Q.For this assessment task you are required to write
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400 word summary of the tutorial reading.Commonwealth of Australia Copyright Act 1968 WARNING This material has been reproduced and communicated to you by or on behalf of Western Sydney University in accordance with Section 113P, Copyright Act 1968 (the Act). The material in this communication may be subject to copyright under the Act. Any further reproduction or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act. Do not remove this notice. Chapter 8 The republic, democracy and reconciliation Mark McKenna Dr Mark McKenna is an Austr:tl.ian Research Council QEII Fellow jn Histoiy in the School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra. He is the best-selling author of several books including The Captive Rept1h!ic: A HislO!JI ef Republiranism i11 A/fstrctlia 1788- 1995, published in 1996 by Cambridge University Press and Gokingjor Blackfella's Point, published by UNS\~ Press in 2002. 98 THE REPUBLIC, DEMOCRACY AND RECONCILIATION On 28 l\fay 2000, hundreds of thousands of people walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. On the same day, thousands more waUzed in other cities and towns across the nation. The desire for reconciliation moved people to march in numbers that had not been seen in Australia since the Vietnam \\far. Imagine now, if you can, a walk for an .Australian head-of-state. While the reconciliation movement goes to the heart of our country's identity, the mere thought of a public march for an Australian head-of-state borders on farce. But this sense of farce is only made possibl.e by the way in which we imagined the idea of a repnblic from 1991 until recently - or rather, the '.vay we have failed to imagine it. In this chapter, I want to present an argument for imagining the republic anew. Since 1991, when the Australian Republican Move- ment (ARM) was formed in Sydney, republicans have focused o n the nationality of the head-of-state rather than democratic repub- licanism or reconciliation. T his .remained the focus up to, and even after the first republic referendum, which failed in November 1999. Yet it is only by re-examining the meaning of republicanism in terms of democracy that 'the republic' will come to embody any meaningful goal. This applies equally to the process by which we become a republic and the content of our republic's institution al 'model'. Similarly Australian republicanism must become synon- ymous with the vital constitutional issues of our time, particuJady reconciliation. I will take these issues in turn. Democracy Much of the process by which debate about the republic was conducted in the 1990s is summed up by an event that took place in Paul Keating's Prime Ministerial Office in 1995. From Don Wat- son's memoir, Recollections q/ a Bleeding Heatt, we now know that in early 1995 Mr Keating was toying with the idea of 'handing the republic over to the people'. Watson fails to explain precisely what he means by this, but given Keatings aversion to holding a Cons- titutional Convention and to a popularly elected head-of-state, it can only mean that Keating was thinking of an indicative plebiscite on one question - republic or monarchy. Having written the page-and- 99 RESTRUCTURING AUSTRALIA a-half on the plebiscite proposal for one of Keating's speecbes, \X!atson discovered unexpectedly the following morning, when rea- ding the press, that the Prime Minister bad decided to drop the idea. The fact that Keating decided at the last minute to cut the speech is less surprising than another frank, if not disturbing admission by Watson. The idea of 'handing the republic over to the - people' was designed in part to counter any negative publicity that might emerge from the release of former Prime l\llinister Bob Hawke's memoirs. Handing the republic over to the people was a 'good story', especially if it could knock 'Hawkey' off the front page: (:.'(le) thought it would be a boon both to the republic's fortunes and to ours. \Xie hnd no doubt it would be the story, and we hoped it would be big enough to at least partly smother anything emerging from the I-:lawke affair (\X/atson 2002: 507) . This seems a grotesque motivation for the government's desire to be seen as the champion of democracy. \X/atson's revelation offers further support to the attacks on 'Keating's republic' employed by constitutional monarchists and the conservative parties against the whole idea of republican change in the early 1990s. Between 1991 and 1996, Keating kept the republic at arms' length from popular involvement. As Watson admits, 'we never found a place for the people in the big picture' (Watson 2002: 529). The two biggest failings of tl1e republican movement in the 1990s were the failure to project a vision of an .Australian republic that would inspire the people, and the failure to involve the people folly in the process of change. The quandary in which the repub- lican movement now finds