Real issues in republican debate
By Jonathon Strauss
In November, a referendum will be held on whether to make Australia a republic with a president as head of state, elected by a two-thirds majority of federal parliamentarians, or to retain the existing vice-regal forms. Two issues being debated in the preparation of the referendum are how the president should be elected and a possible new preamble to the constitution.
The biggest threat to the adoption of the parliamentary republic proposed by the Australian Republican Movement (ARM), which was passed by the 1998 Constitutional Convention and is supported by the ALP and many Liberal politicians and business figures, comes not from monarchists but from republicans who support a popularly elected president — people such as former federal independent MPs Ted Mack and Phil Cleary and former Labor Brisbane mayor Clem Jones. Cleary and Mack have formed a group, Real Republic (RR), to campaign for a no vote.
Mack, chairperson of RR, told Green Left Weekly that a republic is defined by popular sovereignty. "Therefore, the people must replace the monarch, and to do that they must have the right to vote. The model of the republic which came out of the Constitutional Convention will not give us a republican form of government."
Mack argued that a plebiscite should first be held on whether to break the link with the monarchy, then a referendum on what form the republic should take. "There needs to be a gap between the general question being decided and the model [for election] being decided, so that the monarchist groups can mentally abandon the monarchy and then focus on what form of a republic we should have."
The ARM has combined the questions of whether Australia should be a republic and the way of electing the president, in a way that allows the second question to be glossed over.
"[This] simply reinforces the power of the two political parties and breaks down the original separation of powers that was installed in the constitution", Mack told Green Left Weekly. "But the principle of separation of powers, and checks and balances, is fundamental to democracy."
Democracy does not concern supporters of the parliamentary republic model. In 1993, the Labor-appointed Republic Advisory Committee asserted, "The establishment of an Australian republic is essentially a symbolic change, with the main arguments, both for and against, turning on questions of national identity rather than questions of substantive change to our political system".
This was "nationalist" republicanism, according to Robert Manne, former editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, writing in the February 1 Sydney Morning Herald. Its supporters, such as Greg Craven (the Australian, February 5), fear that a directly elected president may become an alternative site of power. However, that situation already exists, as was shown when Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam government in 1975.
The real worry for conservative republicans is that a directly elected president might be more susceptible to popular pressure than a government created indirectly through the filters of parliamentary elections and mainstream party structures.
Nationalist republicanism, according to Manne, converted "a solid core of Coalition politicians to the republican cause, [but] spectacularly failed to convince the people". Manne says, "It was the radical idea of a directly elected president ... which struck a popular chord".
This proposal expresses the perspective, as Mack puts it, that "the system is broke and desperately needs reform. We want a better form of government than the ARM model will give, and we would like a better form of government that what we have now."
Peter Boyle, a leader of the Democratic Socialist Party, told Green Left Weekly, "The emerging discussion on a constitutional preamble shows that the changes the system needs go far beyond the form of government to the rights of people in the system and whose interests — the working people or the idle rich — that government serves".
On a preamble, Boyle said: "Howard and Tim Fischer, and right-wing media commentators like P.P. McGuinness and Christopher Pearson, have given their support to a constitutional preamble that recognises prior Aboriginal occupation as a historical truth — but only as long as it brings no legal or political rights with it. Any mention of Aboriginal ownership, or their dispossession or even their current disadvantages, are to be excluded, along with any other references to democratic rights. People's equality — which doesn't exist — will be asserted as if it does."
"A constitution is not a history essay", Boyle said. "It's about politics and law. So people's rights should be up front. The ALP, which promised at the federal election last year to 'support the inclusion of a new preamble which recognises the original ownership of Australia by its indigenous people', is now running the ARM line that a preamble question would confuse the vote on the republic."
Mack told Green Left Weekly that RR thinks a preamble is important but should be dealt with at a separate time. "If the questions are asked together, that will also encourage a no vote" not only against the ARM model, but also against a preamble.
But Boyle counters that republicanism "has not captured people's attention when the degree of change being proposed is narrow. Campaigners for democratic rights should look at how to link the interest in political rights expressed in the desire for a direct presidential election with proposals for Aboriginal land rights, and greater economic rights and legal rights for ordinary people."