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TRANSCRIPT OF
PROCEEDINGS
Wednesday, 4 February 1998
Page 10
Ms MACHIN- Thank you, Mr
Chairman. I will try to avoid that terminology. Delegates,
earlier today I was talking to a fellow representative here at
the Convention who said to me, `I am a little bit daunted by
this. It seems that everybody has come here and they have got
very strong views, very definite opinions.' I could understand
how one could have that perception, but I would like to say that
I stand here as a member of the largest group, the Australian
Republican Movement, with still very much an open mind. Obviously
I have a preferred position on a number of issues, but we do not
have a mortgage on all constitutional wisdom. We are not all
lawyers in our group, obviously. I think that many of the issues
that have been raised in the last few days are worthy of
consideration and they continue to be so. It is continually
happening, which I think is a very healthy thing, as a result of
this Convention.
Yesterday we voted on the
issue of powers of a head of state, and today we are discussing
the method of appointment and dismissal. To me, the two go hand
in hand, and I think that point was made yesterday in debate. I
think that shows that with all of these issues, whilst we have
separated them for practicality, for the purposes of discussing
them separately, they cannot at the end of the day be considered
in isolation. In that context, I make my remarks about the method
of appointment and the method of dismissal this morning.
I came here on the
understanding that we would look at discussing the options
relating to each specific topic, regardless of whether or not it
was our own, particularly in the working groups. I came here, as
I said, with particular views but with an open mind and, from
that perspective, I was very interested to participate in the
working group yesterday, Working Group A, which discussed direct
election with open nominations. I know a number of delegates are
disappointed because they feel that option is off the agenda. I
would simply say to them that I think there are many
opportunities left, over the next seven or eight days,
particularly in the main plenary debate, to ventilate their point
of view, to build their arguments and maybe to persuade more
delegates as to why their point of view should prevail.
I would like to restate very
briefly my position and that of the Australian Republican
Movement. I have to say that there is no conspiracy that three of
us just spoke in order. I think that was just the luck of the
draw. Eddie McGuire and Sallyanne Atkinson before me enunciated
our position very well. The Australian Republican Movement view
has been arrived at over a long period of time. For some six
years as a formal movement it has been considering these issues
and looking at all of the options- tossing them over, working
them over. I think it was Julie Bishop who said, `Trying them on
for size, seeing how they fitted, if they were too tight, if they
needed some adjustment here and there.' Through that process, and
through the investment of a huge amount of intellectual capital,
we have come to the position we bring to this Convention, namely,
that the best of all options is to have the elected
representatives of all the people of Australia choose who our
head of state should be. The reasons for that are: firstly,
because they are accountable. At the end of the day, you and I
and all our fellow Australians vote for them. If they make a bad
decision, then they will pay for it. Increasingly, Australians
are making their politicians pay the price at the ballot box.
In effect, as we have said,
you will get a bipartisan approach. I do not take such a harsh
view of politicians as my chair, Malcolm Turnbull, does. I have
to confess an interest. As some of you may know, I was once a
member of parliament. I do not think we should necessarily say
forever and a day that a politician is not good enough to be our
head of state. I am glad to hear that point of view. I think the
point of view that a politician is not good enough to be our head
of state continues to perpetuate the myth that all politicians
are somehow crook and not people to be looked up to. We need to
start reversing that trend and start saying that the bulk of
people try to do the job to the best of their abilities and they
go there with all the best intentions. That is my plug for all
politicians past, present and future- and I am sure there are
plenty of future politicians here.
We have taken the view that
dismissal should be similar and consistent with the mode of
appointment. For that reason, we initially talked about a
two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament to dismiss.
Richard McGarvie, amongst others, has rightly pointed out the
practical difficulties with that. If a government wanted to
dismiss a Governor-General, a head of state, it could be on
political grounds and, therefore, why would the opposition
cooperate. For that reason, we have moved to looking at- I am
going to say that terrible phrase- requiring a majority of the
House of Representatives, not a two-thirds majority but an
absolute majority, to dismiss. Again, we prefer this because it
is transparent and the people making that decision are at the end
of the day accountable to the public.
With regard to the ARM's
position on direct election, we always said we would look at
this. As I have said, many of us are still looking at ways in
which it can work. As we look at it- and as I look at it as one
of the newer members of the Australian Republican Movement- more
and more questions arise and I think these need to be fully
discussed.
