By Allen Myers
A radio station in Sydney recently reported the creation of a pro-republican group called "Conservative Republicans for an Australian President". It was, presumably, an acronym joke, although in the current republic "debate", you can never be too sure.
Apparently not intended as a joke was the launching on January 24 of "Conservatives for an Australian Head of State" by Andrew Robb, former federal director of the Liberal Party.
Many people would think that Conservatives for an Australian Head of State is a redundant organisation, given the existence of Malcolm Turnbull and the Australian Republican Movement. However, what Robb really means by "Conservatives" in this case is "members of the ruling class": Robert Champion de Crespigny of Normandy Mining, the chair of the ANZ Bank and various other company directors, corporate barristers and the like.
The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Robb as saying it was time "we ... had one of our own as head of state" — leaving a certain ambiguity as to whether "we" was defined by nationality or class.
However, the members of CAHS may have to wait longer than expected before they get their shot at an Australian presidency. According to a Herald AC Nielsen survey reported on January 26, support for a "yes" vote in the referendum due later this year is down to 41%, while the "no" vote stands at 46%.
This is a considerable loss of support since the 1997 convention vote, which gave a majority to republicans. Most of this lost of support appears to be occasioned by the convention's proposal of a non-elected president. Turnbull and the Labor conservatives of ARM have argued that such a "minimalist" change is the only realistic way to win the support of Coalition conservatives for a republic.
What both sets of conservatives left out of account is the voting public, who don't trust politicians to select a president, no matter how many consultations and nominations the selection is dressed up with. According to the Herald AC Nielsen survey, three-quarters of those who said they would vote "no" in the referendum said they would be more likely to vote "yes" if the president were to be elected instead of appointed.
This desire to elect a president appears to be largely a matter of symbolism. That is, people believe in the principle that public officials should be elected, but they don't expect it to make much practical difference in this case. Only 44% of those questioned in the survey thought the decision on a republic to be "important".
A leaflet by the Hobart Democratic Socialist Party distributed at an ARM rally on January 26 put it concisely: "While jettisoning the feudal baggage inherited from Britain is a long overdue and necessary reform, the move to a republic — even if an elected president were allowed — will not make Australia fundamentally more democratic".
Even the most democratic of capitalist countries is not very democratic, for several reasons.
First, some of the most important areas of life are excluded from even a pretence of popular control. As the Hobart DSP leaflet put it, "Does anyone remember voting for unemployment? Or for Australian complicity in genocide in East Timor? Or for increasing greenhouse gas emissions?".
Second, the system of election and appointment is set up to ensure that only supporters of the present system can be chosen as presidents, prime ministers, governors general or even MPs in significant numbers. To ensure their loyalty, they are paid a salary and provided with benefits not available to working people.
Third, capitalist representative democracy deliberately separates legislation and the executive function. Thus if a parliament should go too far in a direction the ruling class doesn't approve, the unelected state bureaucracy, including police and courts, can sabotage the legislation by not enforcing it.
Socialism aims to overcome the limitations that take all real content out of capitalist democracy. Socialist democracy will take control of all aspects of social life, especially the economy. Elected officials will be paid the wages of an average worker, and will be recallable at any time by the people who elected them.
Most importantly, socialist democracy will be a system of the greatest possible direct control by the people, rather than by "representatives" who rule in place of the people. For instance, most decisions about much of daily life could be made by meetings of the people concerned, in the workplace or community. Where decisions must be made for an area so large that a meeting of all concerned is impractical, elected bodies will have both legislative and executive functions: they will oversee the implementation of the laws they pass so that the will of the voters cannot be frustrated by a conservative bureaucracy.
How would the head of state of an Australian socialist republic be selected? The chief function of a head of state is to convince working people that ruling is a specialist activity best left to the experts, and in some systems to call out the army to enforce that idea if the working people aren't convinced. A socialist direct democracy has no need of such an official.
In the present world system, heads of state have a subsidiary diplomatic function, of receiving foreign diplomats and important visitors. So the first socialist republics will probably need a pseudo head of state to fill this function. Perhaps the choice can be made by a national lottery, the loser being required to take on this chore for a limited period.