|
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.
Previous Page
Next Page
·===============  ===============·
Last updated: 21 October 2000
|
