Asia Times: Allies split over referendum on republic



	February 13, 1999	atimes.com

Oceania

Allies split over referendum on republic
By Andrew Nette

MELBOURNE - Phil Cleary wants Australia to become a republic, yet he is campaigning for a ''no'' vote in the upcoming national referendum on the issue.

Cleary, a former independent Member of Parliament, leads a new coalition known as the Real Republican Movement (RRM), which is opposing the blueprint for constitutional change to be put to a vote in November.

He says this model, under which the new head of state would be selected by parliament rather than a direct vote by the Australian people, is ''authoritarian and undemocratic'' and will do more harm than good.

''What we are saying is that if we cannot embrace the idea of the people electing a president we are going nowhere,'' he says. ''Worse than that, it would be a step backwards."

Until a few months ago, most analysts considered it a forgone conclusion that the historic vote on whether or not to replace the British monarch with an Australian president as the nation's head of state would result in a resounding victory for the republican camp.

Now, after a disastrous start to the year for the republican lobby, there are increasing doubts as to whether such a referendum can succeed.

A string of opinion polls in January found that support for the type of constitutional change on offer had dropped. Only 41 per cent of those polled in one survey said they would vote yes, and 55 per cent said they felt the idea of becoming a republic by 2001 was not important.

Compounding this, the ruling conservative Liberal/National Party coalition that must implement the referendum, appears to be deeply split between pro-monarchists and mainstream republicans, with some senior ministers even voicing support for RRM.

Central to the debate is the question of whether or not Australians should be able to elect their own president.

In the model to be put to a vote later this year, the British monarchy's representative in Australia, the Governor General, would be replaced by a president to be elected by two thirds vote of a joint sitting of the country's parliament.

The model emerged out of a national convention on constitutional change in February last year, and is supported by mainstream republicans grouped around the Australian Republican Movement (ARM).

ARM supporters argue their model offers the best chance of an Australian republic in the immediate future without the danger of radical alterations to the Australian constitution and the ensuing instability this could bring about.

''Real republicans'' such as Cleary disagree, arguing that the model to be voted on is so flawed that no vote should be held until a plebiscite to determine whether the people want a directly elected head of state or one appointed by parliament.

They are prepared to advocate a ''no'' vote to any model that includes a head of state elected by parliament. They add that a popularly elected president is also the only way to ensure the job does not go to a politician.

''This issue is important because it carries with it all sorts of important questions about who we are as a nation and where we are going,'' says Cleary. ''What does it say if we accept a model under which parliament elects the president? It says there is no democracy."

Opinion polls consistently show the vast majority of Australians want to elect their own head of state rather than have parliament do it for them.

''What the latest polls are saying is not that people don't want a republic, but that they do not accept the ARM model,'' says Cleary, who spent four years as an independent member of federal parliament.

He accuses the mainstream republican movement of cutting a deal with the current government: ''The mainstream republicans adopt a model for constitutional change which centralises power in parliament in return for government support."

Observers say there are a number of other agendas behind the mainstream republicans push, in particular the perceived need to rush through a model of change to enable an Australian president to preside over the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

For their part, ARM's backers say the RRM's campaign risks handing the November vote to the pro-monarchist forces.

Opposition Labor Party leader Kim Beazley, an ARM backer, recently warned of the danger of disunity killing hopes for a republic. ''Defeat, he said, would be a profound blow to our contemporary sense of national maturity, but it would also be a blow to our national aspirations."

In the meantime, another issue vexing the mainstream republican camp is what form November's referendum will take.

When Australians went to the polls in 1898 to vote on whether to federate, they were asked a simple question: ''Are you in favour of the proposed Federal Constitution Bill?"

Although Prime Minister John Howard is likely to draft a question of similar brevity, he faces other pressures.

Monarchists are pushing for the November ballot paper to include a detailed explanation of the changes being put to the constitution, including a new preamble.

Mainstream republicans fear, however, that too many issues will confuse the key question of whether or not Australia wants a British or Australian head of state.

Complicating the issue is a push from some quarters for the new preamble to include an acknowledgement of the prior ownership of Australian by indigenous Australians, and a subsequent recognition of the injustices suffered by Aboriginal people under white settlement.

ARM's chair, Malcolm Turnball, said that a new preamble dealing with these topics ran the risk of igniting an ''explosively divisive'' race debate.

''Given the way in which race has had the potential of being explosively divisive in this country, it would seem to me that we should be careful not to propose any amendment to the constitution which relates to Aboriginals prior occupation or the Aboriginal history of Australia unless we are confident it has bipartisan support,'' he said.

Aboriginal groups and their supporters are angry about indigenous people's recognition in the new constitution being sidelined in favour of the debate over the head of state.

As Gatjil Djerrkura, head of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Commission, the country's peak indigenous body, put it: ''We have a vision of a future in which we have a rightful place. In the present constitution we are invisible."

(Inter Press Service)