Back to the Future: The 2004 Senate Inquiry's Report into an Australian Republic

However, as Jim Duffy pointed out in his case study on the Irish republic for the 1993 report of the RAC (Vol 2, p136) that has led to a situation where:

The result ... has been to allow Irish politicians, whenever it suits them, to agree among themselves to nominate only one candidate, who then is deemed have been elected without any participation of the electorate.

The problem of what happens when a single candidate stands for a (direct) presidential election in an Australian republic may be one of those "details" the proposed joint committee will work out. On the other hand, it could equally be viewed as a trifle better left to the "fine-tuning" of the "Drafting Convention". Or even the discretion of the government draftsmen drawing up the constitutional amendment.

But it also may not find its way into the constitutional amendment at all. Instead, it may be (quietly) left to parliamentary legislation to resolve after the republic is in place, and thus to the discretion of the very politicians vested with the exclusive right to nominate presidential candidates.

Conclusion

I am not normally given to quoting myself, but in light of the committee's choices and what I have written above about them one passage from my own submission would seem to bear repeating.

[A] bellwether will be the process the present committee chooses for moving towards an Australian republic. If it chooses one which could be perceived in terms of attempting to control or minimise the say and the influence of the Australian people …, or to impose some degree of control by others over the people's choice, then that will say a great deal about the kind of republic model that will likely end up being put to referendum. ...

[Making c]oncessions … to popular sovereignty … not only means popular involvement in the choosing of presidencies but involving the citizenry in the process of moving towards a republic in more than some token fashion. To minimise that involvement would merely be to minimise the chances of another model succeeding by maximising the chances of that model being one which a majority of voters will find unacceptable.

One cannot really have it both ways. If the people are indeed to have "ownership", then that necessarily means they must have a substantial control as well. The less control they have the more likely the real owners, be it of the process or the republic, will be somebody other than the Australian people.
Submission 526, pp173-4