I find both sides of the Republic debate equally unappealing, with their common resort to shabby arguments and specious warnings. Once again, the politically active elites are patronising the electorate and showing that they do not trust Australians to make intelligent and informed decisions.
On the one hand, advocates of the "No" case are making the outlandish claim that a republic would be the first step on the road to a Stalinist tyranny or worse. While I am not drawn to any of the favoured candidates for first President, none of them strike me as being likely to metamorphose into a Saddam Hussein or Idi Amin once they take office.
The "No" case is also indulging in the humbug of offering up politicians who warn that politicians cannot be trusted to choose a president. Apart from the question of whether this really means that they cannot be trusted with anything, many of the same individuals want us to stick with the present system in which politicians have effectively been choosing the governor-general for nearly seventy years.
True, a few of the politician-picked governors-general turned out to be duds. But there have also been some genuine successes, and no system of selection is ever going to be perfect. Popular elections can throw up a Joe Bjelke-Petersen or a Gough Whitlam, and hereditary succession can produce a Prince Charles.
The people promoting the "Yes" case are no better, with their shameless attempts to invoke the cultural cringe by pretending that the rest of the world will laugh at us if we vote to remain a constitutional monarchy. And Kim Beazley's vacuous declaration that "it is time to tell kids across the country they are good enough to become president of Australia" could not have come at a worst time, given that NSW members of his party have just told the kids' parents that they are not even good enough to be given an honest chance of getting tickets for the Olympic Games.
So I would like to suggest an alternative course of action. Admittedly, some may dismiss it as fanciful. But it would certainly blow an equally large raspberry at both the "yes" and the "no" sides of the Republic Referendum, as well as offering many other wonderful benefits.
My humble proposal is for a republic without a president, or indeed, without any head of state at all. The whole point of a republic is supposed to be about symbolism, and the kind of image that we should be presenting to the world. If we really think it is necessary to make a grand statement about the egalitarianism of our nation, then no-one should be occupying a symbolic position above the sovereign and equal Australian people.
Such a move could restore us to the status we held around the end of the last century, when people in Europe and America saw us as a great beacon of democratic hope. The secret ballot was an Australian innovation, and we were one of the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote. Australia was held up as an exciting social laboratory, where many radical ideas about equality, justice, and welfare were starting to bear fruit.
A headless republic would show the world that once again we are prepared to indulge in worthy social experiments of our own provenance, rather than slavishly following dubious nostrums imported from the United States and Canada. It could even help our own chattering classes to abandon their deep sense of shame at being Australian.
A republic without a president would also provide a boost for reconciliation, for it could readily be presented as an adaptation of traditional Aboriginal beliefs that tribes or clans should not be led or represented by a single individual. It would involve a more substantial acceptance of the idea that indigenous cultures could enrich the life of our country than fatuous New Age sounding claims about "their deep kinship with their lands", or exhortations for us to "taste the spirituality of our first peoples".
So how would the duties of a president or head of state be divided up under this alternative proposal?
Occasional political crises involving the appointment or dismissal of governments could be dealt with by the judges of the High Court. This would do little more than regularise the situation which now exists, where many of the judges seem to believe that they should be able to make creative political determinations which usurp the law-making powers of popularly elected governments.
Ceremonial duties, such as opening Parliament, receiving visiting dignitaries, or hosting garden parties at Yarralumla would be handled differently. They could be allocated in a way that truly expresses the Australian ethos, through a national lottery in which every citizen would have an equal chance of wearing the ceremonial plumes for a day.
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