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TRANSCRIPT OF
PROCEEDINGS
Monday, 2 February 1998
Page 13
Ms RAYNER- My friends
and absent friends, I am one of those Australians who chose to be
so- I was born in another country- 13 years ago. I am one of
those Australians who was born prior to 1949 in a country which
made a sentimental commitment to the monarchy, which it has
retained. I refer, of course, to New Zealand. Until recently I
described myself as a sentimental monarchist, and I describe
myself today as a realistic republican. Should Australia be a
republic? Yes, but not at just any price. The reason I support
the creation of a republic is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to make a country which is proud of itself and is
aware of its responsibilities.
I am not prepared to
support a republic that entrenches discrimination or perpetuates
injustice. That is not a real republic and it is not worth the
trouble of creating one. A real republic puts the power in the
people, not just symbolically. Republican heroes are ordinary
women, men and children who value their rights and freedoms, and
fight for them and for the responsibilities, and respect them and
expect them from others. The quality of a republic depends on the
quality of its citizens.
This republic must
come because the people want it and want it passionately. I have
heard on all sides of this chamber groups of people who want the
status quo dressed up in much the same language. No minimalist
model, no cautious compromise, no preservation of the past in
aspic will capture the hearts of the Australian people. Any
constitutional document that defines our nation must reflect our
democratic expectations. It must guarantee individual, human,
social and economic rights somehow, but that is a debate we are
not going to have. It must protect the individual from the misuse
of her government's power somehow, but is this not the debate we
are not going to have?
I was elected second
on the real republican ticket in Victoria, together with Tim
Costello, to represent Victorian electors on a platform based on
three core principles. The first is that this Convention is a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to build a new Constitution and a fair,
modern and thoroughly democratic Australian republic, which we
should not waste on just one issue. The second is that for
ordinary Australians it is more important that our Constitution
guarantees decent living and working conditions, social and other
justice, and equality before the law; recognises indigenous
rights; and respects our environment, our diversity and our
common goals- far more important than the appointment of a
symbolic head of state.
If Australia is to
become a republic, and I believe it should, our new arrangements
must not just symbolically reflect the moral as well as the
political fact that all political power depends on and comes from
the people. But the Constitution we have was drafted in terms of
the rights of governments- colonial governments, imperial
governments, federal and state governments- with each other. It
reflects their turf battles, it reflects their jealousies, it
reflects their trade and economic concerns. It says virtually
nothing about the freedoms, rights and responsibilities of
government to citizen and citizen to government. Any
constitutional change must enhance democracy.
The purpose of a move
to a republic is to do that and to put back in the hands of the
people the constitutional and political power that is genuinely,
and ought to be recognised as, theirs. But the agenda which was
settled by the government and selected delegates before we
commenced our discussions this morning has focused debate
relatively narrowly- whether we should have an Australian head of
state and the very technical and legal issues that derive from a
possible `yes' answer to that question.
But the people who
elected us and the people who write to us do not want to talk
about just the appointment of a head of state, and it is not
because that issue is unimportant. It is a question of where it
belongs in a proper democratic scheme of things. This, I believe,
falls into place after you have thought through core values,
basic rights and duties, and the citizen's relationship with her
government. The real republicans seem to be the only group that
went to the people and asked what they wanted in their
constitution.
We have not got every
answer, but we do know that a far higher proportion of people
support a Bill of Rights of some kind, in fact even believe they
have one already, than want to have an Australian head of state.
The more dialogue we had and the more we trusted the people, the
clearer that message became.
The message was this,
and this I believe is the core we should focus on: the Australian
people do not trust their government. The Australian people
believe that they are treated with disdain by these persons. They
tend to regard them as self-interested and incompetent at best.
So when we hear speaker after speaker today saying that we have
the best democracy in the world, I say to them, `Don't be so
bloody-mindedly self-satisfied and complacent.' It is not a
question of tinkering only with the top levels. Only those who
have benefited from the practices of the past hundred years think
so- that is, proud men, clever and cautious administrators and
academics, and new and old elites.
This Convention has
been opened by speakers who want to retain the way things are,
who have given some lip service to those who have traditionally
been excluded- especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people and, in some respects, women- but there is no special
place for the poor, the unemployed, the people who have no
disabilities, the children who do not vote and the alienated or
cynical excluded voter who sees all politicians as power
grubbers.
This is a time when
government is held in deepest disrespect by the people and when,
if you are running a current affairs program on television and
you put on a politician, the ratings go down. This is the time of
the growth of managerial politics and of the power of the
executive overwhelming the parliament which is elected by the
people, a time of galloping loss of esteem for all politicians
and political structures and of loss of faith in the institutions
which are intended to decide- and on the face of it they do so-
how we are governed. And this is a time when we must make people
and their participation in government the core of the republican
debate.
We need a proper
consultation over the next two weeks, and I am prepared to find
ways and means of making sure that discussion does take place
about what sort of a republic this will be. After this
Constitutional Convention we need to engage with community groups
who have been left right out of this debate, and we need to find
imaginative ways to break that technical nexus between our
constitutional document and what really happens- not leaving it
to lawyers and self-interested politicians.
