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In
the lead up to November's referendum, the competition
for least helpful contribution was always going
to be stiff. At first, the multi-hued conspiracy
theories of Phil Cleary, Ted Mack and the Real
Republicans looked set to win the day.
Then, the cries of some monarchists that an Australian
republic would see us expelled from the Commonwealth
of Nations, the western world and the intergalactic
league of decency edged ahead.
But now Peter Reith has entered the field. Doubtless
with his heart in the right place, Mr. Reith has
produced a manifesto so profoundly mistaken that
it sets new benchmarks for constitutional confusion.
His essay on the republic rises to two parts.
The first is an attack on the referendum model
which is composed about equally of the inherently
unconvincing and the utterly implausible.
The second is his own plan for a directly elected
President, which achieves the dubious distinction
of being probably the vaguest proposal in the
history of that entire implausible genre.
Sadly, both combine to cast Mr. Reith in a role
all too familiar in Australian political history:
he is the well-intentioned wrecker, unable to
come up with any convincing programme of his own,
but absolutely convinced that if he could, it
would be better than whatever is on offer.
Mr. Reith's general tactic on the referendum model
is to smear it as "elitist' and "undemocratic".
By this he means simply that what is going to
referendum is not his own pet republic. Reading
Reith, it seems that the model devised by the
Constitutional Convention is some vast anti-democratic
conspiracy.
You almost forget that within this totalitarian
nightmare, Australia would have elected Parliaments,
an elected Prime Minister, and a President chosen
only after a popular nomination process and a
bi-partisan vote of a parliamentary joint sitting.
Reith systematically distorts the referendum model
to provide his charges. He expresses horror that
the Prime Minister will have the right to "personally
select" the President, but glosses over the fact
that this is precisely the position at present
with the Governor General.
He certainly never acknowledges the uncomfortable
fact that both the nominations process contained
in the model, and the requirement that a nomination
receive bi-partisan support, represent the first
restrictions on an Australian Prime Minister's
choice of a head of state.
Similarly, Reith solemnly denounces Prime Ministerial
dismissal of the President as constitutionally
unique, conveniently failing to note that the
Governor General presently may be dismissed by
the Prime Minister for the cost of a telephone
call to Buckingham Palace.
Nor does he choose to notice that the fact that
a Prime Minister must account to the House of
Representatives for a presidential dismissal means
that prime ministerial power will be diminished,
not enhanced under the model.
All in all, Mr. Reith is a little too fond of
ignoring problems in his arguments. The Nominations
Committee would be a mere cipher he says, easily
ignored by the Prime Minister. How John Howard,
say, would simply ignore the Committee's endorsement
of an eminent Australian who may have received
thousands of nominations is hard to imagine.
Then there is the reference to sixty nine changes
to the Constitution, each apparently pregnant
with catastrophe. As Mr. Reith well knows, the
amendments proposed are the most conservative
imaginable to produce a republic. Most of them
have about as many implications as a piece of
burnt toast.
So what does Mr. Reith propose instead? Predictably,
the champion of Australian democracy is mounted
upon the plunging steed of direct election.
Mr. Reith clearly has followed the republican
debate closely enough to understand that there
are two insuperable obstacles to any such proposal.
First, a presidential election would require such
financial, media and organization resources that
only a political party could undertake it. Consequently,
a directly elected president would always be political.
Secondly, a directly elected president would enjoy
a massive electoral mandate. This would mean that
he or she would be a rival for power with the
elected Prime Minister, leading to disastrous
constitutional instability.
Mr. Reith attempts to deny these inevitabilities
with a series of propositions that are quite frankly
incredible.
Political parties would not put up presidential
candidates, he says, for fear that their opponents
would do the same. Not unless they thought they
could win, one supposes.
The public would not vote for a political presidential
candidate. At least. so long as they even got
to hear of one of the non-political candidates
in the barrage of publicity and media for the
candidates of the major parties.
Presidential candidates would not stand on policy
platforms. In the name of Jeff Kennett, what else
would they stand on? How is a President to be
elected without standing for something? Even a
President elected on something as nebulous as
their "traditional values" has a platform in their
pocket.
Apparently unconvinced by his own prophecies,
however, Mr. Reith goes on to propose a number
of truly extraordinary measures to safeguard a
presidential election.
It seems that the Australian Electoral Commission
would be given some ill-defined powers over the
distribution of material about presidential candidates.
What would those powers be? Would it have a monopoly?
Political parties would not be given funding for
a presidential campaign. But what would prevent
them from using their own resources and vast connections
to bolster their favoured candidates?
How to Vote cards would be "rendered ineffectual"
by ensuring that material relating to candidates
was provided only in voting booths. Yet how would
this be achieved without some remarkably anti-democratic
ban upon the dissemination of material during
an election campaign?
By his own standard - democracy - Mr. Reith's
vision is sadly lacking.
Yet the greatest disservice Mr. Reith has done
the republican debate is holding out the facile
promise of a "better" republic, a utopia with
a directly elected president that can be achieved
safely, simply, and by consensus.
This is a dangerous mirage.
By producing a political president with an electoral
mandate, direct election would destroy our century
old system of stable, democratic, parliamentary
government. Direct election is the cancer of the
republican debate, not the cure.
Mr. Reith should think again - long and hard.
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