relation to the Governments under them. Queen Elizabeth II has been a good example, in my view, of a monarch in a constitutional monarchy who has not interfered with government. I would expect that we would need to codify some of these conventions and add them to the constitution through referenda over time. If an elected mini-monarch breaks a convention, then once they are out of office you could expect a concerted effort to formalise that convention into words and to have it added to the Constitution after a successful referendum. Over time the powers and boundaries for the head of state will become progressively codified and formalised in the Constitution. It is a kind of incremental codification of the powers of the head of state. But to start with, we can expect convention to have a hold on an elected head of state if they take the place of the Queen in our Constitution.
On a post at LP a while back there was a point made about there being a convention that a US President serves only two terms. Franklin D Roosevelt served more than two terms as President and that prompted the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment a few years after his death so that the limit on the number of terms a President could serve in office was fixed to two. That is a good example of how the system would deal with a breaking of convention. I don’t think it is something that we can codify completely and I don’t think it would be a good idea to do so either. Conventions, or the unwritten part of the Constitution, still have power and in our adversarial system you would expect an Opposition to defend Conventions if it helps them politically. It works as a system. If, however, you tried to codify all the conventions you might find that an army of lawyers would be looking for legal loopholes and unexpected concatenations of meanings that are in the formal wording but that were not part of the conventions they were meant to replace. Not everything needs to be written in the Constitution. The Prime Minister is not mentioned in the Constitution, as an example. I think the argument that the Constitution does not reflect current practice and hence needs to be re-written misses the very point of a Constitution in the Westminster system.
The Governor-General retains the reserve powers and this is a continuation of the situation we have had since Federation. The Queen, our head of state at the moment, can not exercise the reserve powers and if she asked the Governor-General to do so I would expect the Governor-General to offer as a gentle rebuke some advice on how our system of Government works, and if the monarch would persist with her request it would most likely be made public and become a major political scandal. This is in part based on convention. An elected head of state that takes the place of the Queen in our Constitution would not be able to exercise the reserve powers and they should not be in a position to influence a GG to do so either.
The elected head of state would have the sole duty to appoint the Governor-General on advice of the Prime Minister. Again, this is a convention and a break in that convention would be a serious constitutional crisis that would probably be followed by a campaign to have that convention codified and added to the constitution through a referendum. The Governor-General has a term of about 4-5 years and with my proposed model of a state-based round-robin each state-elected head of state will be in office for only a year each. Not every elected head of state would be required to appoint a new GG.
To prevent political dynasties forming – as it has in India and Pakistan for example – I think it would be best to have very short terms and set up the system so that the same person could not be re-elected except after a substantial amount of time. With this proposal there would be a high turnover of people as our head of state, one a year, and they would be from all the states and most of the territories. That would help to prevent an elected “monarch” from becoming too comfortable in the role. Ultimately, we have done alright with an absent head of state for most of the last century, so having a high turnover of Australians in the role of head of state shouldn’t be a problem. We don’t want them to become too comfortable in their role and we don’t want them testing their powers and limits. We do want them to be there as a fresh face to show the rest of the world who we are. And if there is some celebrity that is controversial in the role – they will only be there for a year and there will be the previous head of state hanging around for the first six months and during the last six months there would be the person who would succeed the celebrity hanging around as well. This system won’t give us a head of state like JFK. Political tragics are best off running as candidates for parliament.
Section 59 is a worry if it is left as it is. This topic addresses the powers of the head of state directly. As mentioned before, it may be best to amend Section 59 with a bee-sting clause so that if ever a head of state were to disallow some legislation passed by both houses of parliament, then to do so would result in the immediate and automatic resignation of that head of state from office. They sting with Section 59 and then they die politically – and are out on the pavement in Canberra with their belongings.
I hope that provides some ideas on how this approach would work. Please continue to ask questions about this model and try to find problems in how it would work.
how about a genuine compromise? An electoral college! The people elect the candidates and the electors elect the pres from among themselves, as in the papal conclave. Having parliament select the candidates as has been suggested on occasion is NOT a compromise: its a full blooded direct election model. I’m not falling for that.
how about a genuine compromise? An electoral college! The people elect the candidates and the electors elect the pres from among themselves, as in the papal conclave. Having parliament select the candidates as has been suggested on occasion is NOT a compromise: its a full blooded direct election model. I’m not falling for that.
