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years ago a faltering federal movement was revived in
Corowa. But what was the spirit that made the Corowa
Conference of 1893 such a vital part of our nation's
history.
Patriotism, certainly. A passion for Australia? Certainly.
But most of all the power of Yes. And not just
Yes to change. The founders of our Federation said Yes
to a new Nation, to what would become the Commonwealth
of Australia, but they also said Yes to our Westminster
traditions of Government. They embraced change as a
means of strengthening our traditions of parliamentary
democracy. Their mission was both progressive and conservative.
And so is the republican movement today. In proposing
an Australian Head of State, instead of a British monarch,
we do not challenge our Australian parliamentary democracy.
We celebrate it and we mean to make it stronger and
more relevant.
At every stage of our history, the Noes have tried to
hold back the progress of this nation. No to Federation.
No to Australian Governors-General. No to removing the
power of the British Parliament to legislate for Australia.
No to ending the Privy Council's role as Australia's
ultimate Court of Appeal.
Every one of those steps on the road to independent
nationhood was resisted. Yet today, who would argue
against any of them?
On November 6, all of us will have the last chance this
century, and probably the only chance in our lifetimes,
to vote to have an Australian citizen as our Head of
State. Our vote in November will determine whether our
next Head of State is an Australian, chosen by Australians,
or King Charles III.
What will we feel when we vote Yes. We will know that
we have finished the task of nation building that our
forebears began. We will know that the national pride,
the Australian spirit that drove six colonies to form
one Commonwealth has seen its culmination; an Australian
nation in which every office is open to Australians.
An Australia whose Head of State is one of us.
The referendum will test us, but most importantly it
will be a test of our political maturity and of the
civic responsibility of our leaders. And by leaders,
I am not confining myself to members of parliament.
The single most important objective, which should unite
all Australians regardless of their views on this issue,
is that the Australian people go to the polls on November
6 understanding the nature of the proposition put before
them.
If this nation, in 1999, with all of the benefits of
a developed economy and modern communications cannot
ensure that Australians have the information to enable
them to make an informed decision, then we have not
simply failed the people of this country, we have betrayed
their trust.
That responsibility lies with all our leaders. Let me
deal first with Government. The Australian Government
knows how frustrated most Australians feel about the
lack of information on this issue. The Government must
undertake an intense and comprehensive public information
campaign, which explains the nature of the amendments,
proposed and highlights the changes being made to our
current system of Government.
Any deficiency in this public information campaign will
inevitably be seen as a calculated effort to keep the
public in the dark so that they are more likely to vote
NO. Already the monarchists are using the slogan "If
you don't understand it, don't vote for it."
The last thing every Australian will read about this
issue before they vote is the question on the ballot
paper itself. As currently proposed it is utterly misleading.
It will read A Bill for an Act to alter the Constitution
to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic
with a President chosen by a two thirds majority of
the members of the Commonwealth Parliament. It
is too long to be a simple label, and too short to be
an adequate description of the proposition.
Among other deficiencies it does not mention:
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That
the Queen is being replaced by an Australian President
as our Head of State - and yet isn't this the whole
point of the exercise?
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That
the President will have the same powers as the Governor-General
- and yet isn't that the single most important feature
of the new arrangements? If you were being asked
to vote to establish a public office, wouldn't you
want to know what the powers of that officeholder
should be?
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That
the nomination of appointment will be made with
the support of both the Prime Minister and the Leader
of the Opposition, and
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That
it will be made after considering the report of
a committee, which has received and considered the
nominations of the people.
It may not be possible to include all of these points
in the long title, but to exclude every single one of
them is indefensible.
A deal of media interest was sparked by the ARM, and
the official Yes Committee, suggesting a form of words
which were far more informative than the Government's
version but did not include the word "republic". Rather
than fight a pointless battle we varied our submission
to include "republic". But let me be quite clear about
this. The republican movement does not run away from
the word republic, we will be asking people to vote
for a republic. Nobody who goes into the polling booth
will imagine the referendum is about anything other
than a republic. But what we must do is explain what
this republic proposal means.
The form of the question is not just a semantic or idealistic
issue. Last week's Newspoll in the Australian suggested
that the Government's question would receive a 41% Yes,
43% No, 16% undecided vote. In response to a slightly
more informative, but entirely accurate, question the
numbers were 46% Yes, 40% No and 14% undecided. A Newspoll
in January, which posed an even more informative question,
explaining precisely what was involved, showed a 58.5%
Yes vote.
