2020 SUMMIT NEWS

Submitted by subed on Tue, 01/04/2008 - 10:30
in
by John Pyke | April 5, 2008 The 2020 stage-management committee has released background papers for the 10 working groups. Links to the Governance one are at http://www.australia2020.gov.au/topics/governance.cfm together with a somewhat expanded summary of the topic.  Christian Kerr from the Australian describes them as rather like a set of Monarch Notes for high school students. From the point of view of the republican debate, there are a couple of interesting points. Firstly, they indicate that the stage-managers are not totally opposed to their cast of one thousand discussing the republic.  On the expanded topic page, one paragraph says: "And given no referendum has been passed for 40 years, what are the chances that Australia can modernise its creaky constitutional framework? Or was our rejection of the Republic at the end of the last century just healthy cynicism about the model we were asked to buy?" And on page 11 of the backgrounder, there's a graphic summarising polls on the republic since 1987, together with brief references to federalism, fixed terms and revitalised ministerial responsibility.  Then on page 14 they give a list of 12 questions, of which the last is "Is there a need for constitutional reform?" All very waffly and general, but it leaves the door open for George Williams and others to demand action on the republic.