The issues paper has firmly recognised the complexity of the republican question. It is not a question of crossing out “”Queen and Governor-General” and inserting “”President” _ the “”minimalist approach”. Once the Head of State is elected and removable by some other instrument than the Prime Minister (by advising _ read telling _ the Queen) the President has an independent fountain of power.
And that means if you leave the rest of the Constitution as is, you give the President very wide powers: to appoint and dismiss ministers including the Prime Minister and the power to dissolve Parliament and call and election. In other words, the so-called “”minimalist” approach becomes a “”maximist” approach.
So you have to codify how the President is to be elected and removed and codify the President’s powers.
The issues paper stuck to the President’s power; it did not think about resolving the reserve-powers issue laterally by looking at the powers of other institutions: specifically whether it would be better to remove the power of the Senate to block Supply; to remove the power of the Prime Minister to call elections (replacing it with fixed terms); and to remove the power to the House of Representatives to vote no confidence in a government without specifying the name of the new Prime Minister.
If, of course, these things were done, there would be no reserve powers left worth worrying about.
The issues paper stuck largely to the accepted wisdom within ruling political circles and elites. Its objections to a directly elected President were far more powerfully put than its pro-forma acknowledgment of some difficulties with electing or ratifying a president by Parliament. This was despite a poll at the weekend saying that 83 per cent of people want the people to elect the president and only 8 per cent want the Parliament to elect the president.
It would appear that the people do not necessarily want a figurehead only a President; that the people are sceptical of Parliament and politicians and are perhaps desirous of some figure to step in and sort out brawls, despite the outrage at the Whitlam dismissal in 1975.
Perhaps we have missed the real lesson of 1975: it is not that the people think that the person commanding a majority in the Reps should hold power no matter what and that no-one should be able to dismiss an elected Prime Minister, but rather the lesson is that the person who does the dismissing should not be the appointed representative of a Queen living in Britain, but rather an Australian with some sort of mandate here, provided special circumstances warrant it.
Another point is that the issues paper has raised a lot of major matters for consideration by the Australian people. Some monarchists might be rubbing their hands in glee, thinking that whenever there are muddy waters and a dispute between the major parties a referendum will be defeated. Wrong; this is not a standard referendum about greater Commonwealth powers. They underestimate the power of sentiment and historic moment: the federation and Aborigines referendums are good examples. Unless monarchists and conservatives get into this debate, there is a danger that a swag of constitutional changes will be carried on republican sentiment without their input.