Some timely reminders for all Australians in this article, especially this:

"Australians deserve constitutional certainty. The two [proposed]
non-binding polls have the potential to destabilise one of the
most successful constitutions in the world, without it being
replaced by an unknown preference. A government can make support
for a plebiscite virtually anything they want by the formulation
of words put to the electorate, who are in effect asked to
write politicians a blank cheque."



Exactly.



About time we quarantined our politicians' incomes, not gave them a blank cheque!



I have one little nitpick though. How could we trust the Australian Bureau of Statistics to conduct a "Republic Attitudes Survey" when that instrumentality has failed to publish in its flagship publication, the Year Books Australia, the official results of either the 1988 or 1999 referenda? Up until 1988, all such results had been published in the Year Books.

The ABS has made a liar of former Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen, who wrote in the preface to Year Book Australia 1988:

"... Through the Year Books, one can scan eighty years
of life on this continent, tracing the changes and noting
the trends. ...

As we enter this, our Bicentennial Year, it is appropriate
that that faithful mirror of Australia past and present,
the Australian Year Book, should accompany us, reflecting in
its candid glass the nation in all its states and conditions.
The strength of nations, as of individuals, lies in self-
knowledge and there can be few better introductions to a
knowledge of this nation than through its Year Books."



Not since 1988.



Australians would do well to heed the warning given by Sir David Smith, former Official Secretary to five Governors-General, as to those officials in the Australian Electoral Commission who acted contrary to the provisions of the Electoral Act to turn informal votes into 'Yes' votes during the counting of the 1999 referenda. That warning was in his submission 'How do I say Yes or No? Let me count the ways', No. 159, here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/em/elect04/subs.htm

The Australian Statistician is a member of the three-person Australian Electoral Commission.

Why do we need a figurehead?They went out of fashion on ships at least 100 years ago.

Seriously,the idea of elected,or even worse,inherited heads of state,is beyond ridiculous and the monarchist subset in Australia are always trotting out spurious reasons why we should retain the English monarchy in their current position.

Any constitutional requirement for an "umpire" could be readily satisfied by the full bench of the High Court.We are paying them anyway.

Let's turn all the Government Houses in Australia into asylums for the mentally ill.A worthy use for all that expensive real estate.

I agree with the author. Australia's best interests would be served if all parties to this debate (such as it is) acknowledged that in the normal course of events the earliest this issue would be up for reconsideration is in 20 years time.

The luxury of the two plebiscites proposed by the ALP makes my stomach turn. Especially when republicans can't avoid drafting the text of their proposed amendment in legislative form in the end in any event. The author's proposal for a "national-tune-style" survey to determine the people's preferences is an emminently sensible suggestion.

Why don't those people just do as the author suggests: codify their amendment and let it sit on the table for voters to examine at their lesiure. There's no hurry.

The Australian Federation wasn't built in a day.

The constitutional monarchy in this case has a woman with a deplorable taste in hats and a prince consort who is senile and makes weird public statements that have media moguls rolling about in screams of laughter.
Add to that the hideous spectacle of one day having to tug the forelock every time Queen Camilla comes by. OMG Dont forget bat's ears,oo...an idiot who talks to tomatoes.Huwww
socratease

Since the position of head of state in a parliamentary democracy is a meaningless figurehead, why not express the democratic bias of the Australian tradition by allocating it to a different person each day, to be selected by lottery? The daily stipend would go a long way towards distributing the nation's wealth, and the gossip magazines would have a constant stream of new material. Even babes in arms and patients in comas could participate: ferried around by their drivers and propped up in front of a mike by their minders and bodyguards, any one-year-old or Alzheimer's patient should be able to produce speeches with the incisive qualities of those given by, say, Prince Charles. Let's be the first country to have a genuinely democratic Head of State!

Perhaps I have been too hard on the ABS in my first post to this thread.

Going through some of my old posts to OLO, I came across this, written in August 2007: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6147#89103 . Perhaps the key paragraph in that post was this:

"In the light of the information in,
and revealed by, gazettals mentioned
in the preceeding posts, it now appears
that failure to publish the 1988 referenda
results in the Year Books, far from betraying
a falling standard of reporting, constitutes
a beacon witness to fidelity on the part of
the Australian Bureau of Statistics!
It would appear that with no source document
for results, no publication was undertaken."

