Do we want a republic?

[Satay Mat]

I am a republican.

I struggle however to see how we can achieve a republic in Australia without a large shift in opinion in the republican camp.

Beasley's plan is a joke. He plans to have a plebacite on whether we want to be a republic, without specifying which type...that would follow later in a referendum.

Well unfortunately the constituion does not work like that. To change the constituion you must put forward your exact proposed change to the document (ie insert clause here saying this) which people can accept or reject. You cannot put forward 5 options and then pick the one which has the most support, and use that to change the constituion.

So lets say he has one vote "do you want a republic y/n" and the answer is y=66, n=33%.

It then goes to a 2nd vote....

"IF you had to have a republic which of these would you choose ?"
a) direct election
b) PM appoints
c) US style

etc etc etc

Lets then say that Direct Election wins with 33% of the vote.

This does not change the costitution....even if it got 51% of the vote it would not change the constituion. You would then need a third vote (this time a referendum)

Q: "Shall we change the costituion to replace the Queen with head of state elected by the people ?"

This is no different to the question put by Howard except the model is different....but you will still get the Monarchists and the "Appointee" grouping together and it will fail.

It doesn't matter how many plebacites you have....at the end of the day you need to have a referendum which puts forward one model and you must choose between that and a Monarchy. The best you could hope for in the above example is that the "Appointee" republicans realize they will never get their way and side with the other republicans rather than the Monarchists. This didn't happen last time and I doubt if it will happen next time.

Satay Mat's Republic.

We have an Australian Head of State.

The head of state rotates between the states (we are afterall a commonwealth of states). So for this 5 years the head of state of Australia is the Governor from NSW, next 5 from SA, then WA and so on.

Each state is free to choose their own method of choosing their Governor...it could be direct election, it could be appointment...could be a monarchy or you could draw a name from a hat.

This is what happens in Malaysia. Malaysia is a Monarchy but has several royal families one for each of the 13 states. The King rotates between the head of each state. In theory a state (say Sabah) could decide to have an elected head rather than a monarchy so the head of Malaysia would be elected by the people of Sabah when it was their turn.

What do you all think ?

Satay Mat

 

[Grendel]

Originally posted by Bloodstained Angel

Constitutional Monarchy has proven to be a remarkably stable, efficient and adaptable system for government down the ages - in stark contrast to republics.

Agree totally with you BSA. Thats why I favour retention of the current form of goverment.

"If it aint broke, dont fix it" applys here. So far every republican model thrown up as an alternative to the current model has to me, not seemed to be as an attractive alternative to the safe and stable goverment (even though were way over-governed,but thats another story) we currently reside under.

 

[Dippers Donuts]

Originally posted by Grendel


Agree totally with you BSA. Thats why I favour retention of the current form of goverment.

"If it aint broke, dont fix it" applys here. So far every republican model thrown up as an alternative to the current model has to me, not seemed to be as an attractive alternative to the safe and stable goverment (even though were way over-governed,but thats another story) we currently reside under.

and so if the GG was replaced by a president, with all the current GG's powers remaining the same, would that suffice for you.

No real change EXCEPT one of us, ie an aussie, could one day become our head of state.

 

[Portia]

If the only change was to make the governor general our head of state, instead of the queen, I'd vote for it tomorrow.

I even like the title of Governor-General...its distinctive, and has no more monarchist connotations than retaining the title of Prime Minister would have...

But really, there's a lot of changes to our constitution that I'd like to see ahead of the republic issue.....moving away from the Westminster two-party system, towards an actual representative parliament.....that kind of thing.

I also noticed that the royal visit ignored one of the monarchist strongholds in South Australia.....mayeb the Queen doesn't want to be head of state?...sick of all the flack.

 

[Roylion]

Originally posted by Porthos
If the only change was to make the governor general our head of state, instead of the queen, I'd vote for it tomorrow.

Then of course comes the big question. By what method would the governor-general be chosen and more importantly who by? Direct election by the people? A bi-partisan choice by Parliament? Who would be eligible? How do we ensure the Governor-General remains above politics and makes decisions following Australian constitutional law?

At the moment the Prime Minister appoints the Governor-General, but the Governor-General is not the Australian Head of State. Any decisions made by current and future Governer-General's must be ratifed by the Queen and in time her heirs and successors.

If the Governor-General is Head of State, instead of the monarch, do we need to codify the powers of a governor-general, which states exactly what they can and cannot do? The Queen's powers are outlined in the existing Australian constitution, but with an elected head of state, there are obviously changes that will need to be made. For example, how long would the term of a governor-general be for? How can a governor-general be dismissed. After all an hereditary constitutional monarch by their very definition, cannot be dismissed.

So basically, even with the "small" change of replacing the monarch with a governor-general we would still be grappling with the same questions and issues we were in 1999.