By Libby Connors
By early November, all Australians on the electoral roll will have received a ballot paper to elect candidates for a 1998 constitutional convention to discuss whether Australia should become a republic.
John Howard did not want this convention because he supports retention of the monarchy, and he has done all in his power to limit its success. In fact, if the Greens' Bob Brown had not ended the deadlock in the Senate, it would still not be going ahead.
Since it does indeed look like most Australians are going to vote for a republic, the current Liberal strategy is to opt for minimal change. That is why, in recent weeks, we have even had Andrew Robb, national director of the Liberal Party, come out in favour of a republic.
In fact, half the Liberal Party, the ALP and the Democrats are all supporting the Australian Republican Movement (ARM), which argues that all we need to do is make an Australian head of state.
The old parties want to confine this debate to whether Australia should have a member of one of Britain's richest families as our head of state, and the mainstream media are relishing reporting it as a simple two-way monarchy versus republic issue.
Don't be fooled by their attempts to exclude everyone else. We don't have to settle for the minimalist republican model that ARM is peddling. The republican debate is an opportunity to raise some fundamental questions about Australian political rights.
Our current constitution does not mention the word "environment". Nor does it guarantee a right to vote, let alone any other commitment to freedom of speech, belief, expression, freedom to organise and so on.
This is because our constitution was drafted in the 1890s — a time when trade unionists were being thrown into prison for their involvement in the Great Strikes, when frontier killings were still common in the north and west of the country, when the Queensland native mounted police were still legally operating and when white women did not have the right to vote. British politicians had a say in the drafting of our constitution, but most Australians did not.
The glaring injustices of our constitution have been overcome in a piecemeal fashion. The women's movement won the right to vote in federal elections in 1902. Aboriginal organisations led by the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) had to fight for the 1967 referendum to acknowledge indigenous Australians as citizens of the Commonwealth.
It is time to continue the work of Aboriginal activists of the 1960s and redress the constitution's major failings.
Greens and other progressive groupings are standing to try to incorporate some fundamental principles into our constitution.
Some of their common goals include a constitution that guarantees protection of the environment, that recognises the dispossession of indigenous Australians, that has a Bill of Rights to explicitly protect the civil liberties of all Australians and fairer representation of women and marginalised groups in our political system.
The convention is not likely to endorse an eco-socialist utopia, but we can use it to point to some of the fundamental weaknesses of our current constitution.
As globalisation threatens to undermine our hard-won industrial, environmental and political rights, we need to strengthen our national political rights.
That is why it is so important for the left to vote. Voting is by postal ballot and is not compulsory. It is clear that Howard is counting on the young, the unemployed, activists, students, people who are generally highly mobile and likely to have recently changed address not to bother voting. That way older, settled monarchists will be able to outvote republican supporters.
It is also important to vote only for candidates whom you know have an established record in campaigning for political reform.
There are a lot of candidates with suspect personal and political agendas. In Queensland, for example, one group calling itself Alternative Three is actually a front for Pauline Hanson and the gun lobby. Its statement is couched in the populist anti-politician, anti-government, anti-courts rhetoric that is sure to pick up the support of alienated working-class and rural Australians. Then there is the Elect the President group, which is directing preferences to the constitutional monarchists.
So not only make sure you know who you are voting for, but also make sure you don't just vote for a republic — vote for a just republic.
[Libby Connors is a Greens candidate for the Constitutional Convention.]