The Queen and Australia: Residences, Governor-General, etc...


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Yes, but as you know, referendums to change the Constitution don't involve 'first past the post' voting, or simply an overall majority, but a number of other hoops that have to be jumped, a majority of people in a majority of States and Territories for example, which wasn't achieved in any of them.

Also, yes 45% did vote Yes last time, but it is also simplistic in my view to claim (as some republicans do,) that a huge chunk of those who voted No did so simply because they disagreed with the model put up. There were no formal surveys carried out which prove this assertion, though it's often averred by disappointed republicans. It ignores the fact too that many Australians just simply did not want a republic.

I return to the point in my post above. Would republicans be happy and satisfied if a huge constitutional change such as this hinged on a 51% yes, 49% no, result? It would scarcely be a ringing victory, would it, and may well leave a large aggrieved section of the population?
 
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Yes, but as you know, referendums to change the Constitution don't involve 'first past the post' voting, or simply an overall majority, but a number of other hoops that have to be jumped, a majority of people in a majority of States and Territories for example, which wasn't achieved in any of them.

The Territories don't count in the majority of 'states' at all. The people count in the majority of the population but it only requires 4 of the 6 states not either of the territories. ACT, by the way did vote in favour last time - but as it isn't a state it didn't count.

Also, yes 45% did vote Yes last time, but it is also simplistic in my view to claim (as some republicans do,) that a huge chunk of those who voted No did so simply because they disagreed with the model put up. There were no formal surveys carried out which prove this assertion, though it's often averred by disappointed republicans. It ignores the fact too that many Australians just simply did not want a republic.
The only 'formal' polls that are ever taken are the elections.

There were many polls in the lead up that indicated that many people were going to vote 'no' due to the model.

I return to the point in my post above. Would republicans be happy and satisfied if a huge constitutional change such as this hinged on a 51% yes, 49% no, result? It would scarcely be a ringing victory, would it, and may well leave a large aggrieved section of the population?
Yes - that is all the current constitution requires - so a Yes vote on 50%+1 is enough - if there are also 4/6 states in favour.

The framers of the constitution said that was enough and therefore that is all that is required (not 51% by the way but 50%+1 which means say there are 14,000,000 votes and 7,000,001 vote Yes and 6,999,999 vote No and 4 out of the 6 states vote Yes the constitution changes on any issue - that is the law of the land)

I know many republicans who voted No in 1999 who would have voted Yes had it been for a directly elected president (every member of my school staff except for myself then - but I would vote Yes for any form of republic now - thanks to TRF which opened my eyes to the stupidity of having a Head of State and family who actively campaign against Australia e.g. William and the World Cup - they also cheered for British athletes against Australian and even actively competed against us - e.g. Zara at the Olympics who also married a man who had played in the World Cup of Rugby final against Australia - can't blame Mike for that as he hadn't meet Zara but Harry was there cheering for England over Australia and his grandmother is our Head of State - a totally unsatisfactory state of affairs in the 21st century).

Our politicians realise that our future is in Asia. We don't teach British history in our schools but we do teach Australia's relationship with Asia and how that has changed for instance.
 
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I think it's rather simplistic to say that people didn't listen last time and probably won't next time. Over 45% of people voted for the republic last time, and that was for a model that was not popular. Had a different question been asked, it is quite possible we would have been been a republic already.

Absolutely agree!! I voted NO last time but would certainly vote YES this time around.:flowers:
 
But you have no idea what we are voting for or against yet !


Sent from my iPhone using The Royals Community
 
But you have no idea what we are voting for or against yet !


Sent from my iPhone using The Royals Community

You are right, but I do not wish to wait for the wheels to be put into motion. Again. Last time I did not approve of the model. That was read as "you don't want a republic". I wish to avoid that perception even if it means I am not 100% happy with what is put up...within reason of course.
 
