Pericles: "The reality is, it matters very little these days where you came from and how you feel about it."

Really, then why the multicultural utopia myth?
If one's original culture "matters very little", surely you can just discard it upon arrival?

And now we not only have to deny our Britishness, but any notion of humaneness or civility.

Dog eat dog.
Me First.
Gimme gimme gimme.
The Push and Shove Society.

What an improvement!

Neither.

How about "The Star Spangled Banner"? (but only if that's OK with GWB).

Well, what a veiled way to ask should Australia become a republic, ask what the national anthem should be.

A republic! The song is a secondary issue. we can sort that out later. It is time we matured as a nation and stood on our own two feet politically. The mother/child analogy is a legitimate one in this case. We all have to move out, learn and become confident and develop a high level of self esteem as Australians and as an independent nation. It applies to us individually and to us as a nation of people as a whole.

Who was around or is old enough to remember '75 well? For me it is a disgraceful situation whereby the representative of Australia's head of state, the GG, has the constitutional power and authority to throw out the govt of the day. The fact that the senate blocked supply of funds to the govt thus making the elected govt a lame duck is not the point. It is the way that the situation is dealt with under our constitution that I find objectionable. We surely must have enough pride in ourselevs to be able to deal with such crisises on our own without the Queen of England and her locally domiciled rep looking after things for us.

And hand up all those who would have preferred our head of State, QEII, to be here to open the Olympic Games in 2000. That was the original plan and the correct one to have been put in place. Thank goodness we didn't go ahead with that one.

The change won't be easy, constitutionally, politically or culturally. That does not matter nor should it matter. Other nations have dealt with such a change and survived. So should we.

And to all those who are overly concerned about the change, New Idea and Woman's Day can still have Pricess Di or the Queen on their front cover. So relax. Not everthing will change.

I would certainly prefer to keep my allegiance to the U.K. than to the USA ,which seems to be the way we are headed.Our judicial and voting systems are still in line with that of the U.K.Undoubtably we will break away from the mother land eventually but let's hope we don't tie ourselves irrevocably to the land of warmongers and people that don't know which is the front or back of a cap.

It's a little off topic, but Australia's fixation with 1975 has always fascinated me.

Ditch says:

>>The fact that the senate blocked supply of funds to the govt thus making the elected govt a lame duck is not the point. It is the way that the situation is dealt with under our constitution that I find objectionable.<<

This seems to be the main gripe - Kerr's cur, and all that. But if we assume that Australia in 1975 had been a republic, what checks-and-balances would have been in place - i.e. what would have been handled differently?

Would a "president" have been obliged to step in? Or would it the decision have rested on who his mates were?

The latter, of course, would be a very Australian way of sorting it out.

Pericles, whoever would have stepped in if we were a republic in situations as occured in '75 would be determined by the constitutional guidelines that will need to be thrashed out. So my answer is, I don't know. But it is an important and fundamental issue to resolve. My gripe is accepting that our current constitution dictates that the GG/QEII pairing are ultimately the referees in the parliamentary crises that arise. I believe we should be mature enough to put in place a constitution with complete independence of the Queen and her local rep, the GG. WE are old enough, good enough and capable of looking after ourseleves, and we should look after ourselves. Being tied to Mother England's apron strings is not what I call confident and mature behaviour for this country.

And haygirl, making a constitutional break from the UK does not mean we become closer to the US. Why should it? Our aim should be as a republic, simply to become an independent, mature democracy. We can make up our own minds as to who we want to get closer to.