On November 6, Australians will vote in a referendum on whether Australia becomes a republic or remains a constitutional monarchy.
The model to be voted on is the "minimalist" one, which involves the least possible change: a simple replacement of the queen and a governor-general appointed by the prime minister by a president nominated by parliamentary committee, approved by the prime minister and ratified by two-thirds of parliament.
The option supported by 67% of the electorate is not up for vote — a president directly elected by the people. Instead, we are offered a proposal not even supported by a majority of the largely hand-picked Constitutional Convention, a model which only 47% of ConCon delegates voted for.
Green Left Weekly advocates a "yes" vote for a republic on November 6. We also believe that any public official, and especially one with the broad, undefined powers of a president, should be elected, not picked in backroom deals by parliamentarians.
Although the option of having the president popularly elected will not be on the ballot, Green Left Weekly advocates exercising such a choice anyway: by writing the words "elected by the people" on your ballot. Such an action would indicate opposition to the deliberate restriction of democracy and choice implicit in the republic referendum.
(Such a vote is not informal, as long as the voter's intention is clearly marked in the appropriate box and not obscured by the additional writing.)
The establishment's 'debate'
Debate between establishment politicians and media commentators has concentrated on whether and how a shift to a republic can be accomplished with the least possible change to their status quo.
John Howard believes that even the little on offer is too risky: "We have about the most stable political system in the world and I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to change it". In other words, he and his mates are doing all right.
The establishment republicans are hardly less conservative. Malcolm Turnbull, millionaire banker and lawyer, chairperson of the Australian Republican Movement and architect of the "minimalist" model, argues: "The November model is a safe and conservative means of achieving an Australian head of state while preserving our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy".
For establishment republicans like Turnbull, any change should be about nothing more than nationalist symbolism. They hope that the simple replacement of the queen and governor-general by a president will promote "patriotism" and "national unity" — and thereby dilute increasing popular disgust at right-wing, pro-business social and economic policies.
The great concern of all such figures is to ensure that any shift to a republic does not prompt a more general questioning of Australian society and government. That could lead to the dreaded "instability".
In our view, such questioning, and the accompanying "instability", are badly needed. The end of the hereditary monarchy is but one of many changes necessary.
An undemocratic system
Far from the ideal presented by pro-capitalist politicians, Australia's political system is fundamentally undemocratic. The list of flaws is long:
- None of the basic human rights are guaranteed or even mentioned in the Constitution. Freedom of speech, of association and of conscience are at best "implied rights" and therefore subject to encroachment with little legal recourse. There is no Bill of Rights.
- The electoral system is severely tilted towards the major and already entrenched parties. Proportional representation is limited to the less powerful upper houses, which have ludicrously high quotas for election, again favouring the larger and wealthier parties. Supporters of radical or alternative political parties are, therefore, routinely denied any representation in parliament.
- Members of parliament are elected only every three or four years from electorates of massive size (federal seats have approximately 70,000 registered votes in them); they are thus largely unaccountable to their electors and are not recallable. Their salaries and conditions of life are far removed from those of the people they supposedly represent.
- The executive arm of government operates with little or no oversight by parliament, let alone the public. Despite supposed freedom of information legislation, secrecy is the order of the day. Judges, generals, senior public servants, police commissioners and public prosecutors are not elected even though they have enormous power.
- The powers of the governor-general are wide (wide enough to dismiss elected governments, as in 1975) and undefined. Far from providing for an impartial "umpire", these powers provide a last resort for the elite to exercise dictatorial control in a time of crisis.
- The space for open and participatory public debate is extraordinarily narrow. Information dissemination is dominated by media institutions whose owners, editors and frequently journalists are wholly committed to the status quo.
- The lion's share of the economy, the machinery for wealth creation, is in the hands of a minority of extremely wealthy business owners. This not only gives them the power to make unilateral decisions that can affect millions of people but also the money to corrupt the entire political system in their favour.
Replacing the governor-general with a president (with the same unspecified powers) will not alter any of these undemocratic features.
Republican nay-sayers
Justified disillusionment with the "minimalist" republic and the exclusion of any option for direct election of the president have led some to call for a "no" vote on November 6.
Some direct election republicans, such as former North Sydney mayor and MP Ted Mack and former MP for Wills Phil Cleary, are urging a "no" vote on the basis that an appointed president will (in Mack's words) "preserve and extend a monarchical form of government worse than now exists, as well as denying people the right to vote for their leader" and will therefore be "a continuation of the trend to centralism that has continued since Federation".
While the media often call this view "radical republican", Peter Reith's backing for it shows that it is anything but radical. The arguments advanced by the Mack-Cleary camp are mistaken.
Firstly, getting rid of the queen represents some long overdue house cleaning. It is an extreme anachronism that the head of state is a hereditary and sickeningly wealthy English landowner whose only claim to pre-eminence is that her forefathers proved more effective at crushing peasants and executing rivals than anyone else did. It is long past time to get rid of this vestige of feudalism.
Secondly, the real threat to democracy implicit in the "minimalist" model is not contained in the methods of selection or removal of the president (which are little different from present arrangements for appointing or removing the governor-general).
The real threat is the retention by the president of the same arbitrary and undefined "reserve powers" that the governor-general has. Given that these powers are not subject to vote on November 6, that threat to democracy will remain whether the "yes" or the "no" case prevails.
Thirdly, it is naive to believe that an elected president will end the trend towards "centralism", if the rest of the constitution and the rest of the political system remain intact.
There can be no guarantee against abuse of power by government. Neither the High Court nor an elected president nor any clause in a Constitution will guarantee us against such abuse; only the mobilised power of working people and capitalism's overthrow can do that.
All the "republican no" stance will do is assist Howard's desperate bid to retain the queen. It will not further the cause of genuine democratic restructuring.
Reject 'safe and conservative'
However, to vote "yes" and leave it at that would be to waste an opportunity to demonstrate the desire for democratic changes to the political system, including the preference for direct election of the president. It risks being read as endorsement for Turnbull's "safe and conservative" preservation of "Australian parliamentary democracy", which it certainly is not.
This is why we advocate writing "elected by the people" on the ballot. Such a tactic was used, to very good effect, during a 1981 referendum in Tasmania, when tens of thousands of voters rejected a phony "choice" between destructive dam projects and wrote "No dams" on their ballots. A similar tactic this time around could demonstrate large-scale support for more change, not less.
But it cannot stop there, at a single vote in a single referendum. If there is to be a genuine and far-ranging extension of democracy, we cannot rely on the pro-capitalist politicians, the corporate media and all the other supporters of the status quo to do it for us. We have to do it ourselves: and that means working people need to be more organised, politically conscious and politically active.