If those that want a republic would be quite happy with a 50% win, leaving a divided country and a half of the country unwilling, that says a lot about them! in my opinion.

Anyway, the only people who appear newly enthused about a republic at the moment are some ALP ministers scenting the blood of the Abbott Government's demise. I come into contact with many members of the Australian public socially and it's not in the forefront of the minds of people I speak to. The polls too don't show any great resurge of longing for a republic. Quite the reverse.

Good luck in (a) getting a change through in a future referendum, and (b) getting parliament to agree to a directly elected president model.
 
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The law of the land says 50%+1 for ALL referenda - regardless of what the question is - and I am happy with that as that is the law that is in our constitution.


If it was good enough for the framers of the constitution in 1900 to write in that number than who are we to disagree now.


Yes - I would expect the entire family of the President of Australia to support Australia at all events - even if they were born elsewhere. If they can't then they should say so before the election so that their partner etc is disqualified from standing.


It won't need parliament to agree to a directly elected president IF that is what the referendum question is as that will be it.


Notice that the Treasurer is also in favour of a republic.


I hear this topic discussed quite regularly and the issue is 'when' not 'if' - everyone I know believes that it is a matter of time.


The first thing we need is a simple plebiscite - 'do you think Australia should be a republic?' Had that question been put in 1999 I have no doubts that we would already be a republic.


Once we have an answer to that question then the negotiations about the way the President is chosen will begin and could easily take three or four more votes to get the required majority.


There are many members of both sides of politics who support Australia as a republic but largely both sides have agreed not in the present reign. The two most likely to replace Mr Abbot as Leader of the Liberal Party - Mr Hockey or Mr Turnbull are both Republicans.
 
It must have been a great shock to the republican political elites when they lost the last time as they thought everyone would agree. I can remember Hazel Hawke inferring that all who voted 'No' were stupid. Well, I don't happen to be stupid and I prefer the queen as my Head of State and shall continue to do so, however many academics, celebrities and politicians try and persuade me otherwise. They tried to persuade the Australian population last time and didn't succeed.

If the Queen lives for another ten years then I take it there'll be no referendum on the republican question then.

Cabinet and their legal advisers would frame the referendum question. Last time parliamentarians argued that a directly elected president was incompatible with the Westminster system. Therefore that model is not likely to be on the referenda form.
 
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The politicians can frame the question - but if the leaders of both sides want a republic (and remember it was John Howard as PM who had a large say in that question) - they will ensure that it is worded to get up - particularly if there is a plebiscite first that shows that the majority of the nation do want a republic as they will be obliged to keep putting the question to the people until they give the people want they want - that is a democratic system.


I voted No last time but wouldn't do so again regardless of the question. I voted No last time because I believed in the idea of a monarchy for Australia but I am now convinced that Australia would be better off without any ties to a foreign monarch on the other side of the world who has NO role to play in our nation - she actually has nothing to do with our lives, our laws etc. She can't even sign any laws - only the GG can do that, we can't appeal to her as the top level of justice - only can go as far as the High Court. She is really a 'nothing' person in our system so time for her to go in reality as she has in practice.


I know that the monarchist would be happy with a No vote of 50%+1 so why would the Republicans object to the same level of support?
 
Why? Because changing the Head of State is a huge change and one that you can't go back on. It's very different to voting for the status quo, which doesn't change anything.

A vote hovering around the 50% mark points to a divided and undecided population. Surely, if republicans are so convinced of the rightness of their cause they would want a sizeable majority if not a huge groundswell of ordinary people who desperately demanded this change, not a miserable technical majority, a falling over the line result?
 
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It must have been a great shock to the republican political elites when they lost the last time as they thought everyone would agree. I can remember Hazel Hawke inferring that all who voted 'No' were stupid. Well, I don't happen to be stupid and I prefer the queen as my Head of State and shall continue to do so, however many academics, celebrities and politicians try and persuade me otherwise. They tried to persuade the Australian population last time and didn't succeed.

