Yes, sooner or later the GG would block some legislation. He is more secure so sooner or later he would do it. It has to happen; we have a crisis on average once every 74 years. So lets look at it. Its not as black as you paint it.

The Doctor’s right. If the GG is appointed by the people it is hard to claim legitimacy for someone else dismissing him. The GG has the job of exercising the reserve powers on behalf of the people. He is THEIR representative so what right has anyone else to sack him?

One reason I am reluctant to make an exception to the purity of the word swap is it would be the thin end of the wedge: once the pollies start fiddling with the constitution thered be no end to it. All right, let us admit that there is such a thing as demagoguery, even though the senior citizen with the lifetime of public service whom the PM selected for the job is an unlikely demagogue. The exception I have always thought would be desirable would be to codify the term of office: one only for five years. That alone might solve the problem since even the most popular and unsackable GG couldnt make a career of it.

Perhaps, though, the peoples other representatives could dismiss on the peoples behalf by impeachment, say two thirds at a joint sitting. That might be a reasonable constitutional change to put to the public. Leave the peoples s2 power to dismiss as well. It gives the PM two chances.

But for the sake of argument let us assume that all that is done is switch those three words.

The GGs position would indeed be more secure than at present. A John Kerr would be more confident. As I said before, that might actually make him less hasty. But let us suppose it makes him more cocky.

The legislation for the dismissal referendum would have long been passed with an open date years earlier, signed by some previous GG. I think date to be announced is fairly common with legislation.

Now, with opinion polls in favour of the PM and the GG remaining recalcitrant, the PM would finally, reluctantly, declare that the head-to-head has to be resolved and would declare the referendum. Unless the GG is off his trolley he would immediately resign. Even if the opinion polls were dicey the PM has the resources to campaign and the GG has none (and is no politician).

Dismissal by referendum would not happen with the speed the Queen could act (as we presume) though it might not be as long as you imagine. The dismissal ballots could be mailed a day or so after the announcement, if the government had ordered the Electoral Commission to prepare them. The crisis has been headline news for many weeks and ordering the ballot envelopes is a weapon the PM would have fired which, we are assuming now, did not bring the GG to heel. The result will be that for a couple of weeks the GG will be held up to ridicule and then he becomes a certified nincompoop. Will the Opposition campaign on his behalf? I think not. Fighting for a maverick GG cannot be where their bread is buttered.

its very easy to whip up enough opposition to even a perfectly sensible referendum to ensure a no vote, so it would be easy to ensure that a majority voted against the sacking of a popularly elected G-G who had blocked an unpopular piece of legislation.

That really cant happen, can it? If the PM is going to lose, it just wont be held. If the PM is going to win, the GG will toss in the towel. BTW, I think you are assuming that there have been some perfectly sensible referendums knocked back. I disagree; I reckon there have been a lot of dopey referendums knocked back.

If the PM thinks he might not have the people on side he wont ask the people to dismiss the GG. So that legislation will be dead. No big deal. Seriously. People will run around saying the sky has fallen but it hasnt. Chuck the bill in the bin and forget it. Nothing has happened. The demagogue GG cant actually DO anything (Donald Horne wrote a book after 1975 making out he could but it was baloney). All he can do is block something and if he does he will be made to feel like hes been eating his peas with the fork turned over.

So the GG is going to be very reluctant to rock the boat. But if the legislation is unpopular and the GG shares the publics opinion, he will want to refuse to sign it. Will he? Hardly. He is not in the game of springing surprises on his government. Politics is brinkmanship but if the government is convinced he is serious, the legislation probably would not appear before him in the form originally mooted. Compromise. No bad thing.

You bring up the GST. Howard did win the election on it so a GG would be going out on a limb in declining it. But this is too stark to be realistic. Different power relations give different outcomes. Generally, people dont challenge each other to a showdown at high noon. Everything shifts a little. A different GST lower perhaps. In Switzerland where the people directly voted for the GST it is 7%.