A victory for the monarchy, which has been won by keeping
the electorate in the dark, and rigging the question
itself, will be a hollow victory indeed. It is a crime
to deny a citizen his right to vote. Is it any less
a crime to deny him sufficient information to make an
informed vote?
Now we all know that Mr. Howard intends to vote No and
we respect and accept his position on the ultimate question.
That a Prime Minister is opposing the Referendum that
his government is sponsoring is unusual, but regardless
of his personal view, what should the nation expect
of its Prime Minister during this campaign? Certainly
it expects more than mere partisanship. Australians
are entitled to receive his honest guidance, straightforwardly
delivered, without any spin or manipulation designed
to favour one side or the other.
Because the monarchy itself has so little real support
in Australia today, the advocates of a No vote have
basically abandoned defending the Queen. They are attacking
the detail of the model proposed and they are hiding
behind the skirts of the so-call "direct electionists"
those populists who demand that the people directly
elect any Australian president. This alliance between
monarchists and direct electionists reached the point
recently where Mr Ted Mack was invited by Kerry Jones
to speak on behalf of a mixed group of No vote advocates.
The No Campaign Director, Peter Bennett, is quoted in
yesterday's Age saying the failure to offer Australians
the right to vote for the President will be a central
element in the No campaign.
A directly elected President would inevitably involve
substantial changes to our Westminster system of Government.
It would ensure that our President was a politician,
with partisan loyalties, who would constitute a political
rival to the Prime Minister. Telling Australians you
can have a directly elected President without such substantial
changes like saying you can have a 20% flat tax without
any reduction in government services.
"The
published opinion polls tell us that there is overwhelming
support for the popular election of a president. That
may well be so. It is likely that it is due to the
mistaken belief on the part of many people that the
popular election of a president would deliver an impeccably
neutral, non-party-political head of state who would
impartially soar above the whole political firmament.
Nothing could be further from reality.
"An
elected presidency seems to me to be a sure way of
politicizing the office and creating unparalleled
tensions."
John Howard's words, not mine, although I agree with
every one of them. Mr. Howard knows that the No campaign
is using the prospect of an unworkable and unachievable
republican model as means of beating a workable and
imminently achievable one. Monarchists who can no longer
credibly advocate a vote for the Queen are using the
populist allure of direct election.
More relevantly, the No campaign is using federal funds
to promote the prospect of a republic Mr. Howard abhors
to defeat a republic with which he has often said both
he and Australians can live.
If Mr. Howard, the monarchist, were only concerned to
defeat the referendum he would say nothing on the subject
of direct election. But Mr. Howard, the Prime Minister,
should be concerned to show leadership on this issue
and give Australians the benefit of his many years of
parliamentary experience. Prime Minister Howard should
speak out on the dangers of direct election, often and
loudly.
So our appeal to the Prime Minister is threefold and
it asks nothing of him but that to which the people
of Australia are entitled:
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A
comprehensive and objective public information effort
to ensure that all Australians know what they are
being asked to vote upon in November.
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A
fair question which does not mislead Australians,
and
-
That
rather than playing a partisan role, tempering every
statement by reference to whether it will support
the No case, he gives the Australian people the
benefit of his opinions so that they know what their
Prime Minister believes about the issues in the
debate.
But leadership is required from all of us, and that
includes the protagonists in this debate, two of whom
are here with us today. You will shortly hear from David
Flint who is the Convener of Australians for Constitutional
Monarchy. Mr. Flint has been lately critical of the
referendum proposal because it provides, he says, that
the Prime Minister can dismiss the President "more easily
than his cook."
Now the dismissal procedure arose from a desire at the
Convention to make the republican model as close as
possible to the status quo. So just as the Prime Minister
can remove the Governor General, so can the Prime Minister
remove a President. The important innovations in the
referendum model are that the Prime Minister cannot
replace the President he has removed, the vacancy will
be automatically filled by the senior State Governor
and the permanent replacement will be effected by the
bi-partisan procedure. Further the Prime Minister is
obliged to seek the ratification of his action by the
House of Representatives.
So in short, on dismissal, the essence of the status
quo is preserved, but improved by limiting the power
of the Prime Minister in that he cannot put his own
person in the job, and by ensuring the Prime Minister
is formally accountable to the House for his actions.
This is an outrage according to Mr. Flint.
