What Would an Australian Republic Look Like?

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has reignited debate in Australia about the country becoming a republic. After the defeat of a referendum on the matter in 1999 the issue has been dormant. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull, who was head of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) in the late 1990s, felt that the queen’s personal popularity meant that the subject should be revisited after she had passed. However, Australia’s current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has stated that his government won’t pursue a republic in its first term out of respect for the queen, despite the Labor Party advocating for a republic as part of their platform.

With a few more years to contemplate the change, there is a pressing need to seriously address the republican model. In 1999 the proposition was to simply replace both the monarchy and the governor-general (the monarch’s representative in Australia) with an apolitical ceremonial president. The president’s role would be to simply sign legislation, cut ribbons, and hold the “reserve powers” to dismiss a government in extraordinary circumstances. Appointing the position would be the job of Parliament, the body the president would be beholden to.

A rift emerged in the republican movement as many felt the desire to vote directly for a head of state. The latest model advocated by the ARM is for each state and territory legislature to put forward a single candidate and the federal government to select three. These 11 candidates would then be put to a country-wide vote, using Australia’s preferential, or ranked choice, voting system. This is a model designed to placate those who desire a directly elected president but feel the public cannot be trusted to entirely select candidates themselves.

But there is a problem with a directly elected head of state. Although the position may have strict parameters that in theory would not be in conflict with the executive authority of the cabinet, the process by which a president is elected to the role would create a potential conflict. Given that the prime minister is merely one of the House of Representatives’ 151 members, and serves in the role only with the confidence of both the House and their party’s caucus, a president elected through a single country-wide vote could feel they have a greater public mandate. The “reserve powers” to dismiss a government could become very tempting.

We are currently in a more turbulent political era than the 1990s. People crave an emotional connections with political figures and desire more forceful forms of political action. There are also more politicians who are keen to exploit these desires. This makes the creation of a new political office something that requires great care. It can’t rely on a sense of civic duty from the candidates for the position alone; the office itself needs to have this duty as a binding component of the role.

The duty of the monarch within a constitutional monarchy is to essentially do nothing. Imprisoned in luxury, the queen was unable to live as a normal human being; she held no public opinions and had strict parameters on any advocacy. The sense of stability that was tied to her reign was due to this consistent nothingness: to embody civic virtue without representing a set of political ideas (bar the idea of monarchy itself). While politics itself may often be fraught, the role of the head of state would be mostly unchanged.

For Australia to successfully transition to a republic and maintain its parliamentary system, where executive authority is exercised by the cabinet, this relationship between civic duty and the mechanisms of appointment need to be considered.

There is a tradition in Westminster parliamentary systems that the speaker is symbolically dragged into the chair upon appointment. This is because it is meant to be an unwanted role, as anyone who actively sought it couldn’t be trusted to carry out its duties properly. Monarchies get around this problem by simply being born into the role; for the most part the monarch has no choice but to carry out their duties. A parliamentary democracy with an apolitical president needs to find different mechanisms to create a similar binding duty.

For this, the 1999 referendum model of a president being appointed by parliament remains ideal. The representatives of the people would drag someone into the presidency who embodied a sense of civic virtue without waving their arms around proclaiming that they do. The problem with this is that it is thoroughly unexciting. This lack of excitement may be what the role requires, but it may mean there is not enough enthusiasm for a referendum on becoming a republic to be successful.