Rose, Alan --- "Comment" [1999] ALRCRefJl 1; (1999) 74 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 1

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Reform Issue 74 Autumn 1999

This article appeared on pages 1 & 74 of the original journal.

Comment

Australia is again approaching a baton change in our constitutional development.

Our progress over the past 200 years has been measured and constant. We are about to enter the third stage of nation building following the colonisation of Aboriginal Australia by the British and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia.

How should we crystallise the social, political, economic and constitutional advances of the past 100 years? The mood of the community reflected in the polls seems to suggest a republic - but in what form?

In its recent Preamble Quest, the Constitutional Centenary Foundation, of which I am a board member, drew some 400 or so responses from all parts of the Australian community. The sentiments expressed are summarised in an article in this issue and give some insights into what respondents see as the values that underpin Australia’s democracy.

Strikingly they correspond with what opinion surveys, the popular media and evolving folklore suggest are in fact important aspects of the shared Australian experience, the ‘real Constitution’ by which Australians actually would like to see themselves living. Other surveys confirm the continuing ignorance in much of the community of the actual Constitution and institutions of Australian government. Does it really matter? Is it now time to reconcile the form with the reality by a root and branch review of Australia’s constitutional arrangements?

How hard then will it be to start the last leg towards a republican Constitution:

• whose authority comes solely from the sovereign people of Australia;

• which has the consent of, and achieves reconciliation with, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations;

• which guarantees the aspirations of those original and immigrant Australians to live as equals in peace and freedom with all of their diversity of ideas, cultures and habits; and

• which recognises that the ‘magic’ that has allowed so much harmony to prevail in the midst of the turmoil and change of the past two centuries is performed by the light, the colour, the air, the sea, the land forms, and the flora and fauna of this most ancient and ‘isolated’ land?

The impact on the ‘weird mob’ of the post-industrial information age, which has brought an enhancement of individual rights and freedom of intercourse, might just have laid a sustainable foundation in the national psyche for a change to more direct and less representative forms of Executive accountability. Advanced electronic communications and information technology also conspire to remove the balance of utility from the indirect representative democracy. It has become a more directly participative and accountable world.

Perhaps what the Australian community is seeking is leadership to a more radical but simpler, more inspirational and more understandable change, in tune with popular sentiment and one that can be truly owned by the people. Something that is undeniably Australian.

Such a rebalancing would have a new Constitution addressing the people as citizens; who they are and what are their obligations, rights and freedoms. Much less might be devoted to a simpler form of machinery of government.

Some who look at the regular confirmation of Australian’s ignorance of our Constitution, of our Westminster heritage and of our legal history, believe it is too soon for significant constitutional change to take place. They might be right, but for the wrong reason.

In my judgment the Australian people give priority to overcoming fundamental difficulties in Australian society, possibly because they see a republic in practical terms already a day-to-day reality.

It may also be that their unwillingness to learn the intricacies of the present arrangements is a pragmatic response that it is just not worth the candle.

If so, it would be no surprise to see the baton change slip past 2001.