Legislation, per se, is not the be-all and end-all. In Switzerland all legislation is under threat of referendum. It sits all of it doing nothing, for a hundred days after it has passed both houses. If within those hundred days 50000 voters sign a petition requiring a referendum, the law will sit doing nothing till the referendum is held like a year or so later. The records show that over the last century, decade by decade, six percent of legislation that goes through the Swiss parliament cops a referendum. Of those 6%, half go down the tube. Can you imagine the care with which the government, which has four different parties in the cabinet, prepares legislation? Yet care notwithstanding, 3% of all laws wind up in the WPB. We are talking about a very well-governed country.

So if a particular bill gets canned because the people didnt want it, excellent. What better reason?

But of course, our GG has pulled a stunt (in the context of past convention) and got away with it. He might do that with every bill! Implausible but it really doesnt frighten me. Eventually his term will end and in the meantime bills get adjusted in accord with the peoples wishes. We would be better governed if that prevailed at all times. Okay, granted in accord with the GGs wishes but if that is out of sync with the people the PM will have his hide.

Does the GGs signature on a bill mean anything or is it a pure formality? This is argued about but if the latter then it should be eliminated from the constitution. If the former, then let it work itself out.

I agree with your proposal that sovereignty should be expressed to reside with “the people” (several High Court Justices reckon it already does, albeit by implication), and I also think your proposal for a “one horse race” popular election/approval process for G-G is a good one which addresses most of the cogent objections to an election model.

My problem, as I thought I’d made clear but now suspect I didn’t, is that a similar election/plebiscite for dismissal of the G-G would be dangerous and ill-conceived. The system’s stability would be dependent on always selecting a G-G prepared to exercise restraint and observe constitutional conventions, because if he/she didn’t they might well prove effectively unsackable. You argue that a G-G has never been dismissed and therefore it’s an unimportant issue. But you ignore the strong possibility that it hasn’t happened because the current system ensures that it doesn’t.

A G-G who (for example) tried to block legislation with which he strongly disagreed (a far more plausible situation than the Whitlam dismissal one) would immediately be sacked by the Queen on the advice of the PM under the current system, and the blocked legislation would be immediately signed by his appointed successor. I strongly suspect, however, that numerous G-Gs have in fact privately disagreed strongly enough with particular pieces of government legislation that they would have at least been tempted to block them if they had had an effective ability to do so. Under your suggested system they would have that ability. For example, an elected G-G who disagreed with (say) Howard’s unpopular GST legislation a few years ago could have blocked it and may well then have proved practically unsackable. Just as it’s very easy to whip up enough opposition to even a perfectly sensible referendum to ensure a “no” vote, so it would be easy to ensure that a majority voted against the sacking of a popularly elected G-G who had blocked an unpopular piece of legislation. That would be a radical change in our system of government, which isn’t to say that it shouldn’t be considered, but one shouldn’t present it as a minimalist change when in reality it is anything but.

My own view is that your proposal for express popular sovereignty and popular nomination and approval of the G-G, along with my proposal for dismissal of an errant G-G by the most senior serving State Governor advised by the PM and acting in accordance with the present and longstanding conventions about their behaviour in such situations, would deliver the best of all worlds in this regard.

The Germans elect the president in a special sitting of the federal lower house members plus an equal number of reps from the L

A belated thanks for your detailed response at #35. The argument against parliamentary appointment is, as far as I understand it, that it leaves the appointment at the mercy of party apparatchiks and their sordid dealings. That is obviously a worry, but I’m not convinced it wouldn’t be possible to choose candidates in an open and honorable way. There could be a field of nominees, and an open joint sitting of the houses where candidates could be interviewed. Whatever rules and traditions enable a conscience vote for parliamentarians on issues that transcend party politics, could be extended to the GG election.

I haven’t followed your debate with Ken closely, but I hope that you manage to phase out the acrimony. I’m finding both your contributions useful; and, if there’s one thing we can probably all agree on, this is not an issue that’s worth drawing weapons over, for the reasons Nicholas gave earlier.

In #6, I suggested compromise between parliamentary appointment and popular election: either parliament elects or people appoint. Referring to the second, I said:

No one actually does that for a head of state but it is the method of choosing supreme court judges in about half the states of the US and in Japan. It works. It would also be an accurate republicanisation: precisely replacing the Queen with the people.

