Senator Brown is proceeding with his irresponsible proposal to hold a plebiscite at the next election. He plays down the cost, and gives no details of what he really wants. He will of course need government support for the bill to become law.
It should have been allowed to lapse.
Is it being allowed to linger to be used as a wedge against the opposition, or has some deal been done? A committee report on the bill is planned for 15 June 2009.
The question in the plebiscite is meaningless and a complete waste of time and money: “Do you support Australia becoming a republic?”
Our principal objection to any constitutional plebiscite is that it will ask the people to cast a vote of no confidence in one of the world’s most successful constitutions, to be followed by years of constitutional instability.
[Napoleon: six plebiscites to entrench his dictatorial control over France and occupied Europe]
The Founding Fathers of this country, seeing how constitutional plebiscites had been misused, especially in revolutionary and Napoleonic France, chose the Swiss referendum as the only way to consult the people who would then decide on questions concerning the constitution.
The difference between a plebiscite and a referendum is this. The plebiscite is a glorified and very expensive opinion poll; in a referendum the details are on the table before, and not after you vote.
The only reason Senator Brown and the republicans are not proposing a referendum is that they fear they would lose a referendum. Their fears are, we believe, soundly based.
...Senator Brown should do his duty and not waste the taxpayers' money...
Senator Brown has a duty to indicate what is wrong with the existing constitution and how he proposes to correct this.
What does he want to do? What does he want to replace our oldest institution and one which acts as a check and balance on the political institutions?
In other words, what is his model?
Given the financial situation we are in, the fact that millions and millions of dollars have already been wasted on this folly through six major republican exercises, why is more money to be diverted from such crucial matters as schools, hospitals, water and transport to this folly?
And why is the government allowing this private member’s bill to survive? As I mentioned on Crikey on 13 November, Senator Brown had effectively vetoed the Family First proposal to inquire into the publication of a fraudulent version of the conversation between the Prime Minister and the President about the G20, what some call “blabbergate”?
The government know that a plebiscite on a republic at an election will divert precious media time from the election issues. If they act rationally, they will only hold a plebiscite on such a topic if they think there is a danger of losing the election and a distraction from their performance is needed.
...reference to committee...
The bill had been earlier referred to the Finance and Public Administration Committee for inquiry and report by 10 March 2009, but on 25 November 2008 the Senate extended the reporting date to 15 June 2009.
The reasons given for the referral and the principal issues for consideration are stated to be:
“The issue of Australia becoming a republic is an extremely important one for the Australian Parliament and public. It is important that the process by which this issue is progressed now has appropriate public input and is properly scrutinised and debated.”
There is no reference to the obvious fact that this issue has not only been well and truly debated, it was rejected in a landslide in 1999.
... how to ensure not many submissions are received....
Written submissions must be received by 6 February 2009, that is they must be made at a time whenn many Australians are on holidays. This is obviously designed to limit the opportunity of many Australians to put in a submission.
The Committee prefers to receive submissions electronically as a document attached to an email to be sent to
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Otherwise, submissions may be sent by fax to (02) 6277 5809. We do not know whether mailed submissions will be acceptable.
...arcane warning, what happened to the right to know?....
The Committee secretariat warns about the rather dated rule that submissions become Committee documents and are made public only after a decision by the Committee.
They say the publication of submissions includes loading them onto the internet and their being available to other interested parties including the media.
We are told that persons making submissions must not release them without the approval of the Committee. It is true that submissions are covered by parliamentary privilege but the unauthorised release of them is not protected.
But given that personal confidences are not involved why should people not make up their own decision about this? Is this designed to stop constitutional monarchists from comparing submissions ?
The telephone number of the Committee Secretariat is (02) 6277 3530. The Bill, the Explanatory Memorandum, and the tabled Second Reading Speech follow.
The Speech contains one significant error - the Convention did not recommend the so called "bi partisan" model be put to a referendum. Senator Brown makes the extraordinary claim that the question whether Australia should become republic has been close to the hearts of many Australians since Federation. This is just not true.
The question then is to what extent the untested assertions by Senator Brown were persuasive in the decision to refer this bill to a committee.
