The arguments in Cooke's article are of the same type that were put by monarchists at the time of the Referendum - throw up so much dust about other perceived problems in the Constitution that it is hoped to confuse the electors . Monarchists argue that , unless all constitutional defects can be removed , it is better to remove none .
Object to a non - elected President , because the people must have their say in who becomes President . Then , object to an elected President , because the President will claim a mandate .
Therefore , Australians must be content with a non - elected foreigner in England for head of state , represented by a non - elected , usually [ but not necessarily ] Australian citizen in Yarralumla .
It is quite simple to amend the Constitution to provide for an Australian Head of State , whether elected or non - elected , who will exercise the same powers as are now exercised by the Governor General ,without posing any risk to democracy .

Given my article on the ABC website was a historical piece on Australia's developing nationhood, and didn't focus on the sort of republic we would have, this article is a beat-up.

Here is the relevant sections of the ARM policy:

"The Australian Republican Movement (ARM) recommends the following framework for an Australian republic.

"1. Australia’s Head of State to be an Australian citizen.
2. Australia’s Head of State to be a non-executive Head of State and to have powers like those of the current Governor-General.
3. Australia’s constitution to have all references to the Queen and the Monarchy removed and replaced with references to Australia’s Head of State.
4. Australia’s Head of State to be dismissed only by a significant majority vote of the Federal Parliament.


"The above framework will ensure that our existing parliamentary and federal system of government will continue to flourish regardless of the selection method. The ARM fully supports Australia remaining in the Commonwealth as a republic, as are the majority of Commonwealth nations.

"Selection Methods
The ARM supports the Australian people deciding on the appropriate selection method for Australia’s Head of State. Any of the following selection methods would work with the ARM’s recommended framework. These are methods that have featured in public debate over the last decade.


"1. Elected by the Australian people from a list of candidates nominated by the community.
2. Elected by the Australian people from a list of candidates nominated by the Federal Parliament.
3. Appointed by a two thirds majority of a joint sitting of both houses of the Federal Parliament.
4. Appointed by a constitutional council of eminent Australians such as former Governors and/or Governors-General.

"At present, polls indicate that a vast majority of Australians support the direct election of the Head of State in a republic. A number of options, including direct election, should be considered in the process leading up to the referendum. The ARM will support the selection method preferred by the Australian people and will campaign for it."

Cooke is also ignorant of our Constitution, in that we have a written Constitution - unlike the UK - which confers specific powers on our head of state, the monarch. As such, the monarch has far greater potential powers in Australia than it does in the UK.

To recap, ARM supports one of:
1. Elected by the Australian people from a list of candidates nominated by the community.
2. Elected by the Australian people from a list of candidates nominated by the Federal Parliament.
3. Appointed by a two thirds majority of a joint sitting of both houses of the Federal Parliament.
4. Appointed by a constitutional council of eminent Australians such as former Governors and/or Governors-General.

All but one of these methods limit the pool of candidates for which the public can vote to those selected by a group of "our betters" and that is something that really angers the majority of the public. The public want to choose, and that includes choosing the list of people from whom they will choose.

Something along the lines of requiring a potential candidate to be supported by a nomination petition of x% of the population would probably be acceptable to the majority. Were Option 1 to be proposed in this way, it will gain approval. However, if "the community" means something else, it will almost certainly fail.

Community means the Australian people.

I believe the key criteria for an Australian republic is restoring true accountability. Its quite clear that recent governments & bureaucracies have done their best to divorce themselves from the will of the people, and the obvious power grab by the PTB involved in the last republic referendum was more than sufficient to ensure its defeat. Personally I'd welcome a republic with open arms, but ONLY if I was assured that the inherent flaws in our systems of representation & justice would be fixed once and for all. Unfortunately I can see the republican issue being highjacked by politicians & bureaucrats focussed on further entrenching their positions, which is why I intend remaining on the monarchist side of the fence UNTIL OR UNLESS there is a very definite move to the better rather than the worse.

Following are some of my thoughts on a method of electing a head of state.

“The people should vote in a single national electorate, by an optional preferential ballot voting, from five nominees, creating the ‘Peoples’ Choice’ of the Head of State”.

The nation should remain known as ‘The Commonwealth of Australia’ (and not ‘The Republic’). This will ease any thought in the public’s mind of a major change and limit the cost of change within the public service; it also ensures that our Head of State is effectually disengaged from the ‘The Crown of the United Kingdom’ whilst maintaining our unique form of Westminster Government.

My reading of the Australian public is they would applaud an Australian Head of State but would not countenance any monumental change in our fundamental and proven form of government.

Due to emigration, the last 70 years has seen a great proportion of our current population having no historic links with Great Britain.

This will require a number of years as it must be in accord with the normal electoral cycle to offset excessive cost, the point of cost will be elevated by the monarchists.

