God forbid we become a republic.

Just think for a minute. A republic could end up with a clown like Obama running the show.

We would also see millions going to the legal fraternity for years with the constitutional challenges that would come for every word of change to the constitution.

It's a very common misconception that the queen, and the rest of the royal family are bludgers, parasites, and that they cost the taxpayers millions.

The monarchy own vast tracts of land, including many farms and businesses and a lot of property. This is run by a government dept. called Crown Estates. Under a voluntary agreement between the monarchy and the government, all profits from Crown Estates is handed to the exchequer, in exchange for a stipend. This stipend covers the cost of running the monarchy, including the upkeep of publicly owned properties, travelling expenses, and wages to all the royal staff and hangers on.

In the 2015/2016 fiscal year, the Crown Estates paid £304m to the government, with around £50m returned. When you add this to the money earned from tourism and trade the monarchy are a huge asset ..... to the UK.

Philip Howell,

The most pertinent point about 1975 was that the bills being blocked were supply bills. As such I'm not sure that your proposed changes in the "Disagreement between the Houses" resolves the issue.

As per your proposal, only the Reps can dissolve parliament even when bills have been twice rejected by the Senate. That's OK as far as it goes and would work in regards to most bills. The government in the House could simply refuse to go to the polls even though their bill(s) were twice rejected. This already happens and governments only use the so-called DD triggers when they think they can will eg 2016.

But this was supply. Failure to pass the bills meant that the government was going to run out of money. Public servants unpaid, contractors unpaid, pensions unpaid. To be sure Whitlam had come up with some hair-brained notion of running on IOUs but that was hardly sustainable.

So contra your claims, even with your proposed changes , Fraser would still have blocked supply knowing that the Reps would eventually have no choice but to dissolve both houses to save the national economy.

In the end, we ended up with a situation where an intractable problem was resolved by handing the solution to the people. In many parts of the world it would have been resolved by the army or the mob. If that's not a well-functioning democracy I don't know what is.

For what its worth in terms of proposed changes, my preference is for an elected GG/President which retains all the current black-letter powers of the GG.This was proposed in a marvellous book "Elect the Governor-General" by Solomon written in 1976 in response to the 1975 crisis. The result would be a President with roughly the same powers of, for example, the French President.
The book will be hard to find but is in the National Library (http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/854348). I have a treasured copy.

Dear Mhaze,

Thank you for taking the time to actually consider my proposal and deal with it on an intellectual level. Unfortunately intellect has been missing from the republic debate.

I read 'Elect the G-G' soon after it came out. It would result in an executive presidency, which very few Australians want.

You are correct in saying that under my proposal the senate would still have the legal power to block supply, and could do so to try to force an election. But the Constitution would explicitly state that governments are determined by resolution of the House, and that elections prior to expiry of the 3 year term can only occur if the House votes for an early election.

So the question becomes would there be an opposition-controlled senate prepared to be that bloody-minded that it would try to subvert these express terms in the Constitution by holding the country to ransom.
[to be continued]

This about sums it up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKIWjnEPNY

"Divine providence" the doctrine by which Australian politicians evidently operate under.

Some ideas for your discussion Stephen:

(1)Elected President by popular vote of the people.
(2)Elected number of parliamentarians,(actual number dependent on number of electorates) - must be from electorate represented.
(3)President nominates ministers ('cabinet') from the elected parliamentarians.
(4)All bills through the parliament by secret ballot, decision by conscience vote than adversarial party lines.(Unconscionable vote)
(5)Government governs by privilege from the people for the people.
(6)Code of conduct for parliament.(No helicopter rides and condominium purchase trips)
(7)All parliamentarians must sit in parliamentary sittings or suffer a pro-rata salary reduction.
(8)The foundation stone for the parliament shall be the constitution,(to be hammered out in a following post) to exercise privilege of Democratic procedures without interventionist government. Honouring and protecting individual "Rights".
(9)Presidential candidates must have resided in the republic for 25 years and have attained the age of 35 years.
(10)Parliamentary candidates must have resided in the Republic for 15 years and have attained the age of 25 years plus have resided in the electorate sought for 3 years immediately prior, and continue residency whilst in office.
(11)Any parliamentarian who attracts an Ostrakos vote of 50% + 1 will be automatically removed from office.
(12)The Parliament shall remain One house.

Ideas...?