An unfashionable monarchy?

Constitutional monarchy is about a desire for a figure above politics, representing the interests of all subjects by upholding a nation's laws, who can act without fear or intimidation and be the focus of loyalty without having to win the transient favour of voters or politicians.

When people line the streets to see kings and queens pass by it is an occasion to reflect on the wisdom of giving political power to a charismatic president able to command adulation on the same scale for their own purposes.

Around the world and throughout history the consequences have been disastrous. It is as Winston Churchill wrote on April 8, 1945: "This war would never have come unless, under American and modernising pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones. No doubt these views are very unfashionable ..."

Many republics have been inaugurated through coups and civil wars. In the 20th century, Brazil and Argentina experienced military dictatorship, Yugoslavia disintegrated into a bloody conflict, and Italy was governed by more than 50 different administrations after World War II. The French republic has had five different incarnations since the revolution, with their president now more powerful than the parliament and prime minister.

It is the natural order of things for human beings to live in kingdoms, as it is for other living creatures on Earth. It is not for nothing that Christians pray "your kingdom come". Out of 116 republics, only the US and Switzerland have a record of stability and unity to match the Commonwealth of Australia and neither of their systems have been successfully exported anywhere else.

It is often said monarchs reign but they do not rule. The genius of constitutional monarchy lies not so much with the power the crown exercises but the power it denies others. It is to the monarch and through them to the people that the vice-regals owe their allegiance, rather than mere politicians. A classic example was in 1975, when India's prime minister Indira Ghandi sought to impose an unjustifiable declaration of emergency to avoid the consequences of a court ruling against her, and the president hesitated. Mrs Ghandi reminded the president that she and the Congress Party had "made" him. It was to the party and to her that he owed his position and loyalty, and he signed. No Australian vice-regal would have. Their loyalty is to an apolitical monarch and thus to the people.

That they would not want to go down in history's page as being a partisan was demonstrated in 1951 when Prime Minister Robert Menzies sought a double dissolution election that many in the opposition party thought would be blocked by the Governor-General Sir William McKell, a former Labor premier, to avoid an inconvenient election. Disregarding any feeling of loyalty to his former party and, acting as per convention, parliament was dissolved accordingly.

During Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee year in 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "A lot of people of my generation have decided in part because of how important a unifier for the country the Queen has been that actually this is a better system - rationally, not simply emotionally or as part of tradition - but rationally this is a better system."

Constitutional monarchy as the ideal form of governance is supported by the Human Development Index. Compiled by the United Nations, each year this league table lists and ranks the average achievements in each country in three basic dimensions of human development:

1. a long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth;
2. knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weight) and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment ratio (with one-third weight); and
3. a decent standard of living, as measured by the natural logarithm of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in USD.

Making up only 15 per cent of countries, constitutional monarchies are a select group. In 2009 almost all were concentrated at the top, with Australia at number two. Of the top 20 developed countries, 60 per cent are constitutional monarchies. Republics make up about 90 per cent of developing countries and all least developed countries.

In addition, constitutional monarchies are known for high levels of economic and political freedom. Of the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation's rating of 157 countries enjoying economic freedom, eight of the top 22 are constitutional monarchies. Under the monarchy Australia has been a pioneer of democracy, with Federation in 1901 being the first example in world history of a nation coming into being through entirely lawful, peaceful and democratic means.

According to Transparency International, in 2009, 64 per cent of countries that were perceived as being least corrupt were constitutional monarchies.

The Australian monarchy is cost effective. The monarch receives no remuneration from the Australian taxpayer for her services. Being domiciled in the United Kingdom means the capital and maintenance costs of the royal residences and the civil list are met by the British taxpayer.

The vice-regals, who in the monarch's absence, act as heads of state federally and in the six sovereign states and abroad from 1971, accumulate a modest bill, which amounts to much less than is accrued by their counterparts in federal republics such as the United States.

Across a range of indicators a hereditary constitutional monarchy fares better as a system of government than does electing a politician as president.

The referendum on the Republic Bill in 1999 was less about an earnest attempt to forge a more democratic and independent nation in time for the Centenary of Federation and more about increasing the power of politicians.