On the subject of electing a Head of State, the powers of the office should be tightly clarified in the constitution as a ceremonial position, viz;

As ‘Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces’
Chair of the Executive Council with the instrument to effect legislation.

The commissioning of members of the High Court on advice of the Executive
Government as contained in the Constitution, plus;

To be Principal Companion and Administrator of the ‘Order of Australia’

‘Head of State - The Thread that Binds the Fabric’; the position should be ‘The Conduit–The Trinity’ between The Parliament, The Executive and The Judiciary.

The position should remain known as Governor General so as to maintain the status quo and thus eliminating any false misunderstanding that the Head of State (or ‘President’) usurps the Executive Government

I won’t be supporting any proposal for a popular election for a head of state for a few reasons.
1. It would probably limit the contenders to those who have or can command the considerable wealth needed to fund the kind of campaign that appears to be essential for success in a popular vote (compare the US) — only the independently wealthy or those who can gain political party endorsement need apply.
2. It could elevate someone who is popular, or who is a darling of the shock jocks, irrespective of whether they are politically competent and unbiased.
3. It would surely lead to trouble between the head of government and the head of state if both could claim to have a people’s mandate to impose their views.
Of the selection methods canvassed so far, the system that looks best able to avoid these problems is appointing the head of state by the agreement of at least two-thirds of the elected members of parliament. The fact that neither side of politics is ever likely to command two-thirds of the elected members means that both sides would have to agree on an appointee, and that gives probably the best chance we have of ensuring that the head of state will be both competent and unbiased.

You don't have to go back to Charles 1. English Kings made strikingt interventions into British politics in the 20th century--to ensure the passage of the budget in 1912 when the House of Lords threatened to reject it right after the Liberal Party had wpn an election; and later, to ensure that no member of the House of Lords would be Prime Minister. These were not trivial interventions--in the first case, the King was prepared to appoint enough new peers to ensure the carriage of the budget. The claim that the monarch never intervenes is simple rubbish.

There is nothing but recent tradition to prevent a King of Queen from refusing the royal consent to a bill, dismissing the Prime Minister, or usi9ng other 'reserve' powers. They need to be restricted, whether or not we retain the monarchy.

Indeed. To have my argument labelled "facile" by Mr Cooke, with him not knowing the powers granted by the monarch expressly in our Constitution is a bit rich.

And, just for the record, like most people in the ARM these days,I personally support the direct election of a non-executive head of state. It works in many other similar systems, such as the Irish and Icelandic, where the non-executive President does NOT challenge the mandate of a Government. No risk. This is a monarchist smokescreen and is easily refutable because we can see that it works elsewhere.

There is a much better republican structure that the ARM refuses to consider and that is the constitution of the largest democratic republic in the world namely India. I put an article up on OLO about it.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7503&page=1

Directly elected presidents with the Westminster structure are particularly dangerous and no Westminster elected Prime Minister will ever consider a directly elected President.

And you could counter Iceland and Ireland (two world class economies) with France which since 1789 already is on its 5th republic and during that time has had two restorations and two empires.

My chief concern with a popularly-elected president is one of eligibility. While it would no doubt stand that all Australian citizens would be eligible to stand for the presidency, as GlenC noted very few of us could muster up the funds for an effective campaign. Without careful regulation and a tried-and-true steamroller to level the playing field, we would either have to choose between political party cronies and the super-rich.

To that end, one thing I do like about our current system is the fact that our executive is not - as is the case in the USA - necessarily aligned with a political party. I would like to see this preserved: indeed, I'd like to see (if we adopt a republican model) a requirement that our head of state is not a member of a political party. This, with a properly-developed and enforced electoral system, could prevent the head of state (whatever we call the position) from being a simple puppet. Even if the role simply involved serving cucumber sandwiches and christening ships, it would be nice to see it maintain some dignity - something party politics in Australia has consistently failed to do.

The Commonwealth would call for nominations for this position, through Local Government Councils, 150 days or more prior to a General Election.

The candidates to be put to the people should be Australian Citizens aged between 39 and 69 years {6} of age as at the date of nomination. A candidate will not be a current or an immediate past member {7} of any parliament in Australia.
A final list of up to five candidates, for election, will be chosen as follows;
Candidates for election to position of Governor General may be nominated by any registered voter residing in any Local Council area. Each Local Council will call for the nomination {8} of any citizen residing in any Local council area. The nomination should be in writing on a prescribed form, the completed form to be submitted to the Local Council via mail/web site or deposited in a ballot box at the Local Council premises by due date. The voters name would be marked off the roll, electronically, on receipt of a nomination.

The elected members of each Local Government Council should vote, by secret ballot and elect up to five candidates from a list of up to ten nominees receiving the greatest number of nominations received from the voters, this count of postal and deposited votes to be conduced by the Local Council’s returning officer.

