Those pariahs of the mainstream, Green Senator Bob Brown and Independent Senator Brian Harradine have behaved with much more maturity and principle on the republic than the establishment politicians of the Liberal, Labor and Democrat Parties.
At first the Liberals seemed content to hand the issue to Senator Nick Minchin to run as a private plaything to give his pet hobby horse of voluntary voting a trial gallop. Alternatively, it hoped that the side-effect of insisting on this off-beat voting system would be that the convention would not get off the ground so the issue could be abandoned.
Labor and the Democrats, on the other hand, seemed determined to stymie the Government’s republican convention, supposedly on the ground of their high-principled objection to voluntary voting, but more likely to ensure that they could go into the next election with the republican issue running hot and them the only parties to deliver on it.
The Greens and Senator Harradine had offered several compromises to allow the issue to go forward, but the Government refused to talk, in marked contrast to its position on the sale of Telstra and workplace relations. It seemed that the Government was not serious and had deliberately put up obstacles such as voluntary voting for the convention. It hoped that its voting system would be so unpalatable to Labor and the Democrats that they would reject the whole convention and the Liberals could forget about the whole thing.
Neither party reckoned on the sensible conduct of Senators Harradine and Brown. These two senators thought it was more important to keep the republic issue alive than worry about the voting system. And they are quite right. If the convention did not go ahead, the Government would have had an excuse to do nothing. The Labor Party would have liked that because it could present itself at the next election as the only party of the republic.
The Government should have accepted Senator Brown’s first compromise which was to have an additional question on the ballot paper asking people whether they were in favour of a republic. Given we are going through the costly exercise of a talkfest, it would have cost very little extra. Moreover, it would have given the talkfest a starting point, most likely that a majority of Australians were in favour of a republic. That might have prevented an unseemly squabble between republicans and monarchists on (ital) whether (end ital) there should be a republic and made delegates concentrate on the question of (ital) what sort (end ital) of republic.
Senator Harradine showed exceptional political nous in asking for a guarantee that the voluntary voting would not be used as a precedent for voluntary voting in federal elections. Prime Minister John Howard could hardly refuse. After all, he has said all along that the voluntary postal vote was a money saver for the republic vote, not a beachhead for later voluntary voting in federal elections. With this guarantee now in the open, however, it will be thrown in the face of the Coalition at any subsequent attempt to put up voluntary voting at federal elections. In effect, Senator Harradine has stymied it.
And so to the convention. It is difficult to see a consensus emerge. But it seems very likely that it will reveal a clear majority in favour of a republic and may at least give Mr Howard the impetus to engage in some followership, given that he will not lead.