Whilst this assessment, if correct, may be a nice let-off for the ABS (which is, after all, only responsible for producing its flagship publication, the Year Book, as a publication, not for the content of all of the reports therein. One would have expected reports of the official results of referenda to have been provided by the AEC to the publishers of the Year Book. Why was that seemingly not done?

Whilst some may contend or suggest that ours is an unfashionable monarchy, no doubt with a focus upon who it is that the Governor-General represents and her relatives, they conveniently ignore or forget that it is a CONSTITUTIONAL monarchy, and that that Constitution, our Australian Constitution, imposes certain statutory obligations upon any Governor-General. Notable among these is that of Section 61 thereof, which charges the Governor-General with the execution and maintenance of the Constitution.

Unlike the revelation in another current OLO article, 'Australian identity, Australian literature and an Australian republic', that to elicit excitement in relation to a republic the ARM has to encourage the writing of FICTION, interest in our supposedly 'unfashionable' constitutional monarchy can be raised to fever pitch simply by considering the possible implications for the supposed 'figurehead' Governor-General of publicly attestable FACTS like the one revealed here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10607#175624 , and here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3550#84937

It looks like the Constitution stands in need of some maintenance!

With all this seemingly divergent talk about referendum results and the reporting (or lack) thereof, it has to be noted that Nigel Morris, in writing about the foreshadowed non-binding plebiscites, fails to explain the mechanism by which this trick of changing a proven and historical collective 'No' to a purported collective 'Yes' can be perpetrated against the whole populace.

The important differences between a referendum proposing alteration of the Constitution, and a non-binding plebiscite are that the rules for determining a 'Yes' vote will be different, and that the compulsion to vote at the plebiscites will in all likelihood be absent (just like it was for the election of persons to the Constitutional Convention that preceeded the holding of the 1999 referenda, at which only a minority of electors voted).

Could it be a desire to conceal from Australians at large the differences in the counting regimes as between a referendum to change the Constitution, and plebiscites being held to obtain what well may be a false mandate to throw the whole rule-book, the Constitution, into the bin, is what lies behind the seeming decision to not publish the results of the 1988 and 1999 referenda in the Year Books?

Since Federation the wording of Section 128 of the Constitution has effectively prescribed that anything other than an express and clear 'Yes' vote marked in accordance with the instructions for completing the referendum ballot paper will effectively count with the 'No' votes in determining the result of that referendum. Yet in 1999 the Australian Electoral Commission's 'Electoral Backgrounder 10' web document (a document no longer up on the website), which I understand to have been a guide to polling staff who would actually count the votes, seriously falsely recited the law of the Constitution where it said:

"29. ....... Any referendum ballot paper
that does not show either a 'Yes' or a 'No'
vote against the question(s) provided is
categorized as informal ...... That is,
such ballot papers are put aside and do not
count toward the final referendum result."

Bullsh!t

As Sir David effectively said.

Given that it is now 12 days since a comment has been posted in response to this article, I intend to use this thread in the mode of fulfilling what is increasingly becoming OLO's role, that of journal of record. My posts will, I believe, be illustrative of, or expansive upon, points brought up by the author, and so will indirectly do justice to the article. They will have a focus upon Constitutional matters, 'constitutional' being the qualifying adjective always used when describing our monarchy, whether or not that monarchy might be thought to be 'unfashionable'.

I have already foreshadowed this intention in a post to the 'Punishing poverty' thread, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10659#176717 , upon which another Constitutional issue has arisen, that of discovery of a defective alteration of the Constitution in respect of the 1946 insertion of placitum (xxiiiA) into Section 51 thereof.

Joel Tozer, author of the current OLO article 'Punishing poverty' http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10659 , says:

"While Minister Macklin has indicated that
a national roll out of income management
would not occur before late 2011, opposition
leader Tony Abbott has said that if elected
he would implement a national scheme immediately."

With the income quarantining legislation already passed, and the call of the 2010 Federal elections having been announced, this is now a very topical issue, whether or not the public yet know it.

On the 'Punishing poverty' thread OLO userID Aime made this despairing observation that:

".. the worst part of all is that no matter
how we vote at the next election, it won't
make a bit of difference. One of the top two
parties will come to power and continue to
push their dogma down our throats."

In succeeding posts I shall propose a course that could be taken with complete Constitutional propriety by the Governor-General that I contend could remove the seemingly impenetrable cloud of gloom and hopelessness as to ordinary Australian voters having a real and workable electable alternative at these upcoming elections is concerned.

Lets see whats 'unfashionable'.

The thread of course remains open for any other poster wishing to comment directly on the article.