Now the convention election is over, the big question remains: how are we to select this president?
The outcome of the election leaves this question wide open. Most eyes have slotted winning candidates as either republican or monarchist. But in fact there are now really three camps in the convention.
The republican vote was divided between the Australian Republican Movement and other republicans with various other ideas.
Most of the latter want a direct election for president. The ARM, on the other hand, favours nomination by the Prime Minister and ratification by a two-thirds majority of Parliament.
So the convention has three groups: no president; directly elected president and indirectly elected president.
The ARM is sitting in the middle. There is now a dilemma for ARM and other moderate republicans — hold out for principle and what is best for Australia (the minimalist position and a neutral president) or give in to the ill-informed rabble who want a directly elected (inevitably a politician) as president. The former requires hard work and faith that the majority in the convention and in the wider electorate can ultimately get better informed and see the danger of a direct election.
Some moderates have already chucked in the towel. Two state Labor leaders, Western Australia’s Dr Geoff Gallop and South Australia’s Mike Rann, called on ARM to abandon the minimalist position of an indirect election. They said the position defied public opinion and risked derailing the move to a republic.
ARM’s leader, Malcolm Turnbull, however, has expressed a clear preference for an indirectly elected president and no other change. He argued that the results of the convention election now proved that republican Australians preferred the minimalist position because more ARM candidates got elected than candidates seeking a directly elected president.
True, the convention vote is the latest expression of democratic opinion, but Turnbull’s argument flies in the face of consistent opinion polls giving high majorities for a directly elected president.
It is sad and misguided, but it is the fact.
Turnbull was far more conciliatory to the directly elected president last month when a Newspoll poll revealed 78 per cent wanted a direct election.
He said, “Popular election can certainly work.
“”I think both Howard and Keating overstate the risk of popular election. You’ve got to recognise that it does work in the Republic of Ireland and has worked perfectly well for 50-odd years. You’ve got to take note of public sentiment and if it continues to support a popularly-elected president, that’s something that we’ll be looking at very constructively. What we want to do is to effect a compromise, having as much democratic participation in the choice of the head of State – and at the same time ensure that the appointee is seen to be a bipartisan figure.”
It is a strong indication that if non-ARM republican delegates at the convention and popular opinion hold fast, ARM will move to them rather than sacrifice a republic.
The tragedy for Australia is that the constitutional monarchists are also likely to hold their position of no change — no matter what. This will drive the ARM to forge an alliance with the other republicans because they are determined to have a republic — no matter what. They will with reluctance accept some form of direct election.
The monarchists will rub their hands in glee as a direct election for president will require significant changes to Australian governance which will add great fodder to a scare campaign for no change.
The tragedy is that the choice and result will be either no change or big change, instead of a sensible minimalist change. The minimalist change would be that the important symbol of head of state is made Australian and everything else stays the same.
There is a small possibility that the less dogmatic constitutional monarchists will see the obvious: that a solid majority of Australians want an Australian head of state (not the Governor-General ratified by the Queen or the Queen herself); and that to preserve the best parts of our system (which they hold so dear) it would be better to accede to that and side with the ARM in doing in a way that will cause the least change and disruption.
But we are dealing with symbols and emotion here, not logic.
I think the constitutional monarchists would rather risk the possibility of an elected president in the hope the whole republic would sink with it than compromise to retain the present system of government with a minimalist symbolic change.
With a bit of uncharacteristic statesmanship Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Beazley could cut through this likely brinkmanship by ARM and the constitutional monarchists and the stubbornness of a great majority of Australians who honestly but naively believe that a direct election for their president will somehow result in a distinguished non-politician being elected.
People do not seem to understand that a direct election for president means a Liberal candidate and a Labor candidate, one of whom will win.
But it goes deeper than just guaranteeing a head-to-head party-political election and that a politician is always president.
The real change will arise because the winning candidate will not resign from the political party. We will have a Labor President of Australia or a Liberal President of Australia, just like we have a Labor Prime Minister or a Liberal Prime Minister.
In the past when a politician was appointed Governor-General (or head of state) he resigned from the political party. McKell and Hayden resigned from the Labor Party and Hasluck resigned from the Liberal Party.
The questions to be put to the present parliamentary and machine leadership of the two major parties are these:
If there is to be a direct election for president, will your party stand a candidate?
If your party’s candidate wins the election, will the candidate resign from the party?
Asked those questions now, they would shuffle their feet and go off into a tangent about not answering hypothetical questions.
But in the face of a convention deciding this very issue, they are not hypothetical questions. In fact, the answer to them could change the apparent stubbornness of the present large majority that want a direct election.
Mr Beazley should announce that if there is a direct election for president, Labor will stand a candidate who if successful will be the Labor President of Australia. Mr Howard should do the same thing for the Libs. Australians would then understand plainly what they are in for if they persist with the nonsense of a direct election.
The ARM has a very difficult choice now. Does it hold the minimalist position and risk no consensus coming from the convention so Howard can justify himself in doing nothing? Or does it compromise with other republicans and cop a directly elected president in order for the convention to get a republican consensus?
Most of the non-ARM republicans, of course, are unlikely to move to the minimalist position because opposition to it was often the very reason for their standing.
If ARM does go for the directly elected president it has said that the president’s powers should be codified, and therefore reviewable by the High Court. The codification would be necessary if you had a president who had won a direct election and who presumably had a party label. The president could claim a greater mandate than the indirectly elected prime minister.
But there is trouble in codifying the powers of the president. It would mean spelling out what is to happen if the Senate rejects Supply. It might flow to codification of fixed-term elections to remove the head of state’s role in acceding to early elections. These issues are bound to be contentious and bound to change the system of government, perhaps for better but perhaps for worse.
There is a dilemma here for the constitutional monarchists. If the convention consensus is for a direct election and that proposal goes to the people, it could easily be accepted. This is because many people might feel they will only get one chance at a republic and they will vote for it no matter what sort it is.
To prevent that folly, it is in the hands of the constitutional monarchists to accept the inevitable and join ARM (however reluctantly) in a minimalist position to retain all of the working bits of the system they purport to love.
They should not see joy in the republican house divided, but fear it.
The other remote, but worthwhile, outcome might be that a concocted convention consensus for a directly elected president might jolt Howard and his colleagues into supporting a minimalist indirectly elected president as an escape-route compromise, given that Howard is on record as being implacably opposed to a direct election.