Ken in his summary at #23 talked about the seemingly insoluble stand-off between those favouring respectively elective and appointed models. Evidently, my two solutions hadnt registered, so I repeated them in #31, this time being explicit about the necessary changes to the constitution:

why such extremes? Parliament appoints vs people elect. Why the extremes of both the who and the how? Parliament could elect; the people could appoint see #6. The latter is simpler: just go through the constitution and strike out Queen and write in People. But both are middle of the road proposals. No elections, no campaigns, no mandates.

I briefly mention it again in the last lines of #35:

A minimalist republic would ensure that the people replace the Queen and the GG/President continued to be appointed, not elected, by the sovereign and the politicians would have nothing to do with it. That would give the GG/President the authority to dismiss (etc) without a mandate to rule.

You argue over the word sovereign in #40 so in #41 I sort out the precise hunk of sovereignty in question then repeat my suggestion of replacing Queen with People. And just so it is clear (I thought) that there is no election involved I repeat:

No change to conventions except the PM has to write a letter to the people instead of the Queen. And of course, the people could refuse. Like the King in 1946, they really could refuse.

Then in #51 Ken said:

How would the people appoint the G-G? Presumably by election

I responded with some restraint.

My language seems plain to me so I am not sure what the confusion is. At its most minimal put People for Queen in three places in s2 and s4 of the constitution to transfer all power to appoint and dismiss the GG. Do nothing else. Nothing. Assuming conventions are kept, the process would be that the people would appoint (or not) the candidate. It is just how the people appoint judges under the Missouri Plan.

That’s it. We would go on doing what we have done for a hundred years but in a republican way.

Technically, you could be even more minimal by replacing Queen only once in s2 and thus leave dismissal in the Queens hands. Two swaps of a single word and the Australian people would be appointing the GG.

I hope its clear now. Do you still see implications that are anything but simple? If you do, I am keen to hear of them.

The problem is this.

Your original proposal was, according to you, a model of simplicity. Replace “The Queen” with “The People”.

Ken and I have then pointed out that doing so opens up lots of implications that are anything but simple. Then, suddenly, you’re talking about the Missouri Plan and Japanese judges. OK, fine, but don’t pretend we’re still at search-and-replace here.

It’s not ad hominem to point out that you aren’t keeping a constant position.

The difference between appoint and elect is not clear? You Googled Missouri Plan but can’t figure it out? The citizens of the US and Japan don’t seem to have a problem, Ken. Some of those US states used to have their judges elected by the people (I think some states still do) but they changed to appointment by the people. Can you see the difference? About 20 states have adopted it. This went, state by state, two legislatures per state, argued through, then voted for. They all saw a difference.

Does the Queen elect the GG? Or does she appoint him? You really want to insist that a vote yes or no for the PM’s choice is the same as an election from competing candidates? The essential objection to election is the political campaign, is it not?

The silliest proposal you’ve ever seen? The Yanks don’t think so. Yes you are rude, Ken. If you have a substantive argument, put it. I have made the points that it is republican propriety for the power of the monarch to be transferred to the people, and that it would preserve dignity but give authority to the GG. We would just keep doing what we do now – the sovereign appoints the GG. BTW you mentioned s2. Make three swaps of “People” for “Queen” in s2 and s4 to entirely transfer appointment and dismissal. Entirely. Wouldn’t make us a republic, of course, but would remove the stumbling block.

One problem with the 1999 proposal was that it was appointment. If they had let parliament elect the HoS – as is done in Germany and Italy – there would have been some echo of the people having input, ie via their reps. But no, they insisted on appointing (and made that a formality to boot). Big diff between appoint and elect.

Dismissal of GG. Sure I concede. But you think it important and I don’t. How many governors and GGs have we had in 150 years? Couple of hundred? How many were dismissed? None. There’ve been a few who were embarrassing but what premier ran off to the Queen? None. You’re not the only one to go on about it – the pollies at the eleventh hour in Feb 1998 did too and that little spot of hubris was probably the single thing (I mean the PM’s power to instantly dismiss the Pres) that caused the 1999 referendum to go down. Power mad pollies protecting themselves from spectres of their paranoid imaginations.