If the Queen lives for another ten years then I take it there'll be no referendum on the republican question then.

Cabinet and their legal advisers would frame the referendum question. Last time parliamentarians argued that a directly elected president was incompatible with the Westminster system. Therefore that model is not likely to be on the referenda form.

Not so. I was a republican and did NOT expect it to stand as the model was unacceptable. I was relieved. I will not make that mistake again! It has delayed the inevitable.
 
The politicians can frame the question - but if the leaders of both sides want a republic (and remember it was John Howard as PM who had a large say in that question) - they will ensure that it is worded to get up - particularly if there is a plebiscite first that shows that the majority of the nation do want a republic as they will be obliged to keep putting the question to the people until they give the people want they want - that is a democratic system.


I voted No last time but wouldn't do so again regardless of the question. I voted No last time because I believed in the idea of a monarchy for Australia but I am now convinced that Australia would be better off without any ties to a foreign monarch on the other side of the world who has NO role to play in our nation - she actually has nothing to do with our lives, our laws etc. She can't even sign any laws - only the GG can do that, we can't appeal to her as the top level of justice - only can go as far as the High Court. She is really a 'nothing' person in our system so time for her to go in reality as she has in practice.


I know that the monarchist would be happy with a No vote of 50%+1 so why would the Republicans object to the same level of support?

If the Queen has no say in Australian affairs and all her formal powers are effectively exercised by the Governor General, then the Governor General is, for all practical purposes, a "de facto" head of state. Since the Governor General, however, is nowadays always an Australian, the argument that Australia must become a republic to reaffirm its independence from a foreign head of state becomes moot IMHO.

I suppose the pragmatic question that Australiians must ask themselves is whether a partisan, directly elected president would be better for the country than an apolitical Governor General formally representing the Crown. A directly elected president would fundamentally change the balance of power in Australian politics and could result in a French-like scenario where a president of one party with a popular mandate of his own would clash with a prime minister of another party controlling the House of Representatives. Conceivably, a president backed by millions of direct votes in a national election in a continental country like Australia could easily overshadow a PM, who would be just the Leader of the majority in the House.

In any case, with a directly elected president, the way Australia has been governed for more than 100 years would be fundamentally changed. Are Australians willing to take that risk ? I am not so sure.
 
If those that want a republic would be quite happy with a 50% win, leaving a divided country and a half of the country unwilling, that says a lot about them! in my opinion.

As for showing enthusiasm at international sporting contests, what if the President of the Republic of Australia is him/herself married to a 'foreigner' and also has relatives or stepchildren who were born and brought up in a foreign country, New Zealand, for instance? Would you expect the entire lot to get up and cheer for Australia in those circumstances, at say an Aus versus NZ cricket match? Or would they have to be married to Aussies? The Queen is as neutral in these things as she can be.

Anyway, the only people who appear newly enthused about a republic at the moment are some ALP ministers scenting the blood of the Abbott Government's demise. I come into contact with many members of the Australian public socially and it's not in the forefront of the minds of people I speak to. The polls too don't show any great resurge of longing for a republic. Quite the reverse.

Good luck in (a) getting a change through in a future referendum, and (b) getting parliament to agree to a directly elected president model.

Just as a historic referencie, in the 1960 South África republican referendum, the Yes side won by a very narrow margin of 52 to 48 %, It was a white-only referendum meaning the majority of the country's population didn't actually have a say on the matter.

The white community itself was roughly divided between a majority of the Afrikaners, who backed the republic, and the English-speaking whites plus a minority of Afrikaners who favored retaining South Africa's ties to the Crown. The approach taken by the SA government at the time was a minimalist one whereby the Governor General basically became ceremonial president following the referendum.
 
^^ I believe that a large number of Afrikaners had no love for the British or the British Crown, did they, a feeling which stretched back to the time of the Boer War? I expect that was a deciding factor as well in an unfair and unrepresentative referendum.