I was once reported in the columns of Crikey .com for what the then owner and editor clearly considered a heinous offence. This was to be seen publicly reading, on a flight from Canberra, the journal News Weekly, which was founded by an extraordinary Australian, the late B.A. Santamaria. (The role of News Weekly in the Movement is discussed in several places in Patrick Morgan (ed.) BA Santamaria: Running the Show. Selected Documents: 1939-1996, Melbourne University Press, 2008.)
News Weekly remains an excellent journal embracing causes which sometimes outrage the bien-pensants.
The following is from the issue of 22 November, 2008. You will probably not be surprised to know that I agree with it whole heartedly. It is about the Liberal Party, a two page extract of my chapter in Liberals and Power: The Road Ahead, Melbourne University Press, edited by Peter Van Onsolen.
If I am asked I am also happy to write on the Labor Party and the constitution. As it is as wise as the Australian people are on constitutional issues, I see no need to write about the constitution and the National Party, nor indeed the Christian Democrats nor Family First. However, some National politicians and ex- politicians need to remember what their party stands for.
Incidentally, the then Liberal Senator Vanstone made the argument during the 1999 referendum that had the founder of the Liberal Party Sir Robert Menzies been alive then he would have been a republican. She never explained how she knew this, which went against all that Sir Robert held dear.
[Sir Robert Menzies, founder of the Liberal Party]
The extract follows.
“Liberals also have a strong faith in our constitutional system. This was described succinctly and eloquently by Bolingbroke as "that assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, derived from certain fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the general system, according to which the community hath agreed to be governed".
“The heart of modern constitutionalism is, as it were, a triptych. In one panel there is the rule of law, in the centre, representative democracy, and on the other side, a compelling array of checks and balances, bicameralism, the Australian Crown, the courts. Those checks and balances exist to foil attempts to concentrate power unduly and to prevent serious abuses of that power.
“Menzies would undoubtedly have agreed that the essence of our constitutional heritage is well summarised in the Preamble to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. This recites the fact that the Australian people in each of the several states, "humbly relying on the blessings of Almighty God", had agreed to unite in "one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown" and under the constitution.
“A return to the original intention of the Constitution would bring to an end the states' addiction, their unaccountable dependence on Canberra. Why is that important or even relevant? Until that is achieved, the states will remain analogous to the young and healthy welfare-dependent - they will be irresponsible and increasingly incompetent.
“Unless and until the states become once again accountable to their electorates for the money they obtain, they will be unable to provide the services the people are entitled to expect. By increasing the federal largesse, and handing over the GST revenues, the problem has only been exacerbated. What is happening in New South Wales today is an indication of the direction of the future governance of the states.
“Liberals should also be in the forefront in restoring the checks and balances inherent in the Westminster system, in particular in the traditional separation of powers. This means that Liberals should vigorously oppose the introduction of a bill of rights, which would effectively hand the power to legislate to unelected judges, thus corrupting the judges by politicising them.
“Liberals know that an independent non-political public service is one of the jewels of the Westminster system. They should do what they failed to do when last in office in Canberra - they should reverse rather than join in the politicisation of the top echelons of the public service.
“At the same time they should reduce judicial supervision of public service and executive decision-making. This has reached the point where too many government decisions are now being replaced by the decisions of unelected judicial officers. There is a place for review, but not as wide as it now is.
“A courageous party will offer policies that the rank and file will immediately recognise as restoring governance to the high standards that once prevailed and leaving the people to decide on such matters, which are no business of government.”
“There was a widely reported ceremony at Verdun last week. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, exactly 90 years since the end of the First World War, the crowd, led by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, fell silent in commemoration,” wrote Charles Moore in The Spectator 22 November, 2008.
“Except that it didn’t, because President Sarkozy and his wife Carla were 13 minutes late.
“The two-minute silence was delayed for their convenience,” he adds. “You have only to imagine the utter impossibility of the Queen being late for such an event to see what a strange, high-handed thing it was.
“But the ‘hyper-President’ seems to have attracted no more than a bit of muted tut-tutting. I sometimes wonder if Sarkozy, who is always rushing around and shouting into his mobile phone, might be the first head of state literally to have been driven mad by modern technology and its accompanying illusion that constant, frenetic work gets good results.“
It speaks well for the American way of doing things that one of the first acts of President-elect Obama’s officials has been to confiscate his BlackBerry,” he concludes.
[The Queen and French President Sarkozy, 2008]
Mr.Sarkozy can hardly be expected to behave as impeccably as The Queen.