I find a small irony in the
suggestion that an overwhelming majority of Australians want to
discuss and participate in the selection of our head of state,
that they want a direct election. At the same time, we are told
they do not like politicians, they get irritated at having to go
to the polls for local council elections, state government
elections and federal government elections, they are compelled to
vote, there is no choice, and Australians do not particularly
like being pushed around; and so we are suggesting that they be
compelled to vote in yet another national election, presumably
held at a different time so it would not be politicised. We are
going to have at least four rounds of elections on a regular
cycle in the country. I do not know that many people would be too
fussed about that.
We are told that the public
does not like politicians- wrongly in my view. If you do not get
a politician out of a highly competitive national electoral
process what on earth will you get at the end of day? As others
have pointed out, you could have a person elected with just over
50 per cent of the vote on a preferential basis, which is hardly
what you would call a thumping mandate, assuming they get
something like 30 per cent of the primary vote in the first
instance.
Those delegates who have been
elected here on a direct election platform need to spell out to
us a number of things. These came up in the working group I was
at yesterday and were not really fully discussed. I have to say
that there was a little bit of emotion running around the room at
that time.
The integrity of the
nomination process is very important. For example, I feel there
must be a screening process or else we could end up with a ballot
paper like a phone book. That is a logical progression. We need
somebody to set criteria or eliminate or screen candidates who
nominate or are nominated. How do those who are screened out take
comfort in the process? How can they be sure that there has not
been some unfair treatment of them, rightly or wrongly? What
would be the criteria for nomination? Are we going to do as other
countries do and look at an age limit, qualifications and
citizenship, which I guess would be a logical requirement? In the
resolution, section 44 of the Australian Constitution was looked
at as a rough guide.
What mode of election would
we have? I have not heard that discussed at great length. Some
delegates have put up some ideas. Yesterday when we had the
opportunity to flesh this out we did not really get to that
point. Would we have a first-past-the-post vote, which was
discussed and had some attraction to candidates? If that were the
case, you would have a president publicly elected with perhaps as
little as 20 per cent of the vote with 80 per cent of the people
not voting for them. I do not think that is a particularly
desirable outcome.
Are we going to have full
preferential voting? Again we could still have someone with only
a small percentage of the primary vote ending up as our
president. What is the term of office? Should a president be
allowed to be re-elected?
What is the role of the
political parties? I was very interested in other comments. Chris
Gallus as a serving politician intrigued me. The suggestions that
we will have regulations that either limit or ban the
participation of political parties are, frankly, just cloud
cuckoo land. (Extension of time granted) I think this is a
very important point, given the apparent antipathy felt towards
political parties. How can you possibly keep them out of the
process even if you make regulations, as we have, for public
funding of elections? Most hardheads around here know that there
are very creative ways around those regulations. So there is
simply no way you could keep political parties out of the
process.
The counter point to that
then, which will upset Ted Mack, is to be transparent about it:
let them be involved. That raises the point fleshed out by
Malcolm Turnbull and others that you could have a Labor president
with a Liberal Prime Minister and a Liberal government, a
constitutional crisis arising or there could be collusion and our
whole system of stable democracy is vastly changed, if not
entirely put at risk.
A number of delegates have
expressed concern for a gender equity. I think that a direct
election makes the chances of women getting an equal go more
difficult. We have not seen them thrown up through the political
process at this stage. Direct election requires lots of money,
private money as well as public money, to actually conduct the
election. I think that would militate against the success of a
woman candidate. The relationship I talked about between the head
of state and the Prime Minister directly elected is a difficult
one. The Prime Minister raised that point and I think he was
right in doing so.
So I guess at the end of the
day we also need to be practical. It seems the majority of people
here would like to see an Australian head of state. The issue is
how do we get to that. So we have to take that in sequence. I
exclude the monarchists on that. I accept their right to be here
and their point of view, but if Australians would like to have
their own head of state we have to be little bit practical about
this.
Do we as a nation want to
shift the seat of authority from the Prime Minister and the
elected representatives to a potentially powerful president or
head of state, depending on the system we might come up with? I
think we don't. Do we wish to make major changes to our
Constitution, especially the relationship between the head of
state and the parliament, and in doing so make major amendments
to our Constitution? Again reality suggests that the Australian
people would not like a major overhaul of our Constitution. We
are very conservative about our Constitution and we are to take a
lot of persuasion before we will even make relatively dull and
minor changes, let alone a change of the magnitude we are talking
about over these two weeks.