As long as they puff white smoke out of a little chimney at the end, you’ve got a winner Mr Donnelly!
RobV, we thought we had a convention in 1975 when the furthest thing from virtually all minds was the possibility that Kerr would actually use the powers that he undoubtedly possessed. It is dangerous to trust in the moderation of persons who are given enormous power. Absolute power, etc…
The persons elected by your procedure differ in two vital respects from a monarch:
1. They are elected and can therefore argue to themselves that they represent not only the executive function but also the people’s will.
2. A monarch knows that s/he holds the office in trust for her/his heirs. This element of trust serves to curb the appetite of monarchs to exercise their powers, especially in light of the vivid memory that all surviving western monarch have of Louis XVI and the French Revolution.
Katz, the dismissal was not an exercise in absolute power. There was a stalemate over supply and the Governor-General took an active role in trying to break that stalemate, even before the dismissal by trying to act as a mediator. Kerr was aware of the reserve powers and the Liberals were agitating for Kerr to use those reserve powers to break the deadlock. Whitlam didn’t seem to take them seriously. All that Fraser could do in the hours after the dismissal before he lost a vote of confidence in the House was to pass the supply bills and then call a double-dissolution election.
My proposal is that they be elected in one state (or the territories) only. This would not give the elected head of state a popular mandate. They would be head of state for the whole of Australia and not just the state in which they were directly elected. No matter what state they are from they could only claim support from a minority of the whole population. They would not be able to demonstrate that they represent the people’s will through their election.
They may argue that the represent the executive function, but it is the Governor-General who acts on their behalf. Section 61 makes that clear:
The Governor-General can reserve a proposed law for the “Queen’s pleasure” as in Section 60, and an instance of this was the Royal Assent for the Flags Act 1953, but unless the Governor-General allows this to occur the head of state can not exercise the executive power that is vested in them.
So they can say that executive power is vested in them as the head of state but without being able to exercise that power, and they could say they were directly elected in one state or the territories, but this does not translate into representing the people’s will for the whole of the country while they are acting as the head of state.
This is more difficult to answer because they will be curbing their wish to exercise their powers for different reasons. If they are head of state for a year only, they will not have enough time to become settled in the position. If we overlap the time in office both before and after by six months then the acting head of state will always have a peer with them. If we alternate the head of state each year by gender then the head of state’s peer will be of the opposite gender. There may also be some kind of competition or tension with a particular head of state and the other states of the Commonwealth who didn’t vote for the person. You could add the idea that we could perhaps turn the Old Parliament House into the residence for the head of state – if you have visited the Old Parliament House you will notice how small, pokey and utterly exposed the place is. In short, the head of state will not have much of a chance to become comfortable in their role and they are unlikely to persist with a sense of being powerful. It will be an exciting time for them and they will be constantly meeting lots of people, but they probably wouldn’t feel that they have much control over their schedule and space. They will feel a lot of peer pressure while they are in office, unlike a monarch.
As you well know RobV, the GG needs no justification for dismissing a government. When a GG dismisses s/he never explains or justifies her/his actions. That is the meaning of “reserve powers”. I never claimed that these powers are absolute. I was quoting a famous observation about power. GGs cannot rule as tyrants. The consent of parliament to supply is essential for legal government. However, the reserve powers of GGs are still swingeing.
I believe that these powers are the major defect in our constitution. And I believe that your proposals make that defect more dangerous than it is at present.
Your discussion of Sections 60 and 61 sidesteps the troublesome Section 59. While the monarch sits a world away from Australian politics, Section 59 is unlikely ever to be invoked. When the monarch lives in Gympie or Hahndorf, or Cronulla, or wherever, the possibility that Section 59 will be invoked rises almost infinitely.
