Kevin Rudd said he wanted big new ideas from his 2020 Summit. One of those big new ideas was the republic. Well, at least the Prime Minister got half of what he wanted. The republic is a big idea, but it isn't new. It's an issue that has been around since before Federation, and nine years ago we had a referendum about it.
According to media reports, 98 of the 100 people in the governance stream at the summit supported a republic. This sort of result is not surprising, given the composition of the summit. Neither is it surprising that the opinion of those who attended the summit is quite different from the rest of the community. According to the most recent polls, fewer than 50% of Australians want a republic, with the rest either being opposed or having no opinion.
The summit gave the republican cause a big boost. Although Rudd has said the republic is not a priority, there's now excited talk about a vote on it being held at the same time as the federal election in 2010.
Republicans have trumpeted that not only do they now have the overwhelming support of the nation's best and brightest, they've also reached agreement among themselves about how to get what they want.
The republican strategy that emerged from the summit is as follows. First, there will be a vote to ask the electorate whether it wants a republic. If a majority say yes, there will then be a few years of discussion about what sort of republic we should have. Once a model has been chosen, there will be a second referendum to amend the constitution.
This so-called "two-stage" process towards abolishing Australia's link with the monarchy has been hailed by the republicans as simple and understandable. The republicans say that in theory nothing could be easier than asking Australians whether they want a republic -- and, in theory, the answer to such question can only be either "yes" or "no".
But the problem with theories is that usually they don't match reality. The problem with the suggestion that Australians should just give a yes or no answer is that the reality of constitutional politics doesn't easily fit such a tick-a-box solution.
Any government that offered voters only a yes or no vote on the republic would not be offering Australians a genuine choice. It is disingenuous for anyone to claim that the debate about an Australian republic is about only two choices. The debate is actually about three choices: no change, "minimal" change (a republic with a president, probably chosen by the parliament), and "maximum" change (a republic with a directly elected president).
It's a little bit like asking a friend for a favour. Only the very naive say yes when asked "will you do me a favour?" A more sensible answer is "it depends". And so it is with the republic. Whether people support the notion of a republic depends on what sort of a republic they're offered. It is dishonest to ask people whether they want a republic without telling them the consequences of their response.
Many Australians who favour the country becoming a republic (including many in both the Labor and Liberal parties) support the "minimal" option -- but they would not in any circumstances support the "maximum" change option. Similarly, how should someone vote if they support a republic but only on the condition that a president was directly elected? At the referendum in 1999 many people who held this view voted no when offered the chance of accepting the "minimal" option.
There is no straightforward answer to these questions and it does a disservice to the Australian public to pretend otherwise. It's easy for 98 like-minded people at the 2020 Summit to raise their right hand to vote for a republic. Inventing an entirely new method of government is a slightly more difficult task.
The demand of summit participants for the new and the different was a tendency not limited to the republicans. Across the entire summit there were calls for numerous overhauls and restructures. This sort of revolutionary sentiment was captured in the initial report of the summit.
The truth is that what we have in Australia at the moment is better than many of the alternatives. And this particularly applies to our system of government.
What was absent from discussion at the summit was any acknowledgement that despite our challenges Australia is nevertheless a pretty good country in which to live, and we have a quality of life the envy of the rest of the world. If anyone at the summit did in fact say this, then somehow the ABC managed to miss it.
ADVERTISEMENT
No comments:
Post a Comment