In practise, our g-g would probably dissolve parliament in the scenario outlined above (and that would in fact be the logical thing to do - throw the issue back to the people).
One thing which really DO need to do when we make the transition to a republic is codify the reserve powers - convention isn’t good enough, they need to be enshrined in law.
I seem to recall that one of the British monarchs (Queen Victoria, IIRC) did refuse to give royal assent on at least one occasion (I’ll grub around and see if I can find the specifics). I’m not sure whether the monarch COULD do the same thing in respect of Australian legislation, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they can.
We don’t - it’s cropped up a few times in other threads, but the net contribution from the Sovereign to the Treasury (even after security costs and the like) is in the region of 100 million pounds per year. The secret is the profits from the Crown Estates, which are handed to the Treasury.
Of course, this is all pedantic number fiddling, since we could argue forever over who the Estates ought to belong to. The important question, if we wanted to reduce the constitution to an accountancy problem, is would a President save us money? I’m not sure it would. The palaces would still need to be maintained, presumably the President would want a decent salary, and I guess a lot of the ceremonial stuff would remain for history’s sake.
Oh, and glee - since the Queen owns Kensington palace, why shouldn’t she let her relatives live there for whatever price she decides? On the other hand, if my relatives wanted to camp out in my flat virtually cost-free, I’d tell 'em, to bugger off.
Not quite. The Crown has a very limited role when it comes to givign assent to legislation. The G-G has three theoretical options: assent, withhold assent or to reserve the matter ‘for the Queen’s pleasure’. The G-G may return bills to the House of Reps (or to the Senate) (section 58) but that power is only intended to have a limited operation; it’s only to enable small inaccuracies or errors in legislation to be corrected quickly and with informality.
However, the power of the Crown to assent to legislation could not be described as independent. That is, it’s simply given… because the Government advises the G-G to assent! Assent is a mere formality; it’s automatic and it’s inevitable.
On to your Queen Vic-related point. History has given many examples where the Queen or her Australian representatives have questioned the ‘advice’ of the Government and even suggested changes and asked the Ministers to reconsider the matter. However, at the end of the day the advice tendered MUST be accepted.
Which brings me to a point related to your position on codifying the reserve powers. Edmund Barton (yep, the First PM) would disagree that convention ‘isn’t good enough’. When the Constitution was drafted, Barton as chairman of the drafting committee said there was
**This very topic was in the minds of our Founding Fathers but they chose not to codify the nature of the G-G’s powers in practice. There’s an explanation for this based on the responsible government doctrine and in the political progeny of the Westminister system, but for the sake of brevity, let’s just accept that the G-G (and the Monarch) has no power to refuse the Government in this way.
A substantial amount of Parliament’s time, both in committees and in the general assembly, would have to be devoted to decisions about how to dismantle the monarchy and what kind of republic would take its place. This would necessarily come at the cost of time for other issues. This would be especially bad now, when Norway is going through a time of political flux, and there are enough serious matters demanding the MPs’ limited attention span without inventing new ones.
Since the Constitution was written assuming the country would be a monarchy, substantial changes would have to be made to the document. The Norwegian constitution is amended by a vote in two successive Parliaments, with a general election held in between. It would become the dominant issue in any general election, and since Norway has only one G.E. every four years, that means it would, essentially, dominate national politics for a long time.
At the moment, there is still strong support for the monarchy; a public debate about getting rid of it could potentially rival the EU debate for sheer divisiveness :eek:
I wouldn’t want to give up a non-party political, non directly elected Head of State without some serious guarantees that any proposed alternative would be an improvement: If someone can give me continuity, give me service, give me the influence and experience, give me the national interest rather than political expediency, and I’ll be interested.
And yeah, I don’t want Elton John as Queen or Richard Friggin Branson as HoS.
Also, I really don’t understand the financial argument at all. I live in the world’s fourth largest economy, we can afford whatever is the best democratic model available. Call me old-fashioned but it just seems one of those things you don’t skimp on. The emotionally driven cost arguments remind me of Oscar Wilde: “…the price of everything and the value of nothing”
I’m not sure the cost argument applies in terms of ‘the best democratic model’ available, does it? I don’t mean to split hairs, but does the Queen add much to Britain’s democracy? Cost arguments are surely more convincing when you look at the whole area of tourism revenue.
A potential benefit to one industry does not seem a sound and rational basis for the organisation of a modern democracy.
Anyway, just as tourists still visit places like Versailles, I expect anyone interested would still trot along to Buck House, or Windsor or Balmoral, royal family or no royal family.
Celyn - that was exactly my point. I don’t believe that the monarch’s role in the democratic process - or whatever we’d like to call it - could really justify the money spent. The only way you could justify money spent on the monarchy is by pointing to the purely economic benefits, and I haven’t seen enough to really convince me either way.