In reality it was a hastily cobbled together compromise, amended up until its last hours in parliament. It proposed replacing the Queen and the Governor-General - who is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the prime minister and serves at Her Majesty's pleasure, with the reserve powers of an English monarch - with a president, elected by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth parliament. The president would be instantly dismissible by the prime minister without reason, without notice and without appeal. The president would also be bound by a prescribed constitutional obligation to act on ministerial advice, which was not foreshadowed at the constitutional convention which drafted the amendment, even if the advice tendered was illegal, improper or foolish.

Labelled by its detractors as the "politicians’ republic", it would have been the only one in the world without an impeachment process for the president: it divided anti-monarchist opinion ending in defeat by 54.83 per cent in the popular vote and 6-0 in the states. Such was the enthusiasm of academics and journalists and the political elite for the change, visiting media expert Lord Deedes wrote in the London Times, November 8,1999: "I have rarely attended elections in any country, certainly not a democratic one, in which the newspapers have displayed more shameless bias. One and all, they determined that Australians should have a republic and they used every device towards that end."

The monarchy is Australia's oldest institution, planted when the Union Flag was raised on Possession Island on August 22, 1770 and the east coast declared British territory by Lt. James Cook, RN, which facilitated the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The symbolism reminds Australians that for better, worse or indifferent as a result of European civilisation arriving on these islands, in less than 200 years there was a modern, western nation established here. The monarchy is as Australian as the English language or cricket. The monarch is not a foreigner, but rather a non-resident - a professional, globe trotting sovereign - for a society which enjoys its existence in a borderless world.

Remaining a Commonwealth Realm is the best safeguard for the host culture. The price of any further votes on republicanism must be constitutional protection of the national language, holiday and flag as part of the proposed amendment, or as a simultaneous question.

As the Foundation of Australia took place without the consent of the inhabitants of the time, the view has been advanced there is the need to re-negotiate the nation as a "reconciled republic". However, it is the case that modern Aboriginal people have generally approved of the demographic changes that have occurred since British settlement by marrying the heirs and successors of the colonial population and more recent arrivals and their progeny in large numbers.

The proportion of Aboriginal adults married (de facto or de jure) to non-Aboriginal spouses was 69 per cent according to the 2001 census, up from 46 per cent in 1986. The census figures show there were more intermixed Aboriginal couples in capital cities: 87 per cent in 2001 compared to 60 per cent in rural and regional Australia.

When Captain Arthur Phillip stepped ashore at Sydney Cove, most authorities place the Aboriginal population of Australia at between 250,000 and 300,000. The last accurate census on the number of full blooded Aborigines was in 1961; today the number may be no more than 30,000 out of a total "Indigenous" population of 517,200.

Based on current trends, it is more likely than not that the dysgenic traits carried by Aboriginal people and nature will decide the matter and remove this argument for change in the fullness of time.

All that remains for radical Aboriginal rights activists to do is to reconcile themselves with the fact their future lies not in statements of separateness but as an ethnic minority with equal citizenship under one law in a united Australian Federation.

According to the Australian Labor Party’s platform, it "will conduct plebiscites to establish support for an Australian head of state and the preference for different forms of a republic".

This process model should be opposed and a second referendum on a republic put back at least 30 years after the question was first brought to a head.

Australians deserve constitutional certainty. The two non-binding polls have the potential to destabilise one of the most successful constitutions in the world, without it being replaced by an unknown preference. A government can make support for a plebiscite virtually anything they want by the formulation of words put to the electorate, who are in effect asked to write politicians a blank cheque.

A less burdening alternative for the Australian taxpayer with the same effect would be to commission the Australian Bureau of Statistics to conduct a Republic Attitudes Survey similar to the national poll on preferences for the national anthem in 1974.

There should be a moratorium on an Australian republic until 2029, with the agreement of the parliamentary parties backed by legislation similar to the Flags Amendment Act 1998 (Cth).

A guaranteed period without the possibility of a referendum on Australia's constitutional status would give republicans time to complete the monumental task of developing a framework for a popularly elected presidency and let the text of their proposed amendment lie on the table, ready to be tabled in parliament and put to the people under section 128 of the constitution. It would also give the government the opportunity to implement the recommendation of the inquiry into the Plebiscite for an Australian Republic Bill 2008 for the "establishment of an ongoing public awareness campaign on Australia's constitutional system which engages as wide a range of the public as possible".