We have much more to
address than what has been put to us on a platter. These are
symbolic issues, and we need to be concerned about this gap
between what the Constitution says and how it actually works. Our
Constitution is defective. It is 100 years old, for God's sake.
Thomas Jefferson said that you should revise your constitution
every 30 years to make sure it is relevant to your current
situation. It has a real lack of substance in terms of defining
and entrenching democratic values.
Our Deputy Chair
actually said in the newspaper last week that we have two
constitutions: one written, which says how things are; and one
unwritten and largely discretionary, which is how power is
actually exercised. This is profoundly unhealthy for our
democratic system. Our Constitution says nothing that really
matters in political practice about where power lies. It says
nothing meaningful about the real power sources- political
parties, the Prime Minister, the cabinet, the lobby groups that
have the ear of the political parties, and of the Prime Minister
and the cabinet.
We are not talking
just about formal governing structures; we are talking about
democratic institutions which have fulfilled the gaps in those
structures over the last few years. I refer to freedom of
information about government activity, access to justice- if you
have a lot of money- an impartial ombudsman overseeing
administrative maladministration but, most importantly,
mechanisms which are all used to make government accountable to
the people, because the formal structures do not make it so
accountable.
The founding fathers,
and the bureaucrats in London who re-wrote what they wrote, wrote
a narrow constitutional framework defining powers between
governments, and they did it quite well, but at a cost, leaving
out democratic values and on the dubious assumption that our
common law tradition would do the rest. It has not. The
Constitution has been a tool of administration and when the High
Court has sought to fill the gaps interpreting implied values and
principles into that document, the executive side of government
screamed loud and long. So this is the time, I believe, to talk
about world best practice in democracy and constitutionally.
What would it really
mean if our Constitution were the most progressive, best written
and most effective, in democratic terms, constitution? What sort
of process do we really want to create it when the public,
according to the republican argument, owns its government. Most
of us have not thought what that means in practice. If the public
owns it, it must participate not just in our vote, and especially
not in a narrow postal vote selecting half the delegates to this
Convention. The public have to be engaged in framing what the
Constitution should look like, given the change to a republic. If
we were to adopt this as a principle, we would do far better than
to be engaged in protracted and technical discussions which
assume either that we know the answers or that the people are
stupid and can be told that we know what the answers are.
The group of
republicans who are not ARM members but are, nonetheless, united
in the common goal of a republic have a very large support group,
we believe. Those who elected us believe that this Convention
should be about their greatest hopes and fears represented by the
symbol of a change of a form of our government. They did not
believe it was an elite issue. They did not believe that there
would be to-ing and fro-ing and done deals before anything
happened at the commencement of this Convention. They do not want
no change; they want to choose the change. They feel their
government has become haughty, unresponsive and unaccountable.
They punish those who govern at elections, voting ratbags out and
heroes in and turning heroes into ratbags at the next election.
They expect the worst and feel vindicated daily. There is no
better vehicle than the building of a constitution for building a
democracy and republic alike. We must trust the people.
Government is based on a contract with the people. It has to be
based on full disclosure.
This is not the
government's convention. It is not owned by some voluntary
association of politicians, republicans, monarchists, public
servants, Prime Ministers or ministers. This is the people's
Convention. Abraham Lincoln once said that if the people did not
like the way their government was governing they had the right to
overturn it by armed rebellion. This is an opportunity for the
people's consultation process to begin. The fact that the people
do not know much about their Constitution or, when they read it,
are bored and stop reading at paragraph 5, does not mean to say
they should not be actively involved. Jefferson also said:
I know of no
safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the
people themselves and, if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is
not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by
education.
I believe that the
talk of rights that we began this morning, which was so
vigorously curtailed by a coalition of groups who did not want
that discussion to take place, is the one which should take place
from time to time, where appropriate, through the next two weeks.
The talk of rights implies respect which elevates a person's
status from human body to social being and, even if they cannot
be enforced, these statements of rights are politically
animating, socially cohesive and a source of motivation and hope,
and they are not able to be parcelled out by powerful white men
to minorities, whether they are Aboriginal, ethnic or other
disadvantaged groups, in small pieces, in small favours or as an
insulting gratuity.
Yes, we need a
republic. We need an elected head of state but only if that means
that their powers and the limits on their powers are absolutely
clear and if the checks and balances are rightly, honestly and
accurately set out in our Constitution, not in unwritten
conventions which are ignored in practice, and we need a republic
which is based on the accountability of government to the people
and the humbleness of politicians- much forgotten. In our core
document we need to have an assumption that we are no longer
subjects of a crown but that we are the owners of all sovereign
authority.
I began by saying
that Australia should not be a republic at just any price, but
the price is of course some uncertainty and the risk, a tiny
risk, of actually asking the people what they want. We must
surpass our cautious approach or it will defeat this move to the
sovereignty being placed in the people. We must not become a
`billabong' republic- green and yellow, stuffed with decaying
materials and cut off from the flow of the river: warm, safe and
stagnant. We need to look at the rights of the people in a
meaningful way because this is an animating spirit which fires
this country's most oppressed psyche which will wash away the
shrouds of inanimate object status. Let us say not that we own
gold but that illuminous golden spirit owns us.
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Last updated: 21 October 2000
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