After all he is a politician. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
But wherever he goes, everyone knows that he has on his mind such matters as opinion polling, party support, and re-election.
That is how presidents, vice presidents, governors and lieutenant governors think in a politicians’ republic. Why anyone would want even more politicians, is beyond most people, although it of course appeals to the political class.
By way of contrast The Queen is guided by a strong sense of service, and not at all on whether she will be re-elected.
Of course some politicians also have a sense of service, but even when it is strong, it is necessarily accompanied by all sorts of political considerations.
...Mr. Sarkozy presents....
Incidentally Mr Sarkozy should perhaps thank The Queen for his recent marriage. It seems he married Ms Carla Bruni in anticipation of their state visit this year to London.
But The Queen would hardly have put a condition on whom he could arrive with. It was his own decision.
It was no doubt the President’s good sense that persuaded him that while the French could not care less whether he had a mistress, they would not have been pleased had she been paraded as if she were his wife.
They would have seen French prestige and standing lowered. Indeed they would have feared that many among their traditional enemy, the British, would have laughed at France, and have been delighted to do so.
Of course sections of the British press did try to embarrass the President with photographs of his wife. But those newspapers are held in contempt by the greater part of the public, often including the very people who buy them.
In any event any fears the French presidential party may have had about the reaction of the British was forgotten after the warm reception to them from the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at Heathrow.
The Prince and the Duchess then took the visitors to Windsor Castle where they were guests of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh.
According to Andrew Piece in the London Sunday Telegraph, the Duke showed the couple to their bedroom which he had explained had been the same room where his mother and grandmother had been born.
Despite the imposing surroundings, the couple had felt at ease at all times because of the kindness of the Royal Family, he reported.
Mme Bruni-Sarkozy said that the "exquisite" Queen was everything she had ever imagined a monarch would be.
"Her intelligence, her perfect French - and she looked so well," said Mme Bruni-Sarkozy. “The President, at one point, had asked the Queen if she ever felt tired.
The Queen, in faultless French, replied that while she often did, she would never let it show,” reported Mr. Pierce.
In an interview, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy, whose style and dress sense were very well received in France and Britain, said that despite her initial misgivings before she arrived, she loved the British for their "eccentric" and traditional behaviour.
Frank Devine says Australia will become a republic on the accession of Prince Charles ( “Kinky King Charlie to get our republic across the line,” The Australian 28 November, 2008). But republicans, unable to agree even on how many plebiscites they want, will never agree on a model.
Mr Devine makes the mistake of thinking the 1999 referendum was about a president to be appointed by the PM. No, it wasn’t.
[Prince Charles invests Ms. Kylie Minogue]
It was something polls indicate more palatable than prime ministerial appointment. It was for a president to be elected by a two thirds vote of parliament on the nomination of the prime minister and seconded by the opposition leader (Constitution Alteration (Establishment of Republic) Bill, 1999, clause 60). There was also to be public involvement in the nomination process, albeit purely cosmetic.
Mr.Devine thinks Australians want a republic with an elected president and this would win. Not so. According to the latest polling (Morgan 7 May 2008), only 45% of Australians support this. The same poll said this would rise to 56% on the accession of Prince Charles. On all referendum precedents, such a vote before an informed debate is doomed to defeat.
How many Australians know, for example, that Prince Charles, at an age when many think of retiring works each year to raise over a quarter of a billion dollars for his many charities?
Asking people how they will vote at some time likely to be years away does not tell us much. Certainly the several functions constitutional monarchists held for the Prince’s 60th birthday indicate warm support for him from all age groups.
Incidentally the same poll contains a veritable time bomb for republicans. Among those 14-17, only 23% support a republic with an elected president, confirming a trend in polling which has long been evident.
The New South Wales NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, recently strongly criticised the High Court judge Justice Michael Kirby.
He was referring the judge's support for a charter of rights and his argument that the tenure of judges should be limited to 10 years (“A-G sees red over judge's opinions,” report by Michael Pelly, The Australian , 22 November, 2008.)
[High Court 1903, National Archives of Australia A123401]
In the meantime the NSW Attorney described Justice Kirby’s comments as “unnecessarily provocative” and “profoundly wrong”.
"Justice Kirby has said a lot of things in recent time that I don't agree with... I think it is important for judges to be able to make contributions to public discourse," Mr Hatzistergos said.
