Congratulations to our twenty-fourth Governor General, Michael Jeffery

Major General Michael Jeffery was sworn in on 12 August as the 24th Governor General of the Commonwealth of Australia. As Governor General, General Jeffery is Commander in Chief of the Armed Services of The Commonwealth and is recognised internationally as our Head of State.

We have previously referred to General Jeffery's distinguished record of service to the nation - there can be no doubt that he will fulfil this important constitutional and ceremonial role with distinction. All Australians - well, almost all Australians - will wish him and Mrs Jeffery well.

The occasion had to be spoiled by some politicians who had to predict that he would be the last, or lament that some representative of some minority - that is someone who would be popular with the elites and might even play a political role - had not been appointed.

Apart from the need to exercise some modicum of courtesy on the day of the swearing in, don't they understand that Australians are not interested in wasting any more money on trying to change the fundamentals of our wonderfully successful constitution? In the same way, Australians are just not interested in changing their flag.

Naturally, the swearing in provoked the usual swag of letters from the discontented elites.Typical of these was one from Mr Norm Barnwell in The Australian on 12 August claiming General Jeffery said "nothing about we Ozzies ... nothing about we poor slobs ..." Well, Mr Barnwell must have sent his letter before the swearing in, or he didn't listen to the Governor General's address, or he had the sound on his television set turned down.

General Jeffery did speak about the Australian people - including, by implication self-described slobs. But as you would expect, Mr Barnwell, like the minority politicians, came out at the end of his letter to - yes you guessed it - to call for a republic.

Notwithstanding these skirmishes on the periphery, reality has at last arrived. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Geoff Kitney wrote (12 August) that Keating's big idea - including a republic and a new flag as a statement of a new sense of confidence and independence has been swept away.

In fact, the Keating era was no more than a brief aberration!

What more can we say?

They can't leave the constitution alone

As we have seen, some of our Senators can't accept the fact that as Malcolm Turnbull reluctantly admitted, nobody is interested in Australia becoming a republic. Just as nobody supports the republicans plans to change our Flag.

But one thing will interest the electors, and that is if a group of politicians spend a dollar more on this folly. After all they have already seen millions and millions of their dollars diverted from schools and hospitals to pay for not one, but two failed attempts to graft a republic on to the Constitution .

Unfortunately, those Senators are not the only ones who obviously don't treasure our Constitution.

The fact that it is one of the world's most successful, indeed one of the few that has actually worked for now over a century, just doesn't impress them. Writing in The Financial Review on 9-10 August, Brian Toohey proposes 14 ideas to improve Australia.

The 14th is to rewrite the Constitution to "reflect the reality that executive power lies with the prime minister and cabinet, not the governor general". But the document is hardly intended to be an elementary text in civics - it's a constitution after all!

Mr Toohey's purpose is more than using the Constitution as a text.

He says that the importance of clarifying these powers would increase under a republic with a high-profile president! Such as Cheryl Kernot?

The problem is, as Gareth Evans finally conceded, it is virtually impossible to do this and make the Constitution work as well as it does.

Better to start again - or just leave things as they are. And by the way, who says we want a high-profile president? I haven't seen crowds marching in the streets demanding this!

Mr Toohey's line of thought becomes clearer when he also suggests that consideration be given to "restraining executive power with a bill of rights". But experience shows that this too often results - as it has in the USA in unelected judges making laws the legislators would never dare introduce - because if they did, the people would throw them out at the next election.

Mr Toohey suggests that his 14 "bold ideas" could be embraced by any "progressive politician". It is true that republican politicians probably think of themselves as "progressive", but we suspect that rank-and-file Australians would use a different adjective.