IN 1904, the Governor-General, Baron Northcote, refused a request (or more technically, advice) from Labor Prime Minister John Christian Watson.
Watson had only been prime minister a few months after the protectionist-free trade coalition of Alfred Deakin fell apart. Watson was in a minority. After only a few months in office and less than a year after the 1903 election he found that George Reid, a free trader, was putting together a majority that would defeat him on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Rather than meekly surrender the prime ministership to Reid, Watson went to the Governor-General to seek an early election. Northcote denied him and called upon Reid to form a government.
We now turn to 1975 and the sacking of the Whitlam Government by Governor-General John Kerr after the Senate denied it supply.
Then in 1983, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser went to Governor-General Ninian Stephen and sought a double dissolution of parliament and an early election. Stephen sent him away to get detailed justification. In the meantime, the Labor Party changed its leader from Bill Hayden to Bob Hawke, possibly affecting the result of the election.
These are the three major occasions upon which a Governor-General has exercised political power in Australia. Each time, the exercise of the power was in line with the bald wording of the Constitution which gives power to dismiss a government, to dissolve parliament and order early elections and to refuse to sign bills passed by the parliament into law. They are sweeping powers, but seldom exercised by the appointed Governor-General.
This week, those powers were the subject of some thought by key members of the republican movement — Professor George Winterton, of the University of NSW, a long-term campaigner for the republic, and the director of the Australian Republican Movement, Greg Barns. Both acknowledged that the only way to get a republic will be to have a directly elected President. But that will present some danger because a directly elected President will be able to claim some popular mandate as the basis for exercising those sweeping powers. A directly elected President might have fewer qualms about dismissing a prime minister, ordering an early election or refusing to sign into law something passed by the Parliament.
It has probably been overstated, but the fear is there.
If we have an elected President, it is almost inevitable that the Labor Party will stand a candidate and the Liberal Party it will stand a candidate and one or other of these politicians will be elected. This seems to have escaped a lot of people who paradoxically wanted a direct election in order not to have a politician as President.
So Australia now faces gridlock on the republic question. A majority appear to want a republic. But as soon as you say what sort of republic you want enough pro-republicans desert the cause so that the constitutional monarchy wins out. An indirect model lost committed republicans to the monarchy in 1999 and presumably a direct model would frighten enough conservatives for that to be defeated as well – – unless such a model could be devised so that the elected President did not have powers to inflict mayhem and changes to the current system. If one started from scratch, one would not devise the present set-up, under which the prime minister can choose the head of state without consulting anyone or getting the approval of anyone and that, once chosen, the head of state has sweeping powers to dismiss governments or refuse to enact laws passed by parliament. The system relies hugely on the goodwill and good sense of the people engaged in it.
It seems to me that Australians can continue to rely on that goodwill and good sense whatever changes are made in order to achieve the removal of the Queen from a constitutional system and to have an Australian at its apex. However, I am in a tiny minority. The 1999 exercise revealed a huge number of conspiracy theorists and alarmists among the Australian voters.
So before a direct elected President can be put to the voters, some work must be done to codify and reduce the present sweeping powers that the constitution bestows upon the head of state.
Winterton and Barns might well look at the ACT for some ideas on how to reduce the power of a head of state. Unlike all other states and territories and the Commonwealth, the ACT does not have a head of state, governor or administrator. There are simply no head-of-state powers in the ACT . The power to order an early election is removed by having a fixed terms, so that the election is always held on the third Saturday in October. In the ACT, the Chief Minister takes on the role of formally signing bills into law – – even those he or she has personally voted against in the parliament itself. And the question of who the head of state should choose to form a government is solved by giving that power to the parliament itself. After every election the parliament votes on who should be it the Chief (or prime) Minister.
But the ACT does not have a Senate. And the Senate presents serious muddying of the water. I think it doubtful that any Senate would ever again refuse supply to a government in the way Malcolm Fraser did. However impetuous or testosterone filled a leader of the opposition might be, in future he would wait for the ordinary electoral cycle to attain office rather than inflict that destabilisation into the Australian political system. Fraser has almost admitted as much.
Nonetheless, the issue has to be addressed if it there is to be an elected President. Picture if there were an elected Labor President right now and at the Coalition had a weaker position in the Senate than it does now. There might be a grave temptation to cite the mandate of the people and force an early election.
Once again, I think it is overstated, but in a referendum campaign much would be made of it.
Winterton and Barns will have their work cut out to come up with a model for a directly elected President without either frightening pro-republic conservatives, on one hand, or risking the inevitable referendum scare campaign if the model they choose is too complex in the way it nominates and elects the President in the first place and in the way it codifies presidential power after election.
In the meantime, we will carry on with the politicians’ constitutional monarchy under which the Prime Minister of the day can choose in an utterly undemocratic way whomever he likes to be head of state. A hovering majority appear to want to accept this ridiculous and outdated state of affairs rather than adopt some sensible changes. It is a perplexing paradox that those who wanted a democratically elected President have condemned us to having a de facto head of state undemocratically picked in an unknown process behind-closed-doors.