"They have tremendous capacity to be able to provoke debate on issues that are important to us as a society.
"But I think -- particularly if they are serving judges -- that entry into debates that might lead to criticism of themselves may also reflect adversely on the court.
“ I think people need to be circumspect and be sure the balance is properly struck. "I don't agree with the views of His Honour in regard to a use-by date for judges. I think that was unnecessarily provocative.
"I think there are a number of judges who have been outstanding and who have served the court for a very long period of time and if I may say so, with respect, that he is probably one of them."
Where precisely the balance to which the Attorney refers is not clear.
But it would be entirely unacceptable, for example, for a High Court judge to be seen to be involved in a campaign for, say, the abolition of the states , or the removal of the Crown.
“ Never trust a journalist,” warned the proprietor, “ even ones from around here.” I thought of this when I saw the letter from Sir Robert Menzies’ daughter, Mrs. Heather Henderson, in The Australian on 25 November, 2008. It was headed "Two reputations damaged."
The essential question is surely this. Would Sir Robert have believed his confidence had been betrayed by the publication of his conversation with David McNicoll?
[Betrayal, interpreted by Giotto]
Mrs. Henderson is a lady of great dignity and wise judgement. Her public statements are few and far between; but when she intervenes it is to bring depth and context to some allegation or some story about Sir Robert which has just surfaced or, as is so often the case, resurfaced.
Not so long ago it was the improbable story that Sir Robert had ambitions to take over from Churchill.
More recently it was the conversation in 1974 with David McNicoll in which Sir Robert is reported as severely criticizing his successors, saying “They break my heart.” This extended to personal criticism of the then leaders.
In his opinion piece on 20 November, 2008 in The Australian , Tom Switzer predicted John Howard in retirement would be more discreet even than Sir Robert had been. He then referred to a report published by David McNicoll after Sir Robert’s death.
John Howard is a remarkably forgiving and a discreet man. He will no doubt be very careful not to make life difficult for his succesors.
Mrs Henderson writes:
“Tom Switzer’s article ("Former PM with manners of steel”, Opinion, 20/11) quotes from a conversation that the veteran journalist David McNicoll had in 1974 with my father Sir Robert Menzies when he was a very old man. May I add some background.
“McNicoll and my father had known each other for many years and were on good terms. McNicoll rang Hazel Craig, my father’s secretary, and asked if he could come and see ‘the Boss’. My father agreed but said ‘no tape recorder’.
“McNicoll duly arrived at my father’s office with a tape recorder. Hazel said ‘No’ and McNicoll indicated he wouldn’t switch it on. My father was unaware of the tape recorder. He and McNicoll sat and had a chat between friends, in private.
“After my father had died McNicoll published some of the more sensational recorded parts from that ‘private’ conversation, including the bits quoted by Switzer.”
Mrs Henderson says there were “two sad consequences.”
“ First, my father’s reputation for never interfering in the work of his successors or making public criticisms of them personally was undoubtedly damaged. He had always been meticulous about saying nothing in public that might hurt them or their families.”
“Second, McNicoll had succeeded in damaging his own reputation as well.”
...DD McNicoll to the defence...
The day after the letter appeared, in “Ming taped with assent,”DD McNicoll took up his pen to defend his father against the charge that he had recorded the conversation secretly. He said his father had borrowed a cassette recorder “the size of a briefcase” for the interview.
Further, he said, you had to use “large buttons and circular dials” to turn it on, and could not be used discreetly.
He said the original tape of the conversation is with the State Library of NSW. It begins with his father saying "You've seen one of these before?" To which Sir Robert says "Yes."
David McNicoll was an admirer of Sir Robert and kept a bust of him in his office. But consenting to a recording, if he in fact did, is not necessarily consenting to publication.
This is done all the time, although such record as is kept is usually in writing only. We shall never know the conditions on which the recording was made.
Both were admirable, honourable men. Each played a considerable role in the public life of this country. They both radiated a patrician but not identical style, the sort of style now frowned upon. David McNicoll was the debonair man about town, a description which does not in any way fit Sir Robert.
They both spoke with great authority. Sir Robert has had no equal as a public speaker, and David McNicoll had a rare ability to communicate across the political and social spectrum.
