"Australia's backward democracy". How is our democracy backward? Ah, I see; it's just a whinge from another Fifth Columnist.

The fact that this person is embarrassed by the lack of a bill of rights doesn't give him the right or the evidence to claim that anyone outside his own cocooned, academic little circle is also embarrassed.

Then. There's the old one about a 'foreign monarch', even though Elizabeth II is quite clearly designated Queen of Australia. People used to be taught to write by getting the reader to want to read on, and slipping in the bad news later on. Tim, however, has unloaded his own bigotry straight up. No need to read any further.

Their SSM victory really seems to have emboldened the extreme Left. We will probably be seeing many more tirades on their pet subjects from now on - all the things long rejected by sensible Australians with good memories of just how the Left operates.

Oh god, a few ratbags protest & this clown tries to blow it up into something of real meaning.

We need to defund these swamps our universities have become. Rather than institutions of higher learning, they have become institutions of higher anti Oz & anti west propaganda.

Isn't Turkey a republic? Oh, also China, Russia and North Korea...

Agree, you can't have a republic without citizens. And citizens without codified rights are not citizens but rather nationals/servants. Whose granted privileges, can be wound back at the whim and caprice of the current parliament!

Simply to ignore this fact and then try and state we are a democracy, ignores realities.

Our justice system is now just the province of the wealthy. As is the housing market.

Our 1880 constitution? Was crafted for us by a foreign power that now treats Australian nations as aliens with less real rights than former common enemies.

Why, you even need a passport and a visa to have a conference/tete a tete, with our head of state.

And our government doesn't honour the sacrifice of former generations who built this country and bought and paid for, many of the amenities easily privatized by an elitist government!

I fail to see why there's such hidebound resistance to a people's assembly, that would simply be tasked as experts in the field, with an Australian crafted constitution that reflects our values rather than those of Victorian England.

After all, all they could be asked to do, is craft a modern constitution that reflects a modern day Australia's values! Not actually alter anything!

Other experts will look at it, some through monarchist eyes.

All in all, that is all that is being proposed here, may well limit some of the unearned privileges the elitist element give themselves.

That said, I find little to fault with the suggestions of the author. I mean, it is centuries since we were a penal colony with not many more real rights than we have now.

People ought not be able to subvert taxpayer's funds for pork barreling and other forms of clearly corrupt conduct and a modern constitution, we can all agree or live with? Might well curtail some of that errant behavior?

I commend the Article and its DTE common sense author!
Alan B.

Tim Anderson demonstrates his lack of education by his recommendation of“ electing a Constituent Assembly to draft a completely new constitution. That draft is then put to a popular vote.” is” feared by elites.”
An astute observer is aware that life, and nation building, proceeds by trial and error, which process has delivered us a very successful and workable constitutional monarchy, which Tim somehow perceives as an “embarrassment”.
His nonsense is the embarrassment, not Australia’s tried and true political structure.
The republic supporters should attempt to educate themselves, and cease their ignorant, baseless assertions. We should show some gratitude for the support given to us by the Queen.
If you want embarrassment, look at the verbal diarrhoea sprayed over these pages by Alan B

'We should show some gratitude for the support given to us by the Queen'

Err....refresh my memory....when did this happen?

The simple truth is that we have what we have because that's what we deserve.
Nothing is going to change....and to even think so invites suspicion of intent.
So you can all go back to your relative holes and rest in peace that nothing is going to change.
Australia is a resource that the US and UK can rely on to do their bidding and will never be anything more while the current scheme of things prevails.....and when we've dug it all.... out we'll fill the hole with nuclear waste and hand the place back to the indigenous, audaciously telling them we're leaving the place in a better financial proposition than we found it

Where else are you going to get 'free money'?
As was often heard during the depression when people had something to gripe about....give an Australian his beer and his cigarettes and you won't hear a peep out of him....and nothing has changed....while there's 'free money'
Republic....give me a break!...silk underwear doesn't make a lady and being a Jingo doesn't change reality