And of course Kerr could have used the reserve powers to call a half-senate election to break the deadlock …
Katz, as I understand it, the reserve powers can only be used in exceptional circumstances. If a Prime Minister has lost the confidence of Parliament and refuses to resign the GG can sack the PM. There are a number of other circumstances where the parliament itself can no long continue with integrity. That is also the case if the Parliament can not secure supply and has no money to pay its public servants. The dismissal of 1975 was not the only instance in Australian political history when a government was dismissed. The other example was the NSW state government of Jack Lang. In that case Jack Lang was forwarned that he may be dismissed. That didn’t happen in 1975 because of a reasonable fear on Kerr’s part that if he did notify Whitlam of his intention then Whitlam would be immediately on the phone to advise the Queen to immediately sack the Governor-General. Imagine if there was a stalemate and a deadlocked parliament that had run out of money and where the Governor-General had just been sacked without someone having been put sworn in as the governor-general for an indefinite time. It could have dragged on for ages. That could have turned out to be a worse constitutional crisis. The result of the dismissal was that an election was called immediately and there was a fair election. It was a deadlock in the Parliament and the government was running out of money. You had two egotistical and stubborn political leaders staring each other down with neither being willing to back down. The reserve powers in such a situation was like pressing a reset button on a computer to reboot the system. A dictatorship could be likened to a permanent virus on a computer.
There are a number of solutions to this problem of timing. One being an amount of time before the Governor General can be removed from office – even a few days – after the head of state being notified by the PM that a GG is to be removed. In such a situation, the GG could make public an ultimatum to the political leaders to either sort out their deadlock or else the reserve powers will be used to initate a new election. Its in the public, the leaders have a choice and know what their consequences will be. There needs to be a way to resolve deadlock in parliament if such a deadlock threatens the continued running of the very government itself.
With Section 59, as I have mentioned before, we could amend the section with a bee-sting clause so that if the head of state ever did exercise this power, then that head of state would be immediately removed from office for having done so. Any one head of state could only use that power once, if they wanted to do so. There are other options such as having the section removed altogether. But I think there is value in preserving the section but in modifying it so that it would ot be a danger to parliament. With a bee-sting clause Section 59 would not result in a deadlock between a head of state and the PM.
I know these are complex questions. It is worth noting that the reserve powers have been around for a long time and are a feature of the Westminster system itself. They can also be used in some other Commonwealth nations.
Not true RobV.
See Section 64:
The crucial word here is “pleasure”.
The GG may dismiss one, most or all ministers on a whim.
If the parliament objects, then the GG may call an election for a new parliament:
The Constitution also mentions that the Governor-General is the “command in chief of the naval and military forces” (Section 68). In the book by the Constitutional Centenary Foundation titled The Australian Constitution (1997) with annotated text written by Cheryl Saunders, the comment on page 74 in relation to s68 is:
Some quotes from the introduction of the book by Helen Irving titled Five things to know about the Australian Constitution:
The reserve powers are those that the Governor-General (or state Governor in the case of Jack Lang) can exercise without the advice of the Prime Minister or State Premier (the head of government). The reserve powers have been exercised when the head of government has effectively lost control so that there is no long any confidence in their advice – either through a financial crisis and/or through a hung and deadlocked parliament. It does come down to judgement. But while the Prime Minister has the confidence of the Parliament the Governor-General will only act on advice of the Prime Minister and Government, as is proper.
I think that the Governor-General who holds the reserve powers should continue to be appointed on advice of the Prime Minister because for just about everything they do they will act on advice from the Government, effectively the Prime Minister. I would not like to see an elected Governor-General or an elected head of state who could exercise the reserve powers. I am not advocating such a model, which happens to be the basic model of the mainstream republicans. I don’t think that codifying the reserve powers will help much.
Just because this may have mostly pertained in the past is no guarantee that it will pertain in the future. How many examples of Governors and Governors General acting “at pleasure” do you need before you doubt the validity of your assertion?
In any case, in 1931 and in 1975 Lang and Whitlam had the confidence of their respective parliaments.
