TAKE THE TIME TO GET THE REPUBLIC RIGHT

Article published in the Sunday Times, Perth, 17 October 1999

One republic question has been worked through but insufficient time is left to work carefully through the other before the referendum.

For seven years the debate focused on the easy symbolic issue of whether an Australian should be our head of state. The recent Newspoll finding shows that support for having our head of state on the other side of the world has almost evaporated.

The hard question, the most critical and decisive faced in a referendum since federation, has hardly begun to be considered. It is whether the referendum changes would maintain the strength of one of the best democracies and federations in the world. My recent book, Democracy: choosing Australia's republic, shows that they would not.

Those changes would introduce deep flaws into the actual working of our constitutional system. Clearly the prime minister's instant power to dismiss the president would cripple the fail-safe mechanism. That mechanism enables an exceptional constitutional malfunction to be referred in the last resort to the Parliament or people for resolution. Other flaws are presidents with a great mandate encouraging rivalry with the elected government; celebrities instead of people of the calibre of our governors-general likely to become presidents; the president bound to exercise reserve powers in accordance with conventions which do not exist and would be unworkable if they did; and dissenting States forced into a commonwealth republic which they do not trust.

History teaches that the full impact of these flaws would not hit until the 2020's, when a new generation is in government. Also, constitutional changes typically last for a century or more. It would be absurd to introduce these flaws into our constitutional system and expect future generations to eliminate them.

I expect the referendum will fail largely because committed republicans will put the democracy and federation of future generations first and vote no. A high-powered parliamentary committee should then be given the task of identifying a model safe for democracy and a method of making the decision which does not risk damaging the federation. That would enable a second referendum to resolve the republic issue finally and safely.