The GG as a ceremonial president would certainly make for minimum disruption, Mbruno. However,a large number of Aussie republicans last time wanted a directly elected President, and I doubt whether they have changed their minds. This, as I've said before, is not acceptable to most Parliamentarians and it does not fit in with the Westminster system of government.
 
The parliamentarians have to abide by the decision of the population so if that is the model the majority vote for the parliamentarians will have to go with that idea as they are also supposed to believe in democracy.


Last time the PM forced his preferred model on the convention and thus on the public. He suspected that wasn't the model the republicans wanted and wasn't going to offer the preferred republican model but when the next vote is taken there will probably be a few phases:


1. Do you want Australia to be a republic?
2. A series of models with a preferential vote on those models
2. The preferred model from the preferential vote put to the people as a referendum.


Monarchists can believe it won't happen but more and more politicians are actually republicans now - the PM isn't but many within his party are and it will happen - the question is when not if.
 
Well, we will just see whether the next referendum succeeds. It's not likely for several years anyway, if they wait until the Queen's death and/or possibly the second term of a Labor Government.
 
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"It won't happen overnight, but it WILL happen." ;)

I agree that whilst Abbot is the PM it will stall as he clearly is a stoic supporter of the monarchy. Have we ever had them visit so often? And I have also thought that we would wait for the Queen's death but that is no longer my feeling. People are changing as Iluvbertie has noted.

Your timeline is probable Curryong but change can happen unexpectedly quickly some times.:flowers:
 
I used to think that nothing would happen till after the Queen dies, but now I'm not so sure it matters. She could go on for years. The time to act is as soon as we have a republican Prime Minister. My preference is to have the plebiscite as soon as possible, and then start working on the republic models to decide what type of republic we're going to have.

As for such big changes being made with only 51% of the population supporting them, we're used to that sort of thing. After many State and Federal elections, a large percentage of the population has changes imposed on it that it did not want or vote for.
 
Yes, but these are Acts that can be repealed. That isn't so with a change to the Head of State. That's permanent.

The Abbott Government isn't defeated yet (and I say that as a Labor supporter) and I don't believe Shorten will move on this in his first term if Labor does get elected. Too many other things of an economic nature to be attended to.
 
We may not have to wait for a change in government - just a change in PM - as many Liberals are also republicans e.g. Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull (who has headed the ARM).
 
Last time the PM forced his preferred model on the convention and thus on the public. He suspected that wasn't the model the republicans wanted and wasn't going to offer the preferred republican model

That is at best a revisionist version of what happened in 1998, or, at worst, a blatant and deliberate lie. The model put to the electorate in 1999 was the one chosen by the republican delegates at the Constitutional Convention the previous year. The referendum question, quite rightly, summarised the constitutional changes required to implement the republican's preferred model. But the model chosen by the republicans was rejected by the electorate. It is disingenuous of republicans to blame the then Prime Minister for the failure of the model their delegates chose. If a history teacher wanted an example of how extreme bias can lead someone to misrepresent what actually happened, here is a perfect example.
 
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Republicans misrepresenting the facts is nothing new.
 
That is at best a revisionist version of what happened in 1998, or, at worst, a blatant and deliberate lie. The model put to the electorate in 1999 was the one chosen by the republican delegates at the Constitutional Convention the previous year. The referendum question, quite rightly, summarised the constitutional changes required to implement the republican's preferred model. But the model chosen by the republicans was rejected by the electorate. It is disingenuous of republicans to blame the then Prime Minister for the failure of the model their delegates chose. If a history teacher wanted an example of how extreme bias can lead someone to misrepresent what actually happened, here is a perfect example.

That was the model put forward at the Convention - true - but it was the PM's preferred model, is he had to support any model at all - not a revisionist version or a lie but the facts.

