The Foundation for National Renewal   The Constitutional Convention of February 1998

Federal Election October 2004: Which Candidates Trust the People?

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
Monday, 2 February 1998
Page 12

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN- I have said that I do not think it is a point of order. But your view is noted. I call Ms Holmes a Court.

Ms HOLMES a COURT- Thank you, Deputy Chairman, delegates and fellow Australians. We have heard many times today that this Convention is an extremely significant event. I am privileged, deeply moved and honoured to be here with 151 others, both appointed and elected, to participate in the process of building a nation.

Australia has produced many great writers, but because the people of Western Australia have chosen me, amongst others, to represent them here, I choose to quote from one of our great authors. Tim Winton, in his acclaimed novel Cloud Street has this to say about a group of ordinary Australians on the beach going prawning, not building a nation but lighting a lamp:

You've never seen people relish the lighting of a lamp like this, the way they crouch together, cradle the glass piece in their hands, wide eyes caught in the flame of a match, the gentle murmurs and the pumping and the sighs as the light grows and turns footprints on the river beach into long shadowed moon craters. Let your light so shine.

Ladies and gentlemen, let our 152 lights so shine, and let the lights of 17 million other Australians so shine over the next two weeks as we deliberate on the question of whether Australia should become a republic. It is a question of national maturity and national identity.

I will explain to you why I believe that we should answer this question with a resounding yes. Becoming a republic will give us a head of state who is an Australian. The head of state of a nation must surely be a citizen of that nation. Becoming a republic will make the head of state of Australia a citizen of Australia.

The creation of an Australian republic is not an act of rejection; it is an act of recognition. It is to recognise that our deepest respect is for our Australian heritage, our deepest affection is for Australia and our deepest responsibility is to Australia's future. Three recent experiences have more than convinced me, if I needed more convincing, of this.

At the National Gallery of Victoria there is a major exhibition of the work of Russell Drysdale. There are rooms full of luscious paintings of such evenness of quality, such luminescence and such Australianness. Being in their midst was, for me, a spiritual experience. I saw these paintings and I recognised that this is a unique land with a unique people. I believe that no Australian seeing these pictures could not have the feeling as I did, that this is where I belong, this is what holds me, this is what I love, this is me.

Last Friday, I visited the new Sydney showground at Homebush Bay. The facilities here will be used not only for the Easter show this year but also for many events at the Olympic Games in the year 2000. Here, in record time, 8,000 Australians, architects, engineers, craftsmen, draftsmen, clerks, safety officers, gardeners and landscape architects- up to 1,500 at a time- with birthplaces and backgrounds as numerous and diverse as the countries on the globe, have come together, proud to be Australian and thrilled to be constructing this complex to welcome the world in the year 2000. No other country in modern history has been as prepared to host the Olympic Games as far in advance of the event as we are. I saw this and I marvelled at what Australians can achieve when we work together. I knew that no-one could fail to be proud of this.

Recently, I sat in a shed on the wharf on Sydney harbour to watch a stage adaptation of Tim Winton's novel Cloud Street, the very book from which I just quoted. Australian designers, set designers, costume designers, lighting designers, an Australian composer and an Australian musician, Australian choreographers, actors and a director are bringing us a theatrical event of epic proportions. I saw this and I knew that a nation able to contemplate and describe itself, warts and all, with so much richness must be a mature nation, confident of its identity. It must have arrived.

We live in an age of box ticking. In our private lives, you tick the box showing what toothpaste you use or what channel you are watching. In our public lives, if you want a republic, you tick the box. In our business lives, if you have affirmative action or total quality management, you tick the box. We have been ticking boxes for 100 years. If you are ready for a federation, you tick the box.

If you are ready to have an Australian as Governor-General, tick the box. If you are ready to include the indigenous people of Australia as citizens, tick the box. If you are ready for your own national anthem, tick the box. If you are ready to accept our own High Court as the highest court, tick the box. Fellow delegates, we have one more box to tick. Are we ready for an Australian head of state? I believe that we are. The very full expression of Australian sovereignty cannot be complete until we tick that final box and have a head of state who is one of us.

I will give Tim Winton the final word. I am paraphrasing, and I have Tim's permission. We feel our nationhood. We recognise ourselves whole and human. We know our story for just that long, long enough to see how we have come and how we have battled in the same corridor that time makes for us. Then we burst into the moon, the sun and the stars of who we really are, being Australia, perfectly, always, every place us.

Brigadier GARLAND- Mr Deputy Chairman, delegates- that is, those who are left- ladies and gentlemen, people of Australia, I rise to oppose any proposal designed to amend our Australian Constitution which would change our political system from that of a constitutional monarchy to that of a republic, or which would attempt to substitute a president for Queen Elizabeth II, our sovereign and monarch, or the Governor-General, or which would attempt to change the role of the sovereign or that of her heirs and successors as set down in our uniquely Australian Constitution.

