Paper 42
[ Contents ]
THE HEAD OF STATE
Letter of Jack Hammond QC published in Quadrant, April 2001, No 375, p. 5, responding to criticism of the holding of the Corowa Peoples Conference 2001 contained in the editorial of Quadrant, March 2001, No 374, p.2.
SIR: Your editorial, "Celebrating Federation" (March 2001), insults both the people supporting the forthcoming Corowa Conference and your readers' intelligence. Without offering any reasoned basis for your polemic, you proclaim, "There is to be a conference at Corowa devoted to the non-problem of the head of state, with the same dogs returning to their vomit."
Clearly, the head of state issue is and will continue to be a problem until it is resolved. The November 1999 referendum demonstrated that only 45 per cent of voters supported the Yes vote for a republic, and no state recorded majority support. However, polling both before and after the referendum reveals that the overwhelming majority of Australians want an Australian head of state. A September 1999 poll of city and country voters showed that 95 per cent agreed the head of state should be an Australian, with 88 per cent strongly agreeing. Furthermore, after the referendum, an Australian Constitutional Referendum Study found that when asked if the head of state should be an Australian, 70 per cent strongly agreed and another 19 per cent agreed.
Consequently, the 1999 November referendum result when coupled with those poll results has for the first time exposed a latent instability in Australia's constitutional framework. The Australian constitution makes the monarchy fundamental to our system of government. However, it appears that most Australians wish to separate the Australian federation from the English monarchy. Australia does indeed have a problem if, on the face of it, most of its people reject a key aspect of their constitution, yet in the same breath vote for its retention. The head of state issue is therefore an ongoing problem that requires early resolution.
To assist in that resolution, the Corowa Conference, to be held on 1st and 2nd December this year, draws upon the unique role that Corowa played over a century ago in Australia's path to nationhood. In 1893, Corowa hosted a conference which reignited the then-stalled movement towards federation. Today, it is the head of state issue which has stalled, and the 2001 Corowa Conference is designed to break that impasse.
The Conference will not consider whether Australia should separate from the monarchy, nor the preferred head of state model if it does. It will be confined to recommending an informed, fair and effective process for Australians to decide those questions later. Moreover, the Conference is designed to be non-partisan and reflect the community's views. About half its delegates will have experience or knowledge relevant to recommending practical constitutional process. They will be (and already include) commonwealth, state and territory parliamentarians ranging across the political spectrum and people who hold different positions on the head of state issue, including those who have not taken sides. The remaining half will be the public, from regional Australia and capital cities, who respond to advertisements.
It is proposed that the Conference set up a high-level, non-partisan drafting committee to prepare legislation to establish all party committees within each of the parliaments. Those committees will cooperate in investigating and reporting on two questions:
- which head of state model would best preserve our democracy if it replaced the monarchy?
- which method of deciding the head of state issue would place least strain on our federation?
After that, it is proposed, with the community informed by the reports, that there be plebiscites in which the people of each state and territory will choose their preferred head of state model for their state or territory. They will also choose the model they prefer for the commonwealth. There is no constitutional necessity for Australians to choose the same kind of model for the states, territories and the commonwealth, although that is the most likely outcome.
Finally, all Australians would vote in the one referendum on the single question of whether the whole federation (that is, the commonwealth, states and territories) should separate from the monarchy. All powers of constitutional change would be relied on, particularly the new powers created in 1986 by the Australia Acts. If supported by the overall majority of voters and the voting majority and parliament of each state, the whole federation would separate from the monarchy at the same time, with the commonwealth and each state and territory converting to the model chosen in its plebiscite. In this way, constitutional and politically legitimate change can be made without straining the federation. Otherwise, there would be no change. Either way, the issue would be resolved in Australia's interest.
One of Australia's greatest strengths has been the stability of its democratic federal system. The unresolved head of state issue erodes that stability. The Corowa Conference offers Australia an opportunity to arrest that erosion before it undermines our constitutional foundations.