You said before the GG is presently instantly accountable to the Queen. Really? The Queen jumps when the PM commands? No one has ever tried it. This obsession with the race to the palace! I should think that in theory if the GG is hard to dismiss then the pollies would behave themselves but that is far too crude a picture. The GG is a prominent citizen at the end of a successful career. It is his job to dismiss the govt and it will take guts. (Your “drop of a hat” does not quite capture it.) He has to have the power to do it and the prospect of a race to the palace may have made Kerr act hastily. Surely it would have been better if Kerr had had more confidence in his position.

All this concentration on dismissal presumes the GG is a loose cannon. The whole point is to choose types who are the very opposite. A PM ringing up the palace or threatening to call a referendum to kick out the GG is a soap opera scenario. Hollingworth simply went when asked. The lushes have merely been kept out of view (mostly).

“Tempted to throw his weight around”? To do what? He is not elected, has no political debts, made no promises and has no mandate. We might see a little more of the William Deane type outspokenness. Not so bad. In the end the PM can ask the people to fire him.

Electoral college. Another red herring. It is kept up by the ARM to prop up a pretence of being open to options. It is fundamentally wrong that an official appointed by other officials be empowered to dismiss elected representatives. It’s academic for it will never go to caucus as they know that any attempt to put it to the people would bring ridicule.

I’m not sure whether I’m just obtuse or whether you’re writing is completely opaque. I suspect a little of both. You appear to be positing a distinction without a difference between “election” and “appointment” given that yur concept of appointment apparently involves a popular election (at least by postal vote).

The far more important point is as to dismissal. Here too you seem to be conceding exactly what I said, namely that dismissal would also be by popular vote!! If you’ve ever had anything to do with large scale electoral systems, including elections or plebiscites conducted by postal ballot, you would know that they are extraordinarily slow and unwieldy. The fact that the PM could still be sacked at the drop of a hat by the G-G, but the G-G could only be sacked after a popular plebiscite that would take 6-8 weeks at least, would amount to a massive shift in the balance of power in the Australian political system. What makes you think that a G-G “appointed” (i.e. popularly elected) by the entire Australian people would never be tempted to throw his weight around against a PM who had no such personal national mandate of his own? The bald assertion “not that it would ever come to it” is just misconceived.

Sorry to sound rude, but this is one of the silliest proposals for constitutional reform I’ve ever seen. Fortunately, no politician would afford it even a moment’s consideration. OTO the proposal in an earlier comment by Ian Hope for selection and dismissal by an electoral college comprising federal, state and local government representatives is well and truly worthy of serious consideration. It’s not quite popular election, but it looks a lot more democratic than appointment by the PM or even just federal Parliament. It’s an idea that might stand a fighting chance of garnering support from both sides of the republican divide.

Correct.

“How would the people appoint the G-G? Presumably by election,”

“Appoint” is not “elect”.

“the peoples will would somehow mysteriously manifest itself”

Twaddle. As I said above, this is how the top judges in Japan and in half the US states are appointed. (The “Missouri system”.)

We could continue doing what we have done for the last 100 years: the PM writes a letter to the sovereign saying how wonderful the candidate is; the sovereign replies. I should think the reply would be pre-paid, tick the yes or no box. Set it up like a postal vote, as was done for the election of delegates to the 1998 republic conference.

The GG (or Pres) would be sacked the same way – not that it would ever come to it.

Substitute “People” for “Queen” in the constitution and the only change would be (a) the Queen would be gone and (b) the PM might be nervous when he wrote the letter since the people’s power would be real and a knockback would probably be terminally embarrassing for the PM.

I believe there have been a couple of knockbacks in the US in the sixty or so years it has been going. (None in Japan.)

No pollies, no election, no hoopla, no “mandate”. The GG keeps all dignity and has authorisation to exercise the reserve powers in the sovereign’s name.

Yes, that’s one reason it’s not practical. Keep it simple and it wouldn’t set the hares running. “Elect the GG” is a useful bogey for the politicians who want parliamentary appointment and this keeps the foolish dichotomy going. Blame Turnbull.

You don’t have to talk me into PR. Who still believes in single-member electorates?

The lower house is the creature of the executive and its sittings are superfluous: two warpainted tribes ritually dancing up and down, hollering, beating drums and waving spears – and trying to win a few seconds on the evening TV news. I went to a seminar given by the clerk of the Reps about a year ago. He was bleating about where it was headed.