It should be noted that only 73 out of the 152 delegates supported that model but the direct election supporters abstained from the vote so that a model was able to be put to the people at all. 57 voted against and 22 abstained (some of those who supported the direct election included) so that 79 of the delegates were opposed to the model put to the people. In hindsight I am sure that those who abstained regret their decision as had they voted negatively Mr Howard had promised the opening of the convention to take the simple question of 'do you want a Australia to be a republic' in a plebiscite to the Australian people at the next election. The direct election supporters reasoned that they would get another chance to take their model to the Australian people and supporters of the republican cause do believe that that is the model that has the best chance of getting up next time.

The PM of the day opposed the republic and so was supportive of a model that he felt had the least chance of being past and he was a huge player at the convention.

I voted against that model then believing that a constitutional monarchy was right for Australia but it is this board that opened my eyes and I would like to thank the posters on TRF, both monarchist and republican, for converting me from the monarchist I was when I joined here in 2008 and the republican I am today.

I have taught the republican issue to Year 10 students for many years, first when it was a compulsory topic in NSW and then again when it became an optional topic. Now it is a research option for out students - but most only research a topic that has a minor element of Australian history in it. The latest syllabus (the National Curriculum) makes very little Australian history compulsory - Ancient Australia (pre 1788) and then WWI, WWII and Changing Rights and Freedoms for Indigenous Australians. This is a syllabus approved by the current Liberal government in NSW with nothing of the controversial issues that created a large part of the demand for a republic e.g. the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government (40 years ago this year).
 
YOU have to feel a little sorry for the devoted republicans among us. They may be right in theory but the Australian republican movement is doomed to fail, at least for the next 10 to 20 years, if not more.

Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm summed up the attitude of most Australians when he said last week: “My position is emphatic — I don’t give a stuff.”

It’s precisely how many of us feel about this non-issue that is dredged up on what seems like a biannual basis with the same tired, old arguments. Having a foreign head of state, who comes to that position not through merit but birthright, is a fundamentally flawed system, but the reality is that it works for Australia.

We have a stable system of government with a figurehead who is benign, much admired and not interested in interfering in our affairs. Her representative, the Governor-General, with one notable exception, stays largely neutral and performs only a ceremonial role.

Every few years, the Queen or her unremarkable children or photogenic grandchildren and great grandchildren visit our shores to much fanfare, say a few nice words then are off again. No harm done.

The monarchy is not only low maintenance and low cost but it serves a useful purpose, so why would sensible Australians mess with a system that has served us well since Federation?
Read more: No Cookies | Herald Sun
 
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It is the same old thing dredged up again and again. Australians don't want to be bothered with it. There are more important vital things on the agenda for our country. I can honestly say I haven't heard the republic brought up as a subject of conversation at social gatherings I have been at, (and I count artists, dancers social workers and teachers among my friends,) for about four years, and even then the conversation dribbled away after a few minutes.
 
Numerous off-topic posts about sport have been deleted/edited. Please stay within the topic of this thread and avoid going off onto unnecessary tangents.

The issues relating to Australia becoming a Republic or remaining a Monarchy are very sensitive to everyone concerned - no matter what their opinion might be. As a reminder, this is NOT the place to promote or vent political views or to engage in heated debates and arguments. If people wish to discuss politics in Australia, they may do so privately via Private Message.

Members are reminded to remain civil and respectful toward one another, particularly when different points of view are in play.
 
An article about monarchist support in Australia.

The Monarchy In Australia

Thanks Curryong but as soon as I read "members of the Royal Family have been warmly welcomed by most Australians since 1867" I switched off. That is simply not possible. One only has to look at the crowd turn out for the Queen on her last visit, including the sourcing of children to give her flowers, etc. At best, the author could say that most "Australians don't care".

If most Australians supported the monarchy, the turn out would be much better than what we see. Crowds turn out in far greater numbers for lesser occasions. Have a look at the Oprah turn out. :D
 
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