Is Australia’s best month, certainly on the eastern seaboard. Daylight saving. The beach. Cricket. And the cocooning of politicians. Wrangles over One Nation and Fightback II are deflected gently to the boundary. No elections are held in January. No unionist leaders agitate for strikes. Big bosses go on leave and enterprises run less frenetically. January is the lucky month in the lucky country.
How fortuitous (it’s original meaning) it is that we mark in January two of the most significant days in this land’s history: January 26, 1788, and January 1, 1901. We can consider these national days in a time of leisure and at a time when it very difficult time for journalists to think of anything to write about at all.
I have a proposal. When the pollies come back, talk of the republic will resume. Opinion polls are showing increasing support for a republic, but people seem worried about how exactly it will work. They are worried that the American system will be introduced or that a President could assume unto himself or herself great powers repugnant to our love of liberty etc.
I suggest the republic be brought about in two stages. The first stage would show how the mechanics of a republic would work, without actually changing the present constitutional monarchy much at all.
The simple proposal is that from the retirement of Bill Hayden, expected in 1994, all future Governors-General be elected. Instead of the Prime Minister picking someone on his/her own, the Governor-General would be elected by a (say) two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of the two Houses of Federal Parliament.
No; it does not need a referendum to change the Constitution. Let me explain.
Take out your Constitution. Turn to Section 2. It says: “A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty’s representative in the Commonwealth”, and will have sweeping powers to call elections and sack Prime Ministers. The words “”appointed by the Queen” really mean selected by the Prime Minister and given a pro-forma nod by the Queen.
So Parliament could pass the Governors-General Appointments Act 1993 saying: “”No Minister of the Crown shall advise the Queen to appoint any person to the office of Governor-General unless that person has been approved by a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of the Federal Parliament.” And then a dozen sections would provide for how people could be nominated and the details of an exhaustive ballot to get the required majority.
The general legal principle is that a stream cannot go higher than its source. The Parliament cannot tell the Queen what to do. That is true. The Queen could ignore the law and so could the Prime Minister, but they would be unlikely too. But Parliaments tell the Executive (that is the Queen) what to do all the time, and the Executive or the Monarchy usually obey. An exception was Charles I.
There is a precedent. Turn to Section 72 of the Constitution. It says: “”The Justices of the High Court. shall be appointed by the Governor-General-in-Council.” It does not mention that they be qualified in any way. Parliament has done that. It passed the High Court of Australia Act which says: “”A person shall not be appointed as a Justice unless he (is or was a judge or has been a lawyer for five years).” It says also that the Attorney-General shall consult with the states before an appointment is made.
It is a beautiful use of the passive voice. My GG Act, however, could not do it so subtly. A law saying: “”a person shall not be appointed Governor-General unless he or she has etc etc” would be invalid because the Constitution provides that the Queen does the appointing. However, my GG Act could order the üPrime Minister about. It could order him not to advise the Queen to select a person without the requisite parliamentary approval. It would similar to the way the High Court Act orders the Executive to do certain things before appointing a High Court judge.
The parliamentary vote would then become the pattern. It would set an example as to how a President could be elected and how the office functioned, bearing in mind that a President would have a similar legal role as the Governor-General, though a different symbolic one. It would show that the process of the selection of a President need not be difficult or a matter to confuse the central issue of whether this country wants a Briton as its head of state.
I doubt whether any Government would sacrifice the power over one of its plum appointments, however wouldn’t it be nice to have a musician or cricketer as Governor-General instead of a politician, judge or military man?