Sallyanne Atkinson Address to the Constitutional Convention Old Parliament House, Canberra Wednesday 11 February, 1998 Sallyanne Atkinson is an ARM Delegate from Queensland

I am delighted to rise as almost the last speaker in this segment as I believe speeches are professions of faith. Many of us have been elected by the people of Australia to come to Canberra to discuss, debate, evaluate and assess the very important question of whether Australia should become a republic, and the processes and choosing of a head of state. Even though we have now been here for nearly eight days and perhaps the shine has gone off the glow of our campaign idealism, I hope that the whole experience of being here with such a representative group of Australians has further reinforced our beliefs.

I believe that Australia has come to a stage in our history where we should have our own head of state who would reflect our status as an independent and autonomous nation - in other words, as a republic. For many of us, this has been something of a journey of faith, perhaps even similar to the experience of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.

For me, I guess, the journey began in 1988 with the referendum on constitutional recognition of local government. In that campaign I realised that the Australian Constitution needed revisiting and needed to be updated for our time. It was of its time and appropriate, but not for our time or for the future. Moreover, I have since come to realise that the Constitution has not really been what it was supposed to be then - a document of the government of this country.

Many advocates of no change are very passionate in their defence of what they call "the system", and I agree with them that we have among the world's best practice in politics - a great democracy with a high regard for human rights. But is the system described in the Commonwealth Constitution? Absolutely not.

In a sense, the Commonwealth Constitution has never operated as it was written. It was never followed in practice, even back in 1901. Those first generations of federal politicians worked out some very clever ways to operate around the constitutions. Americans venerate their Constitution, which actually operates exactly as it was written. The US Constitution, operative from 1790 - more than 200 years ago - is not showing its age; ours, operative from only 1901, I believe is.

One of the greatest frustrations for me at this Convention is that monarchists come to praise the Constitution but never to quote it. They refer to the systems as if they are identical and they are not. What are the central elements of the system as it has evolved? An indirectly chosen head of state, a consensus figure, without executive authority who can act as an umpire if an unexpected event - such as the death of Harold Holt - occurs; a Prime Minister and cabinet which exercise executive authority; and a House of Representatives, operating under the Westminster convention, which determines after a general election which party has or group of parties have a mandate to govern.

But the core of the system which monarchists venerate and republicans, indeed, admire is not in the Constitution. Section 61 of the Constitution reads:

The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen's representative...

That is it, no ifs or buts - and I think, Mr Chairman, this is probably the first time that section has been read out at this Convention. Those who say we should not change a word of the Constitution - and, indeed, there are many - and insist that our Constitution is fine as it is obviously have not faced up to section 61; if they did, it would be to put in a side bar or a footnote which would read 'ignore' or 'do not read this'. Prime Minister and cabinet? There is no such thing. There is no reference at all to a Prime Minister and the cabinet system of government in the Constitution.

It has evolved certainly in practice, but it is not in the document. The Constitution makes no reference to the role of elections, the House of Representatives or the party system in the making and unmaking of governments.

It has been argued that we have a dual system of government: the big 'C' Constitution and the small 'c' constitutional practice and history - and I very much hope that we can bring those two models together so that we can actually read the Constitution, teach it in schools and help people to understand how we govern ourselves. The big 'C' Constitution is a monarchical top-down divine right model; and our small 'C' constitutional practice has evolved over 97 years of experience and is indeed, as Lloyd Waddy and Tony Abbott concede, a de facto republic or a crowned republic.

One of the persistent myths peddled in this chamber has been that, since the passage of the Australia Act in 1986, the Queen has no continuing constitutional role in Australia other than appointing or dismissing the Governor-General on the Prime Minister's advice.

Under sections 59 and 60 of the Constitution, the Queen retains the right to veto Commonwealth legislation - unthinkable in practice, you would say, and I think that is certainly true, but it is still there. Indeed, the Australia Act of 1986 did absolutely nothing to change it.

The Australia Act provides in sections 8 and 9 that no act of a state parliament can be disallowed or vetoed by the Queen, and it is silent about the laws of the Commonwealth. This is because a constitutional referendum, of course, would have been required to repeal sections 59 and 60, and the issues were very much ducked. Obsolete? I guess so. But it demonstrates the need to entrench small 'c' constitutional practice into our big 'C' Constitution.

I must say, Mr Chairman, one of the more irritating assertions of the ACM at this Convention has been that, if we try to amend our Constitution to provide for an Australian head of state, we would somehow prove incapable of doing it or we would muck it up. It is as if our founding fathers - because, of course, there were no founding mothers - had the last word and that nothing can be added to what they wrote in 1898.

Have we learned nothing from 100 years of experience of working in the Commonwealth? Indeed, we have, and the time has come to legitimise our de facto arrangements and to put our small 'c' constitutional practice into the big 'C' Constitution. I think it was Sophie Panopoulos who argued that there is an Australian head of state, that it is there already. Regrettably, she did not quote the section in the Constitution that says so - and, of course, she could not because it is not to be found there. There is no reference to an Australian head of state in the Constitution.

I think the toughest challenge of all for any monarchist would be to read chapter II, the executive government, aloud to this Convention and say, "That's an accurate description of our system, and I agree with it." That is one challenge I am afraid that the ACM is never going to meet.

So, Mr Chairman, there is a striking division in the ranks of those who oppose the move to a republic. One group says, "In practice, it will change nothing, so it's really not worth making the effort." The other says, "It's going to change everything; it will lead to raping the states, destabilising the region, possibly contributing to World War III and lead to the emergence of a Hitler or a Mao." All those things have been said at the Convention. Can they have it both ways? Well, apparently.

But I think this Convention ought to make its decision on rationality, and reject the wild claims being put in the debate. As I have also said earlier this week or last, we now have an opportunity to put in place a framework and a structure which will serve us for the years ahead - and pivotal to this new structure and framework is an Australian head of state.

A head of state is an important symbol and I believe very strongly that symbols are important. They affect how we think and how we feel about ourselves as well as how others see us. A head of state should be someone who is able to go out not only to represent Australia but to actively promote Australia and to do this in a way that is free from political constraints, because any Prime Minister, no matter how good he or perhaps she is at speaking out internationally for the Australian people, is always going to be distracted and sometimes deterred by political considerations back home - and we have seen examples of that.

Back to my journey. I was a Brownie way back when the Queen came out in, I think, the early 1950s. I came by train from Southport, where we lived, to South Brisbane station and we walked across the bridge - for those of you who know Brisbane - and stood in the hot sun outside the Roma Street station, and a marvellous experience it was. But I do not think that my granddaughters would ever feel that same degree of excitement about the Queen - the symbol as she was for us all then. I grew up as a small child in Sri Lanka. I was there at the time of independence and I remember the violence not only there but also in other places in the region. We, here in Australia, have an opportunity to become a republic in a way that is free of violence and free of fear and in a way that is truly Australian: by evolution rather than revolution.

Tomorrow, we are all going to be called upon to vote on the major questions before this Convention. Today, a model has been agreed upon by the republicans among us - a preferred model with the support of a broad group of republicans - and we all look forward to constructive debate on this model tomorrow. We all look forward to what we believe should be a successful outcome for this Convention and for the people of Australia.