While everyone is concentrating on the method of (ital) selecting (end ital) the Head of State, the single biggest change in the Keating Republic package is the method of (ital) removing (end ital) of the Head of State. At present the Prime Minister can phone the Palace and the Governor-General is gone. Under the Keating plan the President can only be removed by a two-thirds majority of Parliament. It is perhaps odd that a Labor Prime Minister, particularly one who was one of the Ministers dismissed by the Governor-General in 1975 should be proposing the slight strengthening of the position of the person who holds the equivalent office in the Republic. At present the Prime Minister has the upper hand on the Governor-General. Forewarned by the events of 1975, a Prime Minister would be set to dismiss any hostile Governor-General in the event of a constitutional crisis.
Under the Keating plan that would not be possible. This is the single biggest change in Keating’s proposal. It shows that at last, 20 years after the event, Australia cease to be haunted by the spectre of 1975 as something that defines political motives and the constitutional position of each of the major parties. But perhaps Australia is hung up on the events of 1975 unnecessarily. The experience should tell any Leader of the Opposition that it would be better to wait for a normal election than to force an early one and carry the debilitating taint of illegitimacy that Malcolm Fraser had despite his majority. Malcolm Fraser only had to wait 18 months for Government to fall into his lap. Dismissals and removals aside, Paul Keating sought to persuade Republicans as much as allay the fears of wavering monarchists last night. It was an appeal to the Republicans’ minds, more than their hearts. People’s hearts tell them they want to vote directly for the President. You hear them on talkback radio; they told the Republic Advisory Committee; you read them in the letters columns; they tell you face to face and they tell the opinion pollsters the same thing.
“”I want a republic, but the people, not politicians, should elect the President. We don’t trust the politicians.” All the opinion polls show overwhelming majorities in favour of a direct election for President. So why did Paul Keating fly in the face of that and propose election by a two-thirds majority by Parliament? The answer to that lies in a couple of things. The first is the huge strength of feeling behind why people want to elect the President. The second lies in the timing of the referendum _ sometime in 1997 or 1998. That is at least two years away. The people’s real desire is not so much to have a direct election for the President. That is merely the means by which they think they will achieve a much more serious desire. That desire is not to have a politician as President. Keating has read that correctly and it is the reason for the five-year bar on former politicians being able to be President. The trouble is that direction-election people do not at present understand that a direct election will achieve exactly the opposite of what they want. But if you take a “”I-wanna-vote-for-the-President” diehard aside for five minutes, they can be persuaded. If there is a direct election, the two major parties will put up candidates and inevitably one will be elected. A politician will be elected. Even if an independent like Ross Perot stands, he would become a politician by the end of the election. Election by a two-thirds majority of Parliament means that the major parties will veto each other’s candidate and a consensus person of national stature would have to be selected. Under the Keating timetable there are two years to gets to people’s minds around those propositions. Republicans’ hearts do not need to be changed.
Their hearts are saying: “”We don’t want a politician as President”. All that is required is to persuade their minds on how they are to achieve their hearts’ desire. Keating, of course, will not have to do that himself. People will gradually do it for him, or more correctly for Australia. Now the Government proposals are on the table people will discuss it. Their hearts are already there on what sort of president they want. It is just that their minds are not across how to achieve it. It may seem that a huge change of opinion is required to get republican consensus on the method of election of the president, with polls running at 80-20 in favour of direct election. If fact, it takes only a small amount of explanation to get people to realise they will get what they want, but in a different way from what they originally thought. In two years the 80-20 is likely to be reversed.
At the same time as appealing to Republicans’ minds, Keating sought to allay the fears of people who think the republic contains some hidden power grab by Labor or Keating himself. Hence the minimalist approach. Indeed, it is so minimalist that it can be described by that normally derisive cliche as “”purely symbolic”. Exactly. That is what the republic is about _ just symbols. Keating has stripped away all of the peripheral matters that have gone with the Republican debate over the past three years, especially the reserve powers and the Supply question. For all practical purposes, everything is to say the same. Just the names change. The Governor-General is to be called President.
The Prime Minister puts the name of the President to the Australian Parliament for approval, rather than to the Queen. And the President carries on just as the Governor-General did. It is so obvious as to be boring. If it is so minimalist, why bother? Symbols. And symbols are important. It is not about the system of government. Keating has successfully divorced the republic and selecting an Australian as head of state from the system of government and the mechanics of government. The test of that can be shown by a hypothetical. What if there is another Supply crisis? Under the Keating model the new President would face exactly the issues as the present Governor-General. The only difference being that the Prime Minister can fire the Governor-General.
Under the Republic only Parliament can dismiss a President. Similarly, a President and Governor-General would face the same issues in the case of a hung Parliament, a Government that loses the confidence of the House and refuses to resign; a Prime Minister acting illegally or any other ticklish constitutional matter. Ticklish constitutional matters are too important to be clouded by the symbolism of the republic and the symbolism of the republic is too important to be clouded by ticklish constitutional problems. Paul Keating did well last night to separate them, leaving the baggage of 1975 behind.