But it was not always so. In September 1995, he cited
the ability of the Prime Minister to remove the Governor
General as a key feature of the current arrangements.
"The ultimate guarantee that the Governor-General follow
the conventions that surround the office and the throne
is in the fact that the he holds office during the Queen's
pleasure - the Prime Minister can have him removed."
Of course at that time the ARM proposed that dismissal
of the President require a two-thirds majority of a
joint sitting of the Federal Parliament. This was changed
at the Constitutional Convention, as delegates recognized
the force of the argument that if a President were committing
the worst possible breach of the conventions, namely
conspiring with the opposition, it would be impossible
to obtain a two-thirds majority.
Mr. Flint took some credit for this claiming that the
change was "an admission that we were right and they
were wrong all those years." So why don't we have his
approval? Was he being disingenuous in 1995 and 1998
subtly luring the republicans into a trap? Or is he
being disingenuous today. Or perhaps he just believes
that Australians are too stupid to catch out his contradictions?
Our other opponent Mr. Ted Mack is a self-styled people's
tribune, standing up against the evils of politics and
politicians. His whole career, of course, has been in
politics; local, state and federal. He is in fact a
serial politician. But never mind the man, what does
he stand for? He says the people want to elect their
President and he knows that because the reads the opinion
polls in the paper.
But as we all know, you can get any answer you like
if you ask the right question. Mr. Mack rarely troubles
his audiences with a description of what he really has
in mind for Australia: a wholesale, radical overturning
of our Constitution and Westminster system of Government.
But he did open up a little at the Constitutional Convention.
Mr. Mack wants:
-
A
President, directly elected by the people, with
all of the powers of Head of State and Head of Government.
Mr. Mack describes this "as the best feature of
the American constitution".
-
There
would be therefore no office of Prime Minister.
-
Ministers
would not be drawn from Parliament, but would be
chosen by the President as in America.
-
The
Federal Parliament would be elected by proportional
representation; inevitably neither of the major
parties would ever have a majority.
The consequence of Mr. Mack's vision would be an Imperial
Presidency, as in the United States, a chief executive
who is almost impossible to remove. More incredibly
still, does anyone imagine this new Presidency would
not be the captive of the major political parties? When
was the last independent elected to the American Presidency?
In America, of course, the strength of the two party
system in the Congress provides some balance to the
White House, but Mr. Mack would have none of that. He
wants a fractured Parliament, divided by proportional
representation into endlessly changing factions, no
match for the President. What a vision for Australia:
an American Presidency and an Italian Parliament.
So Mr. Mack is a royalist in two ways. First, by advocating
a No vote he is working his hardest to ensure that our
Head of State remains the Queen of England. Second,
the "real" republic he advocates is best described as
a right royal republican mess and one that the Australian
people would never, ever accept if they were told what
it actually involved.
On the other hand, the constitutional amendments to
be presented in November
"Would
not have significant consequences for the day to day
workings of Parliament or government."
"It
would not alter the day to day operation of the Commonwealth
Parliament."
"It
would not alter the current federal balance between
the Commonwealth and the States."
"It
would not give the President powers different to those
of the Governor General."
"It
would not mark a break with our tradition of stable
parliamentary democracy."
Those are the words of Darryl
Williams QC, John Howard"s Attorney General, the
first law officer of the Crown in the Commonwealth of
Australia.
Apart from the removal of the Queen, the most important
change is in the appointment of our new Head of State.
Instead of a Governor General chosen by the Prime Minister,
the process of selecting an Australian President will:
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Involve
the people through a process of public nomination.
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Ensure
a bi-partisan appointment by requiring the support
of both Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition,
thus ensuring the President will not be a political
hack or partisan of one party or the other, and
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Require
the approval of two thirds of the members of both
Houses of the Federal Parliament, every single member
of which was directly elected by the people.
On November 6, we can honour our nation and its people
be ensuring that every child can aspire to every public
office under our Constitution. We can end the anomaly
of a foreign monarch being Australia's Head of State.
But in voting Yes we will also honour our traditions
of parliamentary democracy, by approving amendments,
which enhance our Australian system of Government.
Like the founders of our Federation we will recognize
that the time has come for change but we will bring
in that change in a manner, which respects and reinforces
the parliamentary democracy that our nation has enjoyed.
The eyes of history are upon us all. On November 6,
a proud nation should vote Yes for Australia, Yes for
a Head of State who is one of us.
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