By its very nature, this Convention cannot be compared with the first national Australian convention of 1891. That was one of the most notable events to take place in our short history as a nation. At that convention, the key participants representing all of the colonies of Australia locked themselves away for several days on the SS Lucinda on the Hawkesbury River to negotiate the proposals which ultimately led to Federation and set the framework for the development of a nation of which we can all be proud. It united the nation. This Convention has the likelihood of only dividing the nation.

That the constitutional arrangements to come out of that convention gave us a federal Commonwealth under the Crown, and that those arrangements have served Australia and its peoples well, is or should not be in doubt. Those arrangements reflect a nation which has over 90-plus years exhibited a uniquely independent spirit and national character and where the peoples hold firmly to the freedoms and ideals of the four freedoms. Indeed, since Federation we have fought two world wars and a number of limited wars to protect those freedoms for the generations to come. Alfred Deakin said of the Constitution:

I venture to submit that among all the federal constitutions in the world, you will look in vain for one as broad, as liberal in its working principles, as generous in its aims, as this measure.

This same comment on our Constitution rings as true today as it did when Deakin said those words. Since raised by Paul Keating in 1991, republicanism and all of the desire to trash our current Constitution have captured an inordinate amount of attention from the media, particularly from those who are anglophobic.

As an Australian returned serviceman who has fought to preserve our Constitution and our way of life against the Queen's enemies, I welcome reasoned debate about our constitutional future but do wonder why such an issue deserves the overwhelming amount of attention it is receiving and has received over the last half decade from the media and from all sorts of academic socialists, particularly when our nation faces a level of unemployment of over 600,000, when we have chronic foreign debt problems and when economic reform in areas such as the waterfront is moving at the speed of an Arctic glacier.

Most of the noise on the subject of a republic for Australia has been generated by those totally committed to the cause, not by those who are prepared to listen and debate. In the main, those people committed to the cause are politicians and their running mates and the media, most of whom demonstrate an anti-British bias. Of course, ever since the first national Australian convention, there have been groups of ardent republicans whose popularity has waxed and waned over the years.

The current republican debate has been engineered in the main by Paul Keating and his mates and political allies buttressed by the media and a small group of committed supporters on this particular subject. I have no difficulty with Keating, Turnbull, Whitlam or even Janet Holmes a Court arguing in favour of constitutional change. Any Australian citizen has the democratic right to do so, but arrangements proposing and favouring constitutional change require clear, unambiguous, honest statements about the benefits which will flow from such change. Above all, they need to be truthful and credible.

In a democracy such as ours which treasures free speech, failure to provide the community with the clear objectives and implications of proposed constitutional change is unforgivable, and I believe blatantly dishonest. To create the belief either deliberately or through disinformation or even through misunderstanding that what is proposed can be achieved by a small, cosmetic, minimalist change to our Constitution when in fact it is a fundamental and radical change to the whole legal framework in which our laws, judicial system and governments operate is not only deceitful but deceptive and dishonest. In the end it will prove to be divisive.

One of the main difficulties that I have with those espousing republicanism is the very apparent obsession they have with their rhetoric and their desire to change our national symbols such as our flag, et cetera, combined with their intense hatred of our British traditions and history. We cannot change our history. It is there warts and all for everybody to see. It is not something we can sweep under the carpet.

I welcome this forum. Reform of our constitutional structure within which our government operates, and must operate, can only be made by the people, but only after they are fully- I say again: after they are fully- informed of the ramifications of the proposed changes. Changes should be properly made only after due caution and must be free of any party political drive or manipulation. There is something inherently sinister when politicians and their mates try to manipulate changes to the very structure of our society without truthfully and publicly canvassing fully the implications and consequences of any proposed changes. Until now this has not been done on this subject. The Australian people are unaware because they have not been informed of the major problems associated with this issue. Because of this they are mainly uneducated in this matter and because of that they have been hoodwinked by those proposing an Australian republic.

When dealing with our current Constitution and our system of governance, two points need to be kept in mind: the system within which we operate at present provides the greatest protection against the abuse of power by politicians and any single government, and without careful deliberation it would be foolhardy to implement changes in our current system in which the checks and balances of our Constitution and the federalism which flows from it have, since its adoption, ensured certainty and stability. These matters cannot be claimed by the majority of existing republics, not even the United States of America. If, by describing their proposition as minimalist, the Australian Republican Movement wishes to convey that the changes proposed by them are neither fundamental nor fraught with difficulty and danger, particularly when dealing with the measures needed to set down formally the powers of the head of state, then they are seriously misleading the Australian public.

Section 128 of the Constitution allows for the Constitution to be amended, but not for one minute do I believe that the founding fathers of our Constitution ever contemplated that this section would be the vehicle for removing the monarch from the constitution. Nor do I believe that they would have contemplated that this was the vehicle to make radical and fundamental changes which go past the normal amendment of a document. There is no doubt that section 128 may be used to amend the Constitution, but I doubt it can be used to amend or delete the covering clauses- clauses 1 through 8. These clauses and many within the Constitution clearly and unequivocally envisage the continuation of the Crown within the framework of our Constitution.

