Wholesome Rage: An Australian Republican

This week's article is on why Australia should secede from the Commonwealth.

Let's leave Britain Johnny-no-friends.

Comments

[Brumby_Run]

One of the things many people forget is that the queen is also head of the Anglican Church. So, not just head of state, but head of a religion too. Does that really jive with our increasingly secular society?

[Murcushio]

The biggest argument against one is that, by stating what rights citizens have, the negative space around it is implied to be rights that aren’t held.

Anyone making that argument immediately reveals themselves as an ignoramus, because that problem is rather handily dealt with by including within any Bill of Rights explicit legal language declaring that it explicitly does NOT function in a "whatever is not explicitly permitted is not allowed" manner.

There's even language for that:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

That's the Ninth Amendment to the U.S Constitution.

It's a little counter-intuitive at first. A lot of people look at that and go "wait, can I just make a right and claim protection under the Ninth?" And no, you can't. But what you CAN do is say "what I'm doing hasn't been found to either be unconstitutional, nor has it been banned by statute. As such, I have the right to do it."

As far as the main thrust of your article goes... I'm curious as to the amount of time the PMs of Commonwealth nations spend on ceremonial bullshit.

Because in nation-states where the Head of Government is also the Head of State, that overhead is IMMENSE. Modern U.S Presidents often spend between thirty and forty percent of their working hours on things like meeting civic groups, photo ops, handshakes, things like that. Many of these actions are encrusted with the weight of tradition; if the Right Honorable Lodge of Corn Whisperers from East Bumfuck, Kentucky have been sending a guy every four years to present a commemorative picture of their grange display to the President since their founder did it with Andy Jackson, if you're the president who puts a stop to that YOU look like the asshole. Multiply that across two and a half centuries, and, well. The topic of "I wish we had a ceremonial monarch who did all that ribbon-cutting bullshit so our Head of Government could do REAL world" pops up periodically from American pundits who don't have anything to write about that week.

I'm curious as to whether or not having a monarch cuts down on that for the Aussies and Canadians. I know it does for the British PM, but they actually have the Queen right to hand and not half a world away.

[Darkstarling]

4957277
To quote The West Wing:
“We’re you calling me a fool just now son?”
“I wasn’t calling you a fool sir, the brand new state of Georgia was.”

That’s a good point about being a ceremony lightning rod, I’m also curious if that actually works.

[Spectrumancer]

I actually love the idea of monarchies, a state where a single powerful person can ignore all the red tape and legions of subcommittees and get shit done. So many problems could be solved.

Of course, the issue is, as always, humans, who are bastards, every one of us. So our optimal form of government has to be one stuffed left and right with corruption and abuse countermeasures, and even then those are still a massive problem.

[howard035]

I'm confused here. It seems like the biggest argument you're making in favor of getting rid of the monarchy is to add a Bill of Rights. But Australia already has a constitution that only Australia can change, right? What does having a monarchy do to prevent Australia from just proposing a Bill of Rights and having them added to the constitution under the normal process?

4957277 That's a very good point about having a head of state to cover the photo-op stuff. In the US we've used the Vice President for that some times, because they don't actually do much, but a monarch fills that role nicely.

In Australia, does the Governor General go around kissing babies and opening shopping malls while the Queen is in the UK?

[CrystalWaters]

4957171
I'd always thought 'secular' was just indifferent to religion rather than anti-religion. Like, a secular society doesn't care if people are religious or not, just so long as they don't try to force it on others.

[MrNumbers]

4957615
1) The argument is more that changing up the government would provide the opportunity to make a bill of rights in the process. You're absolutely right that it's something we could do right now, but it's also something we absolutely wouldn't do unless we were reforming the government entirely.

2) the governer general doesn't. Sometimes the royal family comes and does that though.

[howard035]

4957745
I would think there are more people who like the monarchy and would separately support a bill of rights than would actually oppose a bill of rights amendment.

[Sunny]

As an American, with the way things are fucked up right now, if tomorrow somehow makes things worse, frankly I think we could do worse than to go back to having the English monarchy as our head of state if not government.

Because at least in the democratic monarchies of the modern era, there exists one more major check on the monarchy : Public opinion. Because it's not just that they are raised from birth nowadays, it's that if the royals go too far off the norms of acceptable behavior, they'll find themselves running out of time to continue existing as royals, one way or another.

The same cannot be said for ratfuck US politicians, who have developed an immunity to this process of being driven from office by revulsion over outrageous behavior.

[MrNumbers]

4963858
I cannot stress enough that this is not the case, as what you're describing is only directly influenced by willingness and capacity for violent revolution, which is moot.

[Drachos]

I missed this Blog post earlier and I wish to provide an argument that you didn't address.

So....what type of Republic do you want? Have the Republican Cause of Australia actually decided on that yet?

You see thats the issue that happened last time, that destroyed the Referenduum and meant the majority of Australians weren't convinced.

Republican Politicians can't decide what will happen ONCE the Queen is removed from head of State.

Will the Governor General be removed entirely, and the Prime Minister will answer to no one but the people, or will (s)he be replaced by a President?
If (s)he is replaced by a President, are they going to be a figurehead with no power, or our actual head of state?
Regardless of which gets chosen, is the President going to be Elected or is (s)he going to be chosen by the PM still?

So last time the Referendum happened, the text went as follows:
To alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General being replaced by a President appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament.

((Which I note most importantly, would have still allowed the Australian Constitutional Crisis to occur. Changing to a Republic won't fix that.))

However many people who supported the Republican Cause didn't want this type of Government. The faction wasn't united. So DESPITE the fact that some people wanted a Republic, they voted no to this SPECIFICALLY to avoid the type of Republic they don't want. And it meant that advertising on the issue was....messy, divided, and difficult to sell to the public.

Edit: Phil Cleary for example, specifically ran ads to tell republican supporters to vote no so that they could do this again latter with the intent of a directly elected President.

Where as Howard's, "I want to keep things the way they are." Pro Monarchist message was VERY united.

This is an important issue that the Australian Republican Cause must resolve before this next Referendum. They need a UNITED answer for this, so they can run a UNITED advertising campaign that will win over the voters.

Because as an Aussie to an Aussie....unless you convince us, 'This way is better' we are going to go, "Yeah, nah this sounds like effort, and for what result exactly?" While no one dominates the Australian Parliament like Howard did right now, their are enough conservatives who can once again pitch the united message of, "Why change?"

And you need a united message, a united plan and a united Republican movement to counteract that.

However, on a less political side note: I always thought that they Republican Movement would wait till either Murdock died or Queen Elizabeth II died. Even Howard believed that a King Charles would lead to a Australian Republic because the man has no where NEAR the likability of his mother.
((And frankly is a bit of a wanker.))

[Sunny]

4963904
They wouldn't /really/ need a violent revolution to get rid of the English monarchy. Seize their assets, maybe, but if the people of England decided they didn't want to be a monarchy anymore - well, there's precedent for those fading away without resistance these days, that's all.

Not hugely common, but does happen.

[Latecomer]

4957277
Don't ceremonial presidents fill that role in some countries?