I do find it hard to believe that Sir Robert would have wanted the conversation published. He was too big a man to have allowed that.
But I suppose that David McNicoll could well have believed that, as with a confidential source, the obligation for secrecy was at an end when the source left this mortal world.
I expect that Sir Robert, a magnanimous and measured man, has probably forgiven him.
The recently elected New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has said a republic is inevitable ( this column 12/11), which indicates he has obviously not properly considered the question. But as they warned during the war, “Loose lips might sink ships.” Now the miniscule New Zealand republican movement , which is linked to Australia’s, has behaved predictably.
[World War II poster]
Having won less than 300 votes in the NZ election, the republicans have told the Prime Minister to use his first meeting with The Queen to say it is time New Zealand severed its ties with the monarchy.
According to New Zealand’s 3 News, Mr Key is in Britain on a brief stop on his way home from Apec.
Let us hope that Mr. Key has the good sense not to behave so discourteously and to say something for which he has no mandate whatsoever.
Pointing out there is no groundswell of support for a republic, the Chairman of the New Zealand Monarchist League, Professor Noel Cox, says The Queen has a very good understanding of New Zealand and Mr Key would be wise to take her seriously.
The League recently launched a new and attractive website, but will presumably maintain the present website for some time.
“Sydney is sliding from a joke to a disaster, and it's taking the rest of us with it,” declared Andrew Bolt in “State of chaos drags us down,” The Herald Sun 14 November). Sydney’s Daily Telegraph liked the piece so much, they republished it prominently, just in case its NSW readers had not noticed what is happening in their state.
Andrew Bolt said that not since Premier Joan Kirner’s Victorian government has a state been led as catastrophically as is NSW.
“Sydney,” he wrote “is just the tawdry measure of its astonishing decline.”
He then corrected himself. The current NSW government (not only by its words but by its record the most republican government in Australia) made Mrs Kirner’s look “a model of propriety”.
At least her ministers”... were honest - and fully clothed - as they drove Victoria into the ground.”
Then came the punch line: “They weren't murdering each other, dancing half-naked in Parliament, molesting boys, sleeping with developers bearing gifts or walking over the bodies of men shot just 90 minutes earlier.”
[The Last Judgement: Michelangelo]
NSW is an “all-round disaster,” agrees Adelaide based seasoned political commentator, former newpaper proprietor and publisher, Christopher Pearson.
“The NSW Government is in terminal decline.”
Part of a “patronage network,” they have lost sight of the rudiments of service delivery. Worse, they have no idea of how to fix the problems.
“ The sooner they're out of office, the sooner the (Labor) party can start the process of reinventing and rehabilitating itself.
“The longer the delay, the likelier that the state party becomes unelectable in any but its safest seats for a generation and unable to field a competent Opposition.”
The Opposition is hamstrung, “kept in a holding pattern until a lot closer to polling day, watching as things go to pot.”
Absent the government losing its majority or triggering the Governor’s power to dismiss by behaving illegally or unconstitutionally, there is no solution. Unlike the Senate, the Legislative Council cannot deny supply.
...a solution?...
“Nick Greiner, a former premier of NSW, and David Flint, an authority on constitutional law, recently have suggested a mechanism for precipitating a dissolution, “ writes Christopher Pearson.
California famously allows recall elections, but British Columbia in Canada is a more helpful precedent for Australia in that it combines recall elections with the Westminster system.
[Robust Californian campaign to recall Governor Gray]
“According to Flint, ‘This is typically a three-stage process, with the final two stages taken simultaneously. The first stage is a petition signed within a prescribed time by a minimum percentage of electors, say 10 per cent or 12 per cent. This is followed by a vote open to all electors to determine whether an election should be held. For convenience a ballot for the election is held at the same time, although this could subsequently be found to have been unnecessary.’
“Some may cavil at the idea of combining the state's citizens voting as a single constituency for or against a recall and at the same time electing individual members of parliament if it turns out that the second stage proposition is carried. The process is cumbersome and recall elections are infrequent. Sometimes they end up registering a level of disquiet that is enough to lame an administration without decently dispatching it.
“However, if the mechanism were available in NSW, on present showing it would have no trouble in attracting the necessary 10 per cent support in short order and resolving the impasse.
“Of course, a recall election would not of itself diminish the reserve powers of the governor to dismiss one ministry and commission another, in the event of illegal or unconstitutional activity.