The other practical point of
view again pertains to those who have criticised the attempts by
some of the delegates here to persuade the major political
parties of their points of view. It has to be recognised- and it
has been pointed out here before- that if a referendum is to
succeed it must enjoy the support of both sides of politics. So
at the end of the day we have to have broad consensus on the
political scene.
I would appeal to those
people who are interested in direct election not to throw the
baby out with the bathwater, continue to discuss the nuts and
bolts of your proposal so that we and all Australians can in full
knowledge think about the best outcome for our great country.
Frankly, I am not convinced, for the reasons that I have just set
out. I do not think the Australian people have been presented
with a full enough argument of the detail and support of direct
election, the sorts of issues that I have raised and others have
raised for them to fully consider it is a real goer.
DEPUTY CHAIRMAN-
Before I call the Hon. Don Chipp, I want to very quickly mention
that the Resolutions Committee meeting will be at 1 p.m. today.
The venue will be Committee Room 1- that is, M112- and the
members are Lloyd Waddy, Kerry Jones, Malcolm Turnbull, Wendy
Machin, Jeff Shaw, Pat O'Shane, Moira Rayner, Daryl Williams,
Julie Bishop, Stella Axarlis, Gareth Evans and, to provide a kind
of aura of sanctity to it, the Most Reverend George Pell. No less
in the aura of sanctity, the Hon. Don Chipp.
Mr CHIPP- It has been an
awesome week for me. The place is littered with ghosts of the
past. Twenty-six years of my life I spent in this building: 17
years in this chamber and eight or nine years in the other
chamber. Ghosts like Billy McMahon keep appearing. I remember
once he was about there and he was clowning around and saying, `I
am my own worst enemy,' to which the unmistakable interjection of
Sir James Killen came: `Not while I'm alive you're not.' I was
standing in this very spot in 1975 defending the then
opposition's health policy on the occasion of a joint sitting of
both houses of parliament. Those are the sorts of memories that
this place evokes: a wonderful place and you could not possibly
find a better location for a convention of this kind.
`Should we become a
republic?' has been a topic for a long time. It has rather amused
me in a way because people enter into heated and animated
discussion about whether we should be a republic without quite
knowing what they mean by the term. A very close member of my
family said to me, `Dad, I admire your guts for going up to
Canberra on this Convention, but you are on the wrong side.' I
said, `What do you mean by that?' He said, `You're going for a
republic.' I said, `What do you understand by a republic?' This
kid has a university degree and he said, `Oh, don't get
technical, I don't want to go into that.' That has been a general
sort of view. People have argued about this hysterically without
quite knowing what they mean.
There has been a
philosophical discussion on it. `No Queen! We have grown up
enough. We are beyond the point of needing a Queen,' is one
argument and that has some sort of running because of its
popularity. `We need to be independent. We have grown up. We are
now more almost 100 years. We need to be independent.' That gets
them running. We hear that it will help our trade and our tourism
if we become a republic, and other nonsensical arguments like
that. We hear that there will be an abuse of powers by the
Governor-General. That has got some running. All of those
arguments are really academic. They are good for a dinner party,
until you come down to the crux of it by saying, `How are you
going to appoint the Governor-General or new head of state and
how are you going to dismiss him or her?' That is this section,
as I understand it, that we are discussing now and I would like
to restrict my remarks to that.
The real effect of this
particular section is the palpable results of change and how they
will manifest themselves on the nation if we do change to elect
or appoint our head of state in a different way and remove the
Crown. It is tied up with the question of appointment and
dismissal. Before I discuss that, I would like to generally look
at some of the powers of this person. Stripped of convention that
restrains the present Governor-General, the powers of our head of
state or virtual head of state are awesome. This person,
academically, is the most powerful person in Australia. You can
sack governments, sack prime ministers, call elections and,
arguably, direct our troops into battle.
The one that attracts me,
that is easily understood, is section 58 and the power conferred
by section 58. I know the republicans say, `Look, don't worry
about this; we will fix that.' Section 58 says this unequivocally
and very simply: the Governor-General may veto any bill passed by
both democratically elected houses of parliament. That is an
awesome power. Substitute the word `president', if this side of
the chamber has its way, and you have a president who could veto
any bill that has been laboriously discussed and debated by both
houses of parliament. What an awesome power that is. I join that
with other powers of similar severity.