Federally and in most states the PR upper house amends legislation and the lower house obediently approves it. Apart from the periodic competition for government the lower house is redundant. The clerk should be given a rubber stamp saying PASSED and the chamber turned into a bingo hall.

But I think it’s off-topic. If you don’t know it, you would appreciate Lijphart’s 1999 “Patterns of Democracy”. A fine book from the Dutch-American pol sci professor who spent his career showing that PR was the only reasonable way to go.

I’m afraid not. The Queen’s only real role under Australia’s Constitution is to appoint and dismiss the G-G (Constitution s2). Thus substituting “the people” for “the Queen” would have no real effect in most places but would be entirely question-begging in s2.. How would “the people” appoint the G-G? Presumably by election, which means you would need provisions concerning election of the G-G. Or are you suggesting that the people’s will would somehow mysteriously manifest itself? As for dismissal of a G-G, how would “the people” do this? Again presumably there would need to be some form of plebiscite as to whether a G-G should be dismissed. Since the key reserve powers of the G-G (including dismissing an elected government) may be exercised on short notice (and none at all in the case of Kerr’s dismissal of Whitlam, albeit that this was a clear breach of convention), the effect of substituting a slow and unwieldy dismissal procedure for the G-G (any conceivable mechanism for dismissal by “the people” would be very slow and complex) would be to transfer power decisively to the G-G from the elected government. The G-G would be effectively unsackable.

Compare that with the current situation where the Queen sacks the G-G on the advice of the PM. That system, whereby the Queen acts as a circuit breaker, mostly ensures that the G-G (whose seemingly extraordinarily wide formal powers are not otherwise meaningfully circumscribed by the Constitution) must act only on the advice of the elected government except in very rare “reserve powers” situations, in which he is in any event instantly accountable to the Queen. Mike Pepperday’s proposal would almost completely remove these checks and balances on the G-G and radically transform Australia’s Constitution, effectively back to the colonial period of the 1830s and 40s where all-powerful appointed Governors were advised by relatively powerless locally elected legislatures. This suggestion is anything but “no shift at all”!!!!

That part broadly and easily settled upon, a ‘keep the bastards honest’ house, with rigorous investigative and review powers is a no-brainer. It’s also logical that it be a place for local gripes and geographical representation, with perhaps a continuation of states rights via state based unequal allocation of voters per seat, although the latter might be for the dustbin of history. The plethora of Xenophons, Harradines, local mayors, ex party politicians or PMs, giving it the grass roots input and experience into the political decision-making process and ultimately bringing down an arrogant, out of touch govt, if they’re incensed enough as a group to band together and do so. They can easily appoint the current GG with reserve powers, free of party input and the ultimate appointment would logically be a non- controversial, consensus one that didn’t rise too much above them. When you bring the subject around to new democratic shoes, the overall consensus specifications would be fairly self selecting, which is not to say the arguments about the colur and the buckles mightn’t get a bit confused and heated at times.

The simplest pair of democratic shoes we might think of is a single representative body, elected by one vote one value and their decisionmaking is final and binding by their majority vote. Short of having a huge national list of nominating individuals for us to choose from and bearing in mind we know they’ll inevitably form like political groupings, straight away you can see one vote one value requires proportional representation. In its simplest form, it would be scandalous that the Greens grouping, who received around 7% of the national vote, wouldn’t hold 11.4 (at least 11)of the seats in our current parliament. With that settled you’d begin to move on to the desirable mechanics of representative govt, the problem of remoteness and responsiveness of these representatives and how we could provide appropriate checks and balances. I’d suggest when you do that, you quickly come around to my way of thinking, assuming you’re not simply pushing some politically partisan barrow.

The simpler the plan, the better its chances. To replace the Queen by the people is no “major shift”. It is no shift at all for it would keep the present (tried and tested) system in its entirety.

That’s why I think you need to seriously consider electing the 2 houses in reverse order, allowing the best brains to lead national direction and policy, without the baggage of dealing with local distractions, but always mindful of a storm cloud of local representatives and their appointed leader, bringing them back down to earth from time to time. It’s not that the battlers can’t comprehend and embrace well argued and timely, even radical change, as any cursory political history attests, it’s that they need their Xenophons and Harradines to keep their elites’ feet on the ground and within their grasp at all times. Understand that and you’re well on your way to a republic in our time.

