For Queen or country

The survey recently which shows about 80 per cent of Australians have no idea of the name of their Governor-General Michael Jeffery is indicative of the fact most people see the role of the Queen's representative as being irrelevant to their lives.

This survey, published in The Courier-Mail, provides a valuable signpost for the next push towards an Australian republic.

Unless there is substantial and genuine community involvement in the debate about what sort of office should replace the Governor-General in a republic, then it will be viewed as a waste of time and money by many Australians.

The challenge for republicans is to make sure the vast bulk of Australians know and care passionately about the office of head of state.

The traditional processes by which a republican model is likely to be arrived at, be it by parliamentary committee, another constitutional convention or in the confines of the cabinet room, are all flawed.

They are all processes in which, in the words of English writer George Monbiot, "the deliberations are back to front".

In each case, the public is being presented with a process and a model or models by the machinery of representative democracy - machinery that is little trusted by the community it is supposed to serve.

This is the beauty of what is called deliberative democracy; a process where communities come together to inform themselves, debate and vote on an issue.

It ensures that it is not only the representatives of our democracy who decide the process and substantive questions pertaining to an Australian republic. It empowers the essence of the Australian democracy, the people themselves. It is bottom up, not top down: An essential element of the future republican debate.

The rise of deliberative democracy in North America has been phenomenal. According to one analysis, about 50 million Americans and Canadians say they are involved in some form of deliberative democracy project each year.

We should not be surprised, given the level of mistrust and cynicism about the partisanship and dissembling that is a hallmark of modern political practice, that deliberative democracy is proving so successful.

Perhaps the most relevant example for the purposes of a deliberative democracy approach to the Australian republic is that of the Canadian province of British Columbia which, in 2003, used deliberative democracy to devise a new electoral system.

The British Columbia Government established a citizen’s assembly consisting of one man and one woman drawn from each electoral district and two indigenous members.

The assembly participants were chosen at random by the electoral commission.

This eliminated the politicking that accompanied the election and selection of delegates at the 1998 Australian Constitutional Convention, which determined the republican model put at the 1999 referendum.

The British Columbia citizen’s assembly reached a consensus on a new electoral system after months of hearings, meetings and deliberations. Such a process could easily be adopted by Australia for the next republic debate.

It could, for example, be an initiative of the Council of Australian Governments, the meeting of the Commonwealth, the states and the territories. Having the states and territories involved in the republican debate in a formal way is important because each jurisdiction's constitutional arrangements are altered by the move to a republic.

A random selection process along the lines of the British Columbia experience could choose say 300 delegates: a man and a woman from each federal electorate. This, along with Aboriginal representatives and co-chairs appointed by COAG, would provide for a truly representative democratic exercise.

The role of a Republic Deliberative Assembly would be to deal with fundamental questions such as whether or not there ought to be a plebiscite and then a referendum, or simply a referendum.

The Deliberative Assembly would determine whether or not one republican model, a number and the alternative of maintaining the status quo, would be put to the Australian people in a vote.

Importantly, the decisions that emanate from the Republic Deliberative Assembly's deliberations would be binding on the Commonwealth, state and territory governments.

In short, it is the Australian people who would be deciding the what, when and how of constitutional reform, not the Australian Parliament.

A deliberative democracy approach to an Australian republic not only provides a mechanism to reinvigorate our democracy but it lessens the opportunity for opportunist scare campaigns and division. Let's try it.