“They are enshrined in the Constitution Act, although Flint thinks that in the wake of the Whitlam government's sacking in 1975 they have in a sense become wasting powers.
“If you think about the secretive and melodramatic way that events transpired in 1975, the outcome was sub-optimal and deeply divisive, even though strictly speaking proper.
“Had a recall been available, he thinks the Coalition would have ‘concentrated on its availability rather than in refusing supply. The legitimacy of its use, successful or not, would be difficult to challenge.’
...and Westminster?....
[This is not Westminster]
“Some constitutional conservatives are inclined to view with suspicion anything that smacks of direct democracy, such as citizen-initiated referendums, and to say that even recall elections compromise a fundamental Burkean principle.
“ The principle in question is that democracy under the Westminster model is not direct but representative. Edmund Burke said in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol: ‘Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.’
“ If citizen-initiated referendums seem like too much of an override on the judgment of MPs, recall elections can be justified as an opportunity to confirm existing representatives or choose new ones.
“Arguably, the rigid Australian party system, which is much more of a procrustean bed than the British House of Commons, has already thoroughly subverted Burkean principle.
“Although a provision allowing for recall elections in NSW would be in the best interests of everyone, not least the state Government, it's hard to imagine even the best of its members supporting such a bill if the Opposition were to introduce it.
“ Nonetheless, Labor risks annihilation if it stumbles on in office until the 2011 elections, irreparably damaging its brand in the process and thinning out an already depleted pool of talent.
“On Tuesday, only nine weeks after taking office, Rees was forced to fend off speculation about his leadership. His chances of surviving in the job, even in the absence of a self-evident successor, must be reckoned as slim.”
When we suggested here on 18 November that Liberals politicians, in particular the Federal Deputy Leader Ms. Julie Bishop, are unwise to go on preaching about some vague undefined republic, we illustrated this with Copenhagen statue of Bishop Absalon preaching with an axe.
Such is the perspicacity of this column, it seems our reference to the axe was more than accurate.
[Bishop Absolon - not the only one to preach with an axe]
“Peter van Onselen, whose book 'Liberals & Power: The Road Ahead' ( see this column 4 November) suffered some bad publicity when it was revealed that Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop had lifted sections of her contribution from a speech by a Kiwi businessman, hadn't seen or heard from Bishop, despite writing to her, since the scandal broke.
[Liberals and Power: this author is on the cover]
“That was until they met in the Sky television studios in Sydney yesterday morning. Initially they didn't know the other was there as Sky kept them in separate green rooms before their on-air appearances.
“Bishop was on first, and the final question to her was about her plagiarism in van Onselen's book. She brushed aside the question, saying she didn't want to give the book ‘any more free publicity’.
" The duo briefly came face to face as Bishop was being ushered off set and van Onselen on. He gave her a big grin and she scarcely nodded.
“ Later van Onselen told Strewth he was glad he hadn't taken things further, particularly after reading about how Bishop chased her sisters with an axe as a child. ‘I don't know if I'd like her idea of burying the hatchet,’ he says."
Incidentally, if Ms. Bishop did not write the chapter published under her name, part of which belongs to someone else, who will receive the author’s royalties?
Will she receive a debit from the publishers for refusing to give the book to which she agreed to contribute a chapter ‘any more free publicity’?
After all, her photograph appears on the cover; most of the other authors did not.
We wonder who is named as the author of the 2008 Republican Lecture which Ms Bishop, the shadow Treasurer, delivered in the middle of the world financial crisis.
The core duties of government have evolved over time, but they are essentially as they were in 1788.
These include the defence of the realm, ensuring monetary stability, and maintaining The Queen's Peace, that is, law and order.
The Federal Government has indicated an agenda to remove the Australian Crown. But when it comes to one of its core functions, monetary stability, it has been criticised on the grounds of its competence or lack thereof.
This relates to the form of and the way it came to its recent bank guarantee decision. It is argued that this caused a run on sound mortgage funds, with a large number of Australians still unable to access their life savings.
This hopefully was an isolated incident. But clearly, Australians will have little confidence in the wisdom of a government’s proposals for fundamental constitutional change when they see the way it handles the core functions of government.
What has not been a once-off has been the failure - for years - of state and territory governments to provide that level of law and order the Australian people are entitled to expect
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