THE response to the Budget should put an end to the minimalist approach to the Republic. By minimalist, Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating meant only changing enough of the Constitution to replace the hereditary Head of State and her delegate with an Australian. By whatever way that is done (and minimalism embraces them all), it will surely mean that the Prime Minister will lose the power to sack the Head of State as he effectively sack the Governor-General now by a call to the palace.
Once John Kerr sacked Gough Whitlam, the element of surprise in future constitutional crises was gone. We now have the unseemly situation of whether the PM can get to the Palace to sack the GG before the GG can sack the PM. Take away the palace, though, and the equation changes in unpredictable ways.
The issue of whether we have an elected Australian or a well-connected Pom as Head of State is important symbolically; politically, though, the main issue is the power of the Head of State, not the birth certificate.
The post-Budget chattering about Supply tells us that politicians (of all sides) can be trusted to pursue power and retain it by whatever constitutional means available.
True, on this occasion Hewson has drawn a distinction between blocking tax rises and blocking Supply, but he had not ruled out the Supply option in the future.
(Supply is the parliamentary approval for the Executive Government to spend money levied by revenue measures. Budget tax measures, on the other hand, authorise the collection of money, usually at slightly greater rates than the previous year. Blocking them would not affect the ordinary functioning of government because tax would still be collected at the previous rate.)
So this time we have escaped a Supply crises, but the refusal of the key players to rule it out in the future shows it will not go away while the Constitution remains in its present form. So the question for the minimalists becomes: do you want to hand over to the Australian Head of State the responsibility of dealing with a future Supply crisis?
It is no good saying it is hypothetical or that it will not happen again or both sides of politics have rejected it, because plainly they have not. And the 1993 situation is different from 1975 in two ways that show the Supply issue is a bigger time-bomb than most people think.
In 1975 there were several non-Supply Bills that had been knocked back by the Senate twice. It was these Bills which enabled Malcolm Fraser, as Caretaker Prime Minister, to advise Kerr to call a double-dissolution, not the rejection a single time of Supply. If Supply were rejected now by the Senate, there would be no cause for a double dissolution.
Let me repeat that: the rejection of Supply by the Senate does ünot@ on it own provide grounds for a double dissolution.
Secondly, (hypothetically) if Hewson were installed as Caretaker PM after the Senate blocked Supply on an even 38-38 vote, he would not be able (unlike Fraser) to guarantee Supply to his own government, because the sacked Government and its Senate allies with exactly half the Senate numbers could in turn use the even vote to block it. Further, there being no trigger for a double dissolution, the stalemated Senate would stay in place for its full term (perhaps for as long as three years) in a position to knock back Supply of both the Caretaker Government or any subsequent Government elected after a House of Representatives election.
This would be a dreadful situation _ far more serious than 1975 because an election would not solve the crisis. The move to a republic and the palace option should demand it be addressed.
These are not way-out possibilities. Hostile Senates are the rule, not the exception. While politicians remain the same in their propensity to pursue power by whatever constitutional means available (as the post-Budget chatterings indicate), the Constitution must be changed to ensure that that pursuit is not laced with the potential for prolonged crises. On that score the question of a head of state and the question of Supply are inexorably linked.
And while we are fixing Supply we may as well have clear guidelines for the new president on the calling of elections and the choosing of a Prime Minister after an indecisive election or a no-confidence motion.