Fundamental to the Constitution are the institutions of the Crown, the legislature and the judiciary. Throughout the years the Crown has been the one unifying influence in our system. All judges, politicians, ministers, public servants and members of the defence forces are servants of the Crown and they swear allegiance to it. Each owes a duty beyond self to the nation, embodied in the Crown. The Crown is therefore not only explicit but implicit in the Constitution. Thus to remove all reference to the Crown is not only to amend the Constitution but to replace it with another.

I also suggest that to change Australia into a republic will require more than just 51 per cent of the population and four of the six states voting in favour of the proposal. Unless there is almost total agreement within the community and by all of the states, then the matter will become divisive and could cause the fracturing and disintegration of our Federation and our nation as we know it today. This is not a fanciful proposition. It is very real. It was alluded to this morning by one of the state Premiers. It is also quite likely that, even if the referendum were held and passed by a simple majority, any move towards a republic would spark a court challenge on the validity of imposing a new constitution as opposed to an amended constitution on the nation. Could we accept seven High Court judges who are not elected by the people handing down a judgment on this issue? I think not.

To be an effective working document, a constitution must achieve two objectives. It must, firstly, equip government with sufficient power to run the state or the country. Secondly, it must provide checks and balances limiting the power of politicians to prevent abuse of power by them. These objectives seem to be a feature of all constitutional monarchies but, on the other hand, appear to be absent from most of those countries which are republics. More often than not, republics have heads of state who are seen within their own countries sooner or later to be enveloped into the party politics of the country concerned.

The method of bestowing the powers on any proposed Australian president have not been fully or clearly announced by those proposing to change Australia into a republic. The republican group would suggest that their president will have the same powers as the Governor-General. But there's the rub. How are those powers to be bestowed? The theatrical and reserve powers held by Governors-General and governors are quite extensive. The key to the limitation on their powers is the convention binding them through the Crown- I repeat, through the Crown- to the use of those powers. These same powers bestowed on republican presidents would be disastrous because a president could not be bound by those conventions. They flow from the Crown and, without the Crown, there is no real legal basis to force a president to observe those conventions. I doubt that they could be enforced through the courts.

Another argument put in favour of Australia becoming a republic is that, because allegiance is sworn to a Queen who some say is not an Australian resident and who some believe is a Brit and therefore a foreigner- not an Australian- we are not fully independent and we have not achieved full, mature nationhood. Tell that to the marines. All of those Australians who made the supreme sacrifice in war swore allegiance to the Crown at the beginning of their military service. I need say no more.

The catchcry seems to be, `An Australian for our head of state.' What sort of an Australian do the republicans have in mind? A natural born Australian, or one who is an Australian because of an act of parliament? Can this head of state have dual nationality? Will we accept somebody like Ung Huot? He is a man who is a naturalised Australian of Cambodian extract. If the answer is, `Of course, we can,' what does this mean? Ung Huot is an Australian citizen and he is currently the first Prime Minister of Cambodia. Well done. Of course, republicans are not prepared to accept Queen Elizabeth II as an Australian, but I contend that she has been made an Australian by an act of parliament- in exactly the same way as any other person who is not a natural born Australian and is desirous of gaining Australian citizenship. She, of course, is an Australian because in 1953 the Australian government, in an act of parliament in this place, declared her to be the Queen of Australia.

The republicans have their priorities all wrong by pursuing this issue at the expense of those other pressing issues- such as unemployment, foreign debt, economic reform, et cetera- that impact on the Australian public and its people. It is perfectly right and proper for Australians to examine their constitutional institutions, but debate must be reasoned and it must be, above all things, honest- not orchestrated by politicians, nor the media, nor any of the disaffected. It must be valid. Compelling reasons for any change must be valid. Any change to our Constitution deals with changes to the fundamentals of our society and, therefore, must be treated with caution. It must not be rushed and the people must be given an honest, complete proposal on which to contemplate and then to vote.

There must be real, not phoney, benefits associated with any change. Change that has not been canvassed properly with the public and change for change sake will cause division. Australia is a federation of seven governments. To change our system without the conclusive agreement of all parties and an overwhelming majority of the total population is likely to cause bitter division within the country and could trigger a fragmentation of Australia as a cohesive nation. As I said before, that is not a fanciful proposition. The challenge facing Australians as we enter the 21st century is not whether Australia should become a republic, nor whether Queen Elizabeth II should open the Olympic Games.

CHAIRMAN- Your time has expired, Brigadier Garland. Could you please come to a conclusion?

Brigadier GARLAND- I will come to a conclusion. The important issues are to maintain our national character and our national sovereignty, to provide jobs for our population, to improve the economy of our nation, to reduce our foreign debt and to preserve the environment in which we live for the benefit of those to come. We must, therefore, retain our current Constitution, unchanged, and not take the backward step of becoming a republic.

 
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Last updated: 21 October 2000