Design
On the question of design, there is no point in expecting narrow and
broad republicans readily to agree on a republican model on the grounds
that they are all the same species. On the contrary, each group has
distinctly different constitutional suppositions.
To the narrow, typically conservative republican, the Australian
Constitution is a remarkable document that has stood the test of time in
providing a century of progressive constitutional democracy. It should not
be tampered with lightly, and all that is required is a minimal,
republican adjustment.
To broader republicans, the Constitution is at best outdated, and at
worst pernicious. It fails to deal adequately with such issues as human
rights, and needs extensive surgery. At the very least, popular democratic
principle requires that the head of state be elected.
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Between these two positions, the only obvious common ground is that
Australia’s head of state should be an Australian citizen.
In particular, it should be quite clear that narrower, more
conservative Australian republicans will be irretrievably opposed to an
elected head of state.
There are two straightforward reasons for this. First, an elected head
of state would enjoy a popular mandate, destabilizing the Australian
constitutional settlement. Second, any model of direct election would
require radical surgery to the Australian Constitution.
This is made usefully clear by the direct election models included in
the discussion
paper of the Australian Republican Movement. All will prove anathema
to conservative republicans.
Model Three, with its president selected by a directly elected
presidential college would see a head of state chosen by a body which
itself unavoidably would become an object of party political contest. The
president then would draw an indirect but powerful popular mandate by
virtue of the fact that he or she was chosen by those who had been
popularly elected for the sole purpose of electing him or her. The
practical impossibility of removing a political president completes the
picture.
Model Four, providing for full direct election, would face all of the
well-worn charges concerning the incompatibility of popular mandates
residing in both the head of state and the head of government. It would
share the difficulties of Model Three in relation to dismissal, and add to
them the practical nightmare of codification.
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Model Five, comprising direct election from a parliamentary list
bravely combines all the practical and theoretical difficulties of full
direct election with the fact that those most enamored of direct election
presumably would be highly unhappy with parliamentary limitation of their
choice.
Finally comes Model Six, discussing the possibility of an executive
presidency. The simplest observation to make of this model in relation to
conservative republicans is that, whatever theoretical virtues it might or
might not have, it would be entirely unacceptable as involving a wholesale
reconstruction of the Australian Constitution.
The result is that the basic differences in republican definition and
supposition naturally produce basic differences in republican preference.
Broad republicans typically desire direct election, while this is entirely
inconsistent with the operating assumptions of narrower, more conservative
republicans.
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