For example, in 1931, Land did not need the consent of the NSW parliament to withdraw NSW monies from the banks. Lang’s legal beef was with the Commonwealth government. Sir Philip Game had absolutely no constitutional function to play in a state vs federal stoush.
In 1975, the Senate had not blocked supply. They had merely deferred it. Whitlam controlled a working majority in the H of R. The Senate had not passed a want of confidence motion against Whitlam. Until such a motion is passed, how was Kerr to know whether or not the ministry can provide effective government?
Don’t get me wrong. Kerr’s actions were perfectly constitutional. But your argument strengthens my case about the swingeing nature of the scope of the reserve pweors.
Katz, while I am not a historian, both the times when the reserve powers were exercised were times of economic crisis. In both cases Lang and Whitlam acted unconventionally with regard to government money. Stashing government money in the Trades Hall so that the Commonwealth couldn’t get their hands on it is not what you would expect a responsible state government to do. It may have been a response to the Great Depression and it may have been popular with workers, but it was – literally – taking things into their own hands and it wasn’t what you would expect a responsible government to do. Lang stepped away from normal political action and he was warned that the Governor thought it was illegal and that he would be dismissed if he persisted. He persisted, he was sacked and an election ensued where he lost. In Lang’s time, the Premier of NSW was a more powerful figure compared to the Prime Minister. The state governors are independent of the Governor-General and I would have thought that Governor Game’s main priority would have been to ensure the integrity of the NSW state government rather than playing umpire over a state-federal stoush – but I am not a historian so I don’t know about the context of these times.
Whitlam started many expensive new initiates such as free tertiary education and Medicare. He was PM during the energy crisis of the early to mid seventies and there was also the Loans Affair scandal during that time. Fraser was playing hardball and he wouldn’t let up. It did create a crisis in parliament and supply was not passed. It was perceived as a crisis at the time. You could argue that Whitlam lost control of parliament, even if he controlled the House with a majority.
Both of these circumstances leading up to a dismissal were extraordinary, I think we can agree to that. A full study of the history of these times would provide a better context for the decisions that were made. A lot of it would come down to personalities and the fact that conservatives, as ever, tending not to like approaches that are out of the ordinary, especially with regard to finances.
One of the main points to come out of this for me is that while the Governor-General acts on the advice of the Prime Minister, the times when the reserve powers were used were times when the Governor-General had no confidence in the advice that the Prime Minister provided or would have provided if he wasn’t sacked. That would have been even if the relevant head of government had control of the house. There was in both cases a serious financial crisis and the state Governor and Governor-General judged that the Premier and PM were not capable of resolving the crisis. The exercise of the reserve powers resulted with a general election in both cases. You could argue about the judgement of the GG or state governor at the time. But in both times it was in a context of crisis.
By having the Prime Minister appoint the Governor-General you would expect the PM to know the GG pretty well and make sure that they put someone in the role who is very unlikely to sack them. Maybe Gough was a little too aloof with regard to the GG, until it was too late.
A more interesting question is how you would deal with the reserve powers in a republic. I think having a direct election model where the election is Australia-wide and where the elected head of state can exercise the reserve powers, even if they were codified somewhat, could be disastrous. I don’t think that we can get rid of the reserve powers.
Review our discussion.
This is what I’ve been saying all along.
I’m glad you’ve come around to my point of view.
Now consider whether you want an elected monarch also to have these powers.
In regard to reserve powers in general, it is true that the post WWII German constitution abolished them in the light of Weimar Germany’s disastrous experience of Article 48.
However, in the tumultuous events of 1968, the political classes of Germany decided to give reserve powers back to an elected president. So much for learning from history.
I abominate reserve powers.
Review our discussion.
This is what I’ve been saying all along.
I’m glad you’ve come around to my point of view.
Now consider whether you want an elected monarch also to have these powers.
In regard to reserve powers in general, it is true that the post WWII German constitution abolished them in the light of Weimar Germany’s disastrous experience of Article 48.
However, in the tumultuous events of 1968, the political classes of Germany decided to give reserve powers back to an elected president. So much for learning from history.
I abominate reserve powers.