Before the election, John Howard appeared to put the question of the republic on the same plane as the creation of a new nation.
He promised to have a people’s convention out of which would come a consensus to either do nothing or for a model for a republic. If the latter, it would be put to a referendum of the whole people.
That way of going about constitutional change was used in the 1890s when the six colonies formed a federation and Australia became a nation. It was roughly the same model used by the various British and other European colonies in Africa and elsewhere. It was used to usher in the great fundamental changes in South Africa this decade.
Howard now seems, quite rightly, to recognise that the constitutional change required to formally change Australia from a constitutional monarchy to a republic is not on that level … at least constitutionally and legally speaking, even though it is symbolically. There is no need for a convention sledge hammer to crack the republic walnut.
Legally, the formal change to a republic is quite trivial, and after the event everyone will wonder what the fuss was about, because the governance of Australia would continue in exactly the same way as now.
Constitutional monarchists have long argued that Australia is independent now; that we have an Australian Head of State now and that all the things that the republicans want are already in place. How true. Then why do they fuss so much at the change, many making fatuous assertions that the Keating republic is a recipe for totalitarianism? The answer is symbolism. The Queen is a symbol to them, and Keating was a symbol to them.
One of those two symbols is now removed. It will make the transition to the republic that much easier. There will be no bogeys about the Howard Republic.
The conservatives are more likely to deliver a republic than Labor. This is another example of an interesting phenomenon in Australian politics. The conservatives enact the socially radical things and Labor enacts the economically radical things. You would think it should be the other way around, but the record shows differently. The pattern has been that Labor sows the seed for a social reform, but the conservatives actually do it: the Family Law Act, the first land-rights Act, and the prohibition of whale hunting are examples. On the economic side, there was no way the conservatives would have been able to rearrange the vested interests among its business connections to achieve what Labor did in its radical deregulation of the financial markets.
On the republic issue, with the Keating symbol out of the way, all that remains is the removal of the Queen as symbol. That, of course, is all it need be … removal as symbol. The new president would have exactly the same position and power as the present governor-general (even unto dismissal of a government in some circumstances), with the exception of the question of how the president is chosen and how he or she might be removed. At present that lies in the hands of the Prime Minister alone. Keating rightly wanted to democratise that … but the Keating model was wrongly seen as vesting power in his hands when it was in fact doing exactly the opposite. The obvious and sensible way of electing a president is a two-thirds majority of joint sitting to approve the Prime Minister’s nomination with some sort of loose convention that the states are allowed to put forward names, in much the same way that High Court nominations work now. That would make the symbolic change with the minimum amount of legal change.
To make the change to a republic, it is not necessary to have a people’s convention. Sure, Howard will be bending another promise. But if he substitutes a view-finding plebiscite for a people’s convention he will be living up to the spirit of his promise, which was to let the people have a say about what sort of republic they want before the model is put to a second binding constitutional referendum.
It may seem like unnecessary, wasteful duplication to have two nation-wide votes, but not really. For a start an elected people’s convention will automatically cost more than the view-finding plebiscite. This is because for a convention you have to vote (for the members of the convention) AND hold the expensive talkfest which would achieve nothing. For the plebiscite you only have to hold the vote. Secondly, cost could be saved because one or other of the binding referendum or the plebiscite could be held at the same time as the election that must be held before 2000 (if we are determined to ditch the Queen before the Olympics).
Of more importance, there needs to be some choice about what sort of republic. If not, people who favour a republic at all costs will vote for it even if the proposal is Mickey Mouse and we get a Mickey Mouse republic, or a republic may be denied the majority who want one because the proposal put is Mickey Mouse: and don’t we poor Australian voters know all about Mickey mouse questions posed by politicians at referendums. They are invariably bad or have some hidden agenda; that’s why they are invariably rejected. The so-called propensity for Australians to automatonistically vote No is a myth. Ask the right question you get a Yes every time.
So the first referendum might be in two parts: Do you want a republic, yes or no. If yes move to the second part. The second part would be something like: Do you want the President to be elected by the people directly or by a two-third majority of the federal parliament?
At present, people say they want a directly elected president, largely because they haven’t though through the consequences. A full-scale referendum campaign in the knowledge that they will have to vote will ensure people understand that a direct election will be a Liberal-vs-Labor election with one or other winning and a politician inevitably becoming president whereas a parliamentary vote will result in a distinguished non-politician getting the nod. With a reasonable time for discussion people will come round to the latter.
In short, Howard sees the inevitability of the Keating approach. But it was equally inevitably that Keating was never going to be able to deliver it. That’s symbolism for you.