If the question is: Does the Head of State contribute much to our democratic model, I’d have to say a rather emphatic “Yes” – being ‘passive’ and non-party political are qualities that shouldn’t be underestimated, IMHO.
I’m reminded of the most recent example of HRH’s pro-active involvement i.e. the very subtle questioning of Thatcher’s direction in the early 80’s – nothing public, just a few utterances in diplomatic circles that would get back to the PM. ‘Allegedly’ Thatcher froze at the thought of Queenie going public and the next election doing down the pan. Thatcher denies all knowledge.
If the Tories had lost the blue rinse vote and much else – which they most certainly would if Quennie actually said something – it would have been the end of Thatcher and the Tory Party for a very long time.
Main thing for me is balancing long-term national interest vs. short-term party political expediency.
In another sense and in terms of understanding the position, I’d have Owen as Blair and Queenie as Heskey – not always easy to appreciate but bloody valuable.
I take your point but I have my doubts at how effective - or impartial - the monarchy is within the democratic process. Obviously the Queen isn’t going to come out and tell people how to vote, but I’m sure she has her own vested interests and beliefs. I’m not even sure that in the current climate (wasn’t there a recent poll where most respondents thought the Queen irrelevant to their lives?) that the public wouldn’t support removing all political powers from her.
I don’t think that monarchy is a bad thing, and I don’t think it should be abolished.
Having said that, with the Queen being one of the richest people in the country I don’t know why we should have to pay for her. And then, of course, it turns out that she’s not liable for inheritance tax, talk about one rule for them…
A couple of other points, as I’m sure Australians/ New Zealanders know, you don’t have the English flag as part of your flag, you have the British flag.
Finally, what gets me most about the monarchy (aside from the money) is the National Anthem. It first struck me at the Sydney Olympics, we’re all singing our hearts out, and in the process subjugating ourselves before this old lady. For the record, I’d like to change our national anthem to ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.
I can’t believe there’s not a monarchist amongst us Aussies here, I know too many. McGarvie model for me also, I think the only point I would want to make is that I’m one of the Aussies who would really like to see a new flag if we were to make a change to a republican model. I accept wooly’s point that there’s a limited number of viable alternatives, and haven’t we all seen some horrible attempts at new ones.
Point taken Nerrie, but that’s exactly the reason why I want it off our flag. Because it’s someone elses.
One more little gripe, I really objected to the way the referendum was worded. No excuse for making the question a whole lot simpler than it was. Unless of course, you wanted to manipulate the result.
Tsk! Tsk! On a board devoted to stamping out ignorance, you offer an unsupported allegation which has been publically denied.
The evidence, based on the Duke of Edinburgh’s utterances, Prince Charles’ educational achievements and the younger Royals ‘careers’, is that the Royal family are neither intelligent nor competent.
By all means let’s have an authority above party politics. Just make it a competent one.
P.S. Trust you to make a football analogy - roll on Friday!
I especially dislike that blue and green thing with the big yellow boomerang shape. It’s paraded around uni like it’s an accepted alternative to our current device (which at least has cohesive colours). Yuck, didn’t anyone ever tell these people that BLUE and GREEN don’t go together.
I don’t know why we can’t adapt the Aboriginal flag by adding the Southern Cross to it. We always seem to look to options which include adding the Aboriginal flag to a Southern Cross bases flag which retains our current blue and white colour scheme. Adding the stars to the current Aboriginal flag would work far better.
Nyah nyah - TLD watches “Beauty and the Beast” - speaking of which, doesn’t Uncle Doug have a good head for radio?
I’m for direct election - but why does it have to cost $50M? Why should we let it? I say run it like an election to a credit union board of directors - post a letter to each elector that has the resume of each candidate, and a reply-paid envelope and ballot paper. Or, if you’re worried about security, have an electoral roll at each post office that a voter can pick it up from. That would cost 20 thou, max. And give the post offices of rural and regional Oz some extra work!
Why can’t we have a laid-back election for such a position - keep the candidates to 60+ so we are electing another Bill Deane, a “grandfather for the country”? Then it wouldn’t have to be a political campaing, and all the candidates will be over their alcohol and drug addictions.
You know that under your proposal we’d end up with Kerry Packer or Alan Jones as the “grandfather of our country”, don’t you BB?
Sadly, I don’t think Bill Deane would have even got a look in under the direct election model. I would have been happy to see him appointed “g-g for life.”
Well call me a heretic but I’d prefer my HoS to be elected on something a bit more formal than the procedures for a “credit union director”.
So you want a non compulsory, non secret ballot?
As to the cost, there’s 12.7 mill voters which at retail rates (post out, post back) will cost $12 million for starters. Some people involved with the electoral roll. Some staff has to count them (or feed them into a machine), some scrutineers, just a bit of advertising.
Your $20k max is out by at least a factor of 1,000.