“Whereas simply changing the mode of appointment means we get to keep all the other jurisprudence.”

There is no such simple thing. I guess my #35, in which I did actually specify some of the problems, went right past you. All those things have no effect on “jurisprudence”? Really?

I agree – don’t mess too much with constitutions. That’s why I suggested the ultra minimalist exchange of “people” for “Queen”. To become a republic the Queen has to be removed – that’s unavoidable. And to simply strike the word and substitute another is surely unbeatably minimal. I should think no option messes less with the constitution, written and unwritten.

What if the result wasn’t so good? If we didn’t like it we could change it. The people could do that because the sovereignty would still be in their gift. That is unlike the effect of parliamentary appointment which gives the pollies control and would be the end of all further reform.

Doing “search and replace” with People means we’ll have to do it all over again. Whereas simply changing the mode of appointment means we get to keep all the other jurisprudence.

Constitutions are important. They shouldn’t be messed with lightly. I figure that the risk of your option is much higher than the risk of the simplified model of changing who appoints the G-G; that’s why I don’t support a radical leap. Baby, bathwater, etc.

And now, off to my Java Programming exam.

In 1930 the King rejected the PM’s nominee for GG. That was an act of sovereignty. In 1946 the King refused to appoint the nominated governor of NSW – and stuck to his guns (lots of angry correspondence) and the candidate was not appointed. Certainly, “the King” means the UK government, what else.

Federally our current situation is that there is informal exchange of views and then when the new GG is agreed, the PM writes a formal letter to the Queen requesting his appointment. How do I know this? Because Sir David Smith wrote to me and said so after I had written and asked him. I expect it is the same in the states. It appears the Queen does have input into the appointment. Not that it matters much for present purposes.

We’re a monarchy. We want to become a republic. Where to start? Wouldn’t it be natural, normal, reasonable to START by assuming that a “republic” is where the people are sovereign? And even if the monarch’s sovereignty is a teensy thing, whatever it is, shouldn’t it be passed to the people? If not, why not? (No answer to that in the Turnbull Report which just launches into its plan to usurp the crown.)

But apparently it is not so teensy, given this smidgeon of putative sovereignty is the subject of such a raging “unsolvable” argument.

Wouldn’t it be natural, normal, reasonable, as a first approximation to say that since the constitution says we are a monarchy, to change to a republic you would take the constitution and cross out “Monarch”, “Queen”, etc and put “People”? Now if that is impractical, well so be it. But wouldn’t it be where you start? So what about trying it to see?

It seems very straightforward to me. There are about two dozen mentions. One or two spots just delete “Queen”, otherwise directly replace with “People”. The Republic is created. No change to any powers, explicit or implicit. No change to prestige except that appointment by the people is probably slightly higher than by a Queen. No meddling by politicians. No meddling by lawyers. No change to conventions except the PM has to write a letter to the people instead of the Queen. And of course, the people could refuse. Like the King in 1946, they really could refuse.

“Sovereignty” can be taken to mean “the last word” – who gets the final say. But to go on about sovereignty in general is not germane. The question is over one discrete little hunk of sovereignty. The indivisible little bit the monarch nominally possesses and maybe really has or has power over the gift of. Or maybe it is that Australian subjects, the constitution changers, have power over the gift of it. Whatever: that is the bit of sovereignty that matters here.

It should be obvious by now that it really matters. So many people want to get their claws into it. It rightfully belongs to the people – or we’re kidding ourselves about a monarchy becoming a republic. The shape of our polity depends on this sovereignty.

The Queen is not elected. The Queen is not appointed. Where did this loopy idea come from? (Answer: Turnbull.) It is impossible to make the GG/President replace the Queen. The Queen is the sovereign.

Not quite. In the United Kingdom Parliament is sovereign over the Crown. They could become a Republic with an Act if they so chose. Or change the Queen to somebody else. Quite a lot of things actually.

In Australia we inherited the convention that the Queen is only a figurehead and the Constitution is constructed along those lines. Neither she nor the G-G have much latitude, except as circuit-breakers. Parliament is, as in the UK, effectively Sovereign, though the bounds of its sovereignty are circumscribed by the Constitution.