It's the first year of a new century, Australia is a republic, the Head of State is a resident and we have a President.
According to the republicans, this is what awaits us in 2001, but in point of fact this is what we had in 1901 following Federation.
As Edmund Barton (later to be our first Prime Minister) said in 1897 at the final Constitutional Convention, "If this goes through, then we are a republic." Of course, the constitution was accepted by the convention after much debate, and approved by the people in a series of referenda. What excited Barton was the fact that the people themselves approved the constitution and any changes could only be approved by the people. In australia, sovereignty derives from the people, unlike the United Kingdom, where Parliament is sovereign.
The name we chose for our country is a direct translation of the Latin "res publica" = common wealth, from which republic is derived. and the definition of "republic" in the Macquarie Dictionary describes Australia exactly.
No need to worry about the inevitable republic. We are a republic already.
The only non-republican element in our make up is the inclusion of the Queen. However, she is merely the ceremonial head of state, and a close reading of the constitution reveals that she has only three powers, none of them worth worrying about.
Under Section 2 of the Constitution, she is entitled to delegate some powers to the Governor-General. According to the Letters Patent, the only such delegated power is the appointment of Administrators to act in the absence of the Governor-General. In practice, Administrators have been selected from the ranks of the State Governors to perform the job whilst the Governor-General is overseas. Hardly a major threat to our way of life!
Her second power, also deriving from Section 2, is the power to appoint and dismiss the Governor-General. Until 1926, this was done on the advice of the British Colonial Secretary, but after this date, the Australian Prime Minister advised on the appointment, and James Scullin put his power to the test by advising King George V to appoint the Australian born Sir Isaac Isaacs as the next Governor-General. Despite his personal opposition, the King had no choice but to accept the advice.
Her third power, the seemingly alarming ability to disallow Australian legislation, is a holdover from colonial days, when the British Government reserved the power to advise the monarch to disallow "colonial legislation repugnant to British law". This power has never been used, and following the 1926 Imperial Conference, agreed never to be used. As the only person now able to advise the Queen is the Australian Prime Minister, and he is hardly likely to advise her to disallow Australian legislation, the power is moribund.
The Queen has no other power over australian affairs, and the three powers she does have are exercised on the sole advice of the Australian Prime Minister. Her function is almost entirely ceremonial, and she is a symbolic head of state.
The actual head of state is the Governor-General, and each of his powers is given to him in his own right in the Constitution. The Queen may not exercise any of his constitutional powers, nor may she give instructions on how he is to do his job. In 1975, the then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister. He did this off his own bat, and he was not acting under direction from the Queen, nor did he consult with her beforehand or seek approval afterwards.
In fact, when the Speaker of the House of Representatives wrote to the Queen, asking her to reappoint Whitlam, she wrote back that the Constitution placed the executive power firmly in the Governor-General's hands and she was unable to intervene.
Sir Isaac Isaacs in 1931 was the first Australian-born Governor-General, and since 1965 the post has been held exclusively by Australians. When republicans talk about a president, the job they mean is that of the Governor-General, rather than the Queen.
In fact we already have a President. Sir Richard Chaffey Baker from South Australia was the first President in 1901, and Senator Margaret Reid is the current President. President of the Senate, to be sure, but the Constitution refers to the job as "President" in several different places, and it makes no sense to have two Presidents. Perhaps we could call both of them Bruce, so as to avoid confusion.
The Queen exercises no real power, and our resident head of state is the Governor-General, whom the republicans want to retitle as President. And we already enjoy a republican form of government, simply because we are a republic in all but name.
So the debate is about removing the Queen's residual power, which boils down to finding someone to appoint the Governor-General instead of the Queen, and removing her as the symbolic head of state. In fact, this would make no real difference. India, for example, is a republic within the British Commonwealth, and the Queen makes Royal Visits to India as the symbolic head of the Commonwealth, just as she does to Australia, Pakistan, Canada and the rest of the far-flung Commonwealth. The Queen, and presumably the King to follow, will always enjoy a place of respect and honour within Australia.
The debate is over the method of appointing the Governor-General, who will be the undisputed head of state. If the Queen is not available to appoint him, then who?
Understandably, the popular push is for popular election. Put up a field of candidates, the people pick their choice. Works well in the USA.
Unfortunately in America, the choice boils down to a candidate from each of the major parties, and in Australia this would prove to be the case, for nobody else has the money or the organisation to run a successful national campaign. Labor would put up a candidate, as would the Libs, and one of them would get in.
This would give the Governor-General a mandate he does not now enjoy. With the authority of the people behind him, he might well feel able to exercise his very real powers in ways not intended by our founding fathers. As commander in chief of the armed forces, for instance, or by dismissing the elected Prime Minister. We have been down that road in 1975, and I think that we should be heading away from conflict and crisis, not closer to it.
Appointment by a special majority of Parliament is better, but problems arise with removal. A re-run of 1975 would see Gough Whitlam unable to dismiss Sir John Kerr without going to Parliament, and Malcolm Fraser would presumably dig in his heels and refuse to comply. If a two-thirds majority is required, then it only requires a third plus one to keep the Governor-General in office. The Government would certainly command more than half of Parliament, but the Opposition would almost certainly have more than a third, and may be unlikely to go along with any scheme of the Government's.
The "McGarvie Model" suggests appointment and removal by a council of wise men, but who is to say who will be on this council, and will they be available in a time of crisis?
Tim Fischer favours no change to the current system, but he has suggested that the Chief Justice of the High Court could appoint and remove the Governor-General on the advice of the Prime Minister. This has the drawback of making it difficult for a Chief Justice to become Governor-General, but apart from that it is the best way of keeping our current system of non-partisan appointments whilst removing the Queen from even symbolic participation in the process.
The Constitutional Convention takes place in Old Parliament House for two weeks, commencing next week on the second of Febraury, and the delegates are to debate the issues, culminating in suggestions for a referendum, where the people will vote for or against.
Referenda are tricky things, and only eight out of forty-one have ever been adopted. In 1974 we voted against Democratic Elections, and in 1988 we voted against Fair Elections, so the passage of a republican referendum is by no means assured, particularly if the people suspect that it is designed to concentrate even more power in Canberra.
In my view, the issue is complex, and expecting 150 delegates to come up with a consensus solution in ten days is optimistic, particularly as very few of the delegates have any solid grounding in constitutional law.
I won't call myself an expert, but I shall be spending as much time observing the debates as I possibly can, and reporting back on a daily basis.