These nominated candidates, from each Local Council, to be forwarded to the State or Territory Electoral Commission to construct a list of up to twenty nominees from those candidates receiving the highest number of nominations received, for each State or Territory Parliament to vote upon.

Each State or Territory parliament, in a joint sitting (if two houses exist), of each State or Territory would then vote, by secret ballot, for up to ten candidates from the lists of nominees constructed from the Local Councils returning officers by the State or Territory Electoral Commissions

Cont'

Each State or Territory parliament, in a joint sitting (if two houses exist), of each State or Territory would then vote, by secret ballot, for up to ten candidates from the lists of nominees constructed from the Local Councils returning officers by the State or Territory Electoral Commissions.

This final list would be forwarded to the Commonwealth Electoral Commission who would formerly invite the top 10 nominees, by the number of votes received, in camera {9}, to stand and have them accept or reject the nomination in writing on a prescribed document and within the prescribed time frame.

Should a nominee reject their nomination the next nominee receiving the greatest number of votes would be added to the final list of ten (and so on).

A joint sitting of both houses of the Commonwealth plus the Premier or Chief Minister of each State and Territory would vote by secret ballot.

This secret ballot, for five candidates, from the list constructed by the electoral commission of up to ten candidates gaining the highest number of nominations nationally, these five candidates, voted on by this meeting, will be put to the people for election.

At this stage of the process the final list of five nominees will be published, at the same time as writs are issued for the upcoming election, in the public notices of the local and or national press.

At no point during this process should the nominee or any nominator be permitted, by law, to promote the nominee by way of positive media comment or paid advertising

The Red/green, getup, labour, Socialist Alliance has proven repeatedly over half a century that our state & territory governments are the most ineffective, useless, wastrel's, the world has ever known.

Some Right wing pollies have occasionally mentioned duplication of services. What rubbish. In most cases we have triplication of services.

Lets have sensible, popular, constitutional reform that would easily be passed by referendum, abolish the states & territories.

Schools, hospitals & everything else the Loony, Left, states have ruined, could not possibly be any worse, if administered by local government.

Leave Australia as a Constitutional Monarchy with less politicians & bureaucrooks. Everybody wins.

Leave Australia as a Constitutional Monarchy with less politicians & bureaucrooks. Everybody wins.
Formersnag,
I can't help worrying that those hell-bent on electing incompetent regimes will do anything & aided especially via like-minded media that we will end up a Banana Republic with a helluva bend.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11453#195150

individual, could not agree more, how well i remember Paul Keating's banana republic line. I struggled to work it all out for decades.

Worked out most of it, made no sense at all.

Then i saw this little beauty, & every remaining piece of the puzzle fell out of the sky into place.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236#

Straight away, i could see that GAYLP, Closet Communists, were, "Planning everything, for Failure".

They always DID, exactly the opposite, of what their "principles", SAID.

In theory at least, our GG is not supposed to be a muppet beholden to one (or more) major party , however the reality is something else again. Apart from the Whitlam affair, no GG in recorded history has done anything even remotely of value to the Australian people, in fact all they have ever done is poonce around like little tin gods whilst squandering prodigious sums of our hard earned cash. I'd much prefer to have an apolitical 'el presidente' with a dirty great stick & the authority to smash bloodsucking parasites (AKA politicians) over the head when (as is endemic lately) they need such treatment. Quite obviously no major party is about to give that sort of power to an entity which could potentially derail their scheming. I suspect that the electorate is at least marginally more intelligent than the bloodsucking parasites (as suggested by the resounding defeat of the last republican referendum) and have the ability to see through any proposal for a 'politicians republic'. In short, thats the main reason why so many of us would dearly love to cut ties with the monarchy still oppose a republic.

I think one of the more frustrating things about our current system is that we are wasting many worthy people on a largely (let's face it, pretty much entirely) ceremonial role. Opinion is divided on our current G-G, but in my opinion Quentin Bryce is a very worthy, intelligent, hard-working and eloquent lady. She is a good figurehead but, if her role had some meat to it, I think she would be able to be much more than that.

I know that, if I had a choice about who represented Australia on the international scene, I'd much rather Mrs Bryce over Ms Gillard, Mr Rudd, Mr Abbott or any of the other frontrunning politicians who have graced the stage in recent years.

Alternatively, in the progressive spirit that established this nation, why don't we dismantle the executive altogether? I know the Swiss system (which has no individual executive) is very different from ours - a smaller population, a smaller land area, a much larger number of political subdivisions - but they get by without a figurehead. Maybe we could think outside the box - rather than adopting or modifying an existing model, the (republican) Commonwealth of Australia could adopt a political system for the 21st, rather than 19th Century.