I was wondering to myself. Can the 2020 summit be summed up as ban everything? Nothing actually worthwhile was discussed. Things like censorship that has no place in democracies or pluralist societies wasn't discussed. In fact, it seems as though people spent all of their time thinking of ways to ban things (there will be exceptions). Of course it's much too hard to allow society to be more mature, expansive and inclusive...

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23566377-5016657,00.html

Rudd also speculated about the Republic issue, noting that it would be bad if a referendum failed twice. Why? Who knows... I question for this reason: I distinctly remember the political class interfering in the process last time, by manipulating the question to favour their interests, despite pressure from the Australian people and simple application of reason.

What happened was, the political class didn't want a bar of direct election of the Australian president. No. Instead they wanted to appoint him, or her, themselves. That is to say, our politicians would NOT allow Australians to choose how to elect the president and determined that only they, the priveleged elite, could do so. Luckily it failed. These were the two choices:

- Do you want a Republic where the President is elected by a two thirds majority of POLITICIANS?
- Stay a Monarchy.

-=-=-=-=-
Of course, any reasonable person would think these should be the questions:

1.
- Become Australian Republic.
- Stay a Monarchy.

2.
-Directly Elect President
-Let politicians elect your President (by 2/3 majority).

-=-=--=
Now Rudd's statement was suspicious. He did not mention the controversy or qualify why he might think it would fail twice. It is my view, that he and his political elite wants to elect the president and not allow Australians to directly do so.

Censor everything Steel and save the nation!
The porn is killing women and children.
Lone wolfs hunt throughout the suburbs looking for flesh.
Censor a growing gay movement to stop the spread of disease...and to once again open the public toilets so men can have a pee in peace.
Put the cane back in the schools.
Bring back Holy Scripture and teach a decent moral standard that speaks against immorality (masturbation and porn).
Purge libraries of filth.
Censor and save the land from Gods Judgment...one of which could easily to be an invader.

Steel, I am not sure that Rudd meant to imply a repeat of the same mistake Howard made in the last referendum in fact just the opposite.

My impression on Rudd's statement was that this time he did not want the Repbublic to fail because of that very reason - failure of the people to be able to vote for their President (if they want to). The outcome was rigged by our previous elitist government simply in the limited choices provided and in the wording.

You know Gibo if i didn't know your history a little i would think you were being sarcastic :-)

That's quite probably pelican. My viewpoint could have been influenced by some unrelated statements Rudd has made in the past-or actually maybe it was his ministers for that matter which possibly changed the tone

This is why Howard got the boot. At least Rudd is attempting to listen to what you have to say. He gave millions a voice. Stop complaining, it's boring.

How is banning smoking bad?.

I personally would make it illegal to be intoxicated in public. EXACTLY how it is with driving, with EXACTLY the same levels of tolerance in the amount you can as with drinking and driving.

Would the nation be better off, or worse off as a republic?. Simple question.

Hilarious. At first I didn't realise Gibo's comment was Gibo and had a great chuckle over its cleverness.

The ban everything and censorship argument is popular among monarchists like the irrelevant David Flint, and they generalise it to cover the whole summit. Apparently nobody noticed what was going on in the governance talks where most of the suggestions were about promoting transparency and fixing up the ridiculous FOI system. And ways to make public consultation more wide reaching including using some kind of internet forum.

Rudd was right that the last chance we had to get a republic was wasted, although he was too polite to blame our monarchist ex-prime minister. (ex can be such a satisfying thing to say sometimes) There are plenty of options, like limiting presidential duties to the same ones the Governor General now has. Far less threatening, but we still get an Australian head of state.