Then, getting down to the
nitty-gritty, you have to think: how are we going to appoint this
person? How are we going to transfer this power to someone else
who is an Australian? As far as I am concerned, we already have
an Australian as head of state, a virtual head of state. I would
like to argue that, for anybody who wants to say, `What's the
Queen's picture doing on the side of a 20c coin?' As a matter of
personal preference, I am proud to have that engraving on a 20c
coin. But, apart from that, has anybody seriously suggested that
the Queen has any real power in Australia? Of course they have
not; the Governor-General virtually is the head of state.
Senator WEST-
Virtually.
Mr CHIPP- Virtually,
yes. I concede your point; it is only `virtually'. What sorts of
risks do we run in the various models put up for substituting the
Queen? The risks are awesome. The risks are terrifying. Let us
take one of them: the popular election. The popular election has
quite a few fans here. It is put forward by people I deeply
respect and admire. They are sincere and passionate in their
belief that a popularly elected president is the way to go.
Firstly, that would immediately politicise the office. It would
necessarily do that because both political parties- or even the
three political parties- could not resist the temptation of
putting up a candidate.
Secondly, there would be the
question of financing the campaign of that candidate. How many
millions of dollars would be required? Why don't some of the
republicans who are pushing this model tell us their estimates of
the amount of funding a person in this country would need to
stand as a candidate for president? The corollary of that is to
whom he or she would be indebted and for how much after receiving
those millions of dollars.
Senator BOSWELL-
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Mr CHIPP- There is no
such thing as a free lunch. As ever, I am indebted to my friend
Ron Boswell. To what extent would the debt be? To what extent
would the debts be called up, and at what time and by whom? The
Governor-General at the moment is free of any sort of inhibition
of any decisions that he or she might make.
I believe the popularly
elected president is the worst of all worlds. It would also have
a risk. Steve Vizard, who I admire intensely, says, `Look, don't
worry about that. The new president would only have the power
presently enjoyed by the Governor-General, who has never abused
them.' I agree with that, he has never abused them.
Mr GARETH EVANS-
Never, ever?
Mr CHIPP- Well, there
might have been one exception to that, but it is arguable.
Mr GARETH EVANS- Well,
hardly ever!
Mr CHIPP- It is
arguable; I go no further than that. But they forget the
convention that restrains the Governor-General from stepping over
those bounds. With a popularly elected president strutting around
saying, `Fifty-one per cent of the Australian people voted for
me; they put me here,' there would be no restraint at all. He
would be a free agent to trample on any of the conventions and to
use any of the powers, whether they are implied, reserved or not.
That is a danger. You on that
side of the House say, `That would never happen.' But it might
happen. And that is my reservation; that is why I am proud to
belong to this side of the House, to the Australians for a
Constitutional Monarchy. I am saying, `Why change something that
has worked well, that is working well, that continues to promise
to work well for something we don't know, that runs these awful
risks?' Why change this engraving on a 20c coin? It is not worth
the risk.
What worries me even more is
a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament. I spent 26
years here. I know a little bit about politicians and politics. I
have seen a few deals go through in my time.
Brigadier GARLAND-
Just a few?
Mr CHIPP- Just a few.
The mind boggles at the kind of wheeling and dealing that would
take place between the various parties when some person or
persons were put up for president. What sorts of deals would he
have to make? What sorts of agreements would have to be secretly
done, hidden from the body politic?
I have a view, and it may be
controversial to put this at this stage, for the Convention to
think about. I would think that if the bells rang and we had a
vote today, right now, 90:60 would be the result for a republic.
But it will not end there, will it? You 90 who are going to vote
for a republic are evenly split about whether to have an elected
president or a two-thirds majority of both houses. It could well
be that a funny number will go to the Prime Minister as a result
of this Convention.
What terrifies me more than
anything is the Prime Minister's quaint promise that he will have
a plebiscite. Good heavens! Will that be a tick a box thing like
we had with the national anthem? I hope we can dissuade the Prime
Minister from that. Unless this Convention comes up with
something positive, we should forget the whole thing and stay
with the status quo.
Proceedings
suspended from 1.00 p.m. to 2.15 p.m.
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