itself, is in knowing what to retain from a decade of 'minimalist' thinking and what to leave behind. The republican movement stands at a crossroads. The decision it must 1nake is whether to broaden the debate or to persist with the strategy of pursuing a limited process of co nstitutional change. The starting point of re-imagining the republic, I beli.eve, lies in rejecting the notion that a republic is a synonym for the head-of- st:ate. An Australian republic can and must mean much more than this, especially if it is going to matter to the J\ ustralian people. To date, the republic has not mattered enough. A common republican refrain has been that if Australians woke up tomorrow and found 100 THE REPUBLIC, DEMOCRACY AND RECONCILIATION themselves living under a republic, they would detect little change. Hence, the paradoxical argument that people should vote for change because nothing substantial would change. Don Watson recently admitted that although Paul Keating's arguments for a repnblic were sound, 'they were never going to inspire everyone' (Watson 2002: 429). Inspiration and passion are two things that have been conspicuously absent from the republic debate. In order to make the republic safe and less threatening, we succeeded in making it dull and uninteresting. So much so that it is now seen as a second order issue, or even worse, an issue that ,vjJJ eventually fall into place. Like a shipwrecked explorer, the republic waits on the beach for time to pass, and for a passing vessel to come to the rescue. Perhaps, it will be a change of government - perhaps an .inspirational leader. In reality, rescue may never come unless some bold steps are taken. Process and content If the first step .is to broaden our conception of ·what a republic might mean, the second must be to case as.ide the focus on the search for the perfect 'model' that characterised Australian repub- licanism in the 1990s. Too often in the republic debate, the issues of process and model have been conflated. On many occasions, the assumption seems to be that if we can get the model right then a resounding 'Yes' vote will follow accordingly. But this logic is flawed, not least because many of the difficulties that beset repub- licans in the 1999 referendum campaign turned on matters of trus t, legitimacy, democracy and sovereignty. These matters related as much to the guescion of process as they did to the model on o ffer. If ' republicanism stands for popular sovereignty', as the A.Rl\{'s John Warhurst and Greg Barns have written, then republicans m ust focus their attention on advancing proposals for a democratic pro- cess that will create a sense of popular ownership of the republic. Process should now be the focus. Republicans must put aside the question of the model, and the limited focus on the need for an Australian head-of-state, an argument which has no\v been won. As yet, this is not happening. For example, \".farhurst and Barns continue to insist that the expression o f poplLlar sovereignty can be 101 RESTRUCTURING AUSTRALIA realised solely through the instalment of a new head-of-state, most probably nffw one elected by popular vote. FuU participation by Australians will be reached finally by creating for us an Australian president as head-of-state in place of a foreign monarch. Australian democracy will flower in an Australian republic. Our symbols will have been repatriated from a land far away. This view is simply old 'rninimaust' thinking dressed in new clothes. It remains a view too restrictive and limited in its vision of a republic. The essence of our republican democracy is not the natio- nality of our head-of-state; it is the democratic process that we put in place to discuss issues of constitutional change and the new constitution we must write. In other words, the way in which we become a republic matters as much as the model we eventually choose. Constitution-making is the source of popular sovereignty. Constitution-making is where the principles that underlie a repub- lican Constitution can be seen in practice. One process that deserves support is similar to one of the proposals incluclecl in the recent ARM pa.per on democratic processes that might resolve the issue of the republic (see AR.t\11 website
). This is a process that offers the Australian people the opportunity co be fully consulted. The first step would involve a two-question plebiscite: 1. 'Republic' or ':Monarchy'; 2. Rank the following four republic models in order of your preference - • Prime MinisteriaJ appointment; • the parliamentary appointment model; election by Electoral College; or election by popular vote. Assuming that the answer to the first question is an emphatic 'yes', and that under preferential voting a clear choice emerged in question two, the next step should be a Constitutional Convention elected by compulsory vote. The Convention should sit in various cities arow1d the nation. W11en releasing its redraft of the Cons- titution, the Convention should adjourn