The recent departure of Tasmanian Governor Richard Butler has let the monarchists, long embarrassed by the antics of our hereditary ruling family, get a bit of their own back. Lots of people see prominent republican Butler’s (alleged, I should observe) arrogant and erratic behavior as a prototype for a Malcolm Turnbull presidency.
I’d suggest that the real lesson here is Churchill’s – democracy is the worst system apart from all the others. Perhaps if a President were selected by popular vote, the office might occasionally be filled by popstars or sporting heroes. But does anyone suggest that Butler or Turnbull, or, for that matter, Prince Charles, would ever win a popular vote?
John Quiggin 
There will never be an elected president. Never. Think about it. First it has to get through the Labor party which it will do over the dead bodies of Bob Carr, Barry Jones, Neville Wran and no doubt others.
It then has to get through a Labor cabinet and caucus and the statutes to codify the reserve powers have to be written and passed (this alone is simply impossible) then it gets through parliament with the Liberals furious and a minor party requiring changes. Then it goes to the people and we get treated to the mother of all scare campaigns. It will likely lose.
All this is foreseeable. It is a road that will never be ventured down.
The Senate committee inquiry into the republic is due to report today. I urged them, in the interests of sensible debate, to rule out elected and McGarvie and electoral college models as politically infeasible. I doubt they will. I doubt that this top-down way of trying to get a republic will ever succeed.
If there is to be a popularly elected president may I insist that he/she be elected by the popular vote. An electoral college would be monstrously unfair. You only have to look to the U.S. for the way their pesidential elections take place.
To rebut John’s point – would Butler, Turnbull or Prince Charles ever get up under a system that required election of the parliament by a two thirds majority?
Who cares if they elect Shane Warne or Delta Goodrem? It’s not like they have to do anything important anyway.
If there was an elected presidency, isn’t it inevitable that there would be candidates endorsed by the Labor and Liberal parties, as there are for every (?) other elected office in the land, and isn’t it likely that one of these major party candidates would win — even if they were Butler or Turnbull?
I agree with Michael’s rebuttal point.
There are a string of parliamentary republics with popularly elected presidents. Have any of them ever elected a celebrity?
I loved the arguments against popular ballot for president last time including the ray martin/warnie possibility-yes please,compared to this dross.
Perhaps if a President were selected by popular vote, the office might occasionally be filled by popstars or sporting heroes. But does anyone suggest that Butler or Turnbull, or, for that matter, Prince Charles, would ever win a popular vote?
Or that having popstars or sporting heroes as Presidents would necessarily be a bad thing?
Pr Q, still in a sour mood after the Republicans shot themselves in the foot during their hilarious “constitutional” conference, makes an irreverent remark towards our future Head of State:
This little black duck politely declines his false antithesis of unpopular regime personalities.
Prince Charles is a much nicer person than Richard Butler and would certainly be more popular than Turnbull.
The correct counterfactual is: would any Republican beat former truckie and now incumbent Queen, man-to-man so to speak.
I don’t think so.
In any case, the choice of Head of States will come down to a contest between the Republican’s unseemly rabble of up-themselves lawyers, ostentatious do-gooders and has-been celebrities versus the Monarchists nice young gentleman.
I bet Butler and his DFAT-Republican ilk would not be caught dead doing anything as non-U as Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor’s war service
Jack, I’d be happy enough to have rules for an elected presidency so that allowed the Windsors to run.
People who raise the spectre of the smelly masses directly electing Makybe Diva or Reg Reagan as Oz President overlook two points:
1. The experience of positions in Australian public life which are directly elected by the general population (or a representative part of it) is that the punters don’t elect candidates who would be a disgrace or an embarrassment to the office. Whatever partisan criticisms we might have of the current or previous Lord Mayors of Brisbane, none of them could realistically be described as not fit and proper to hold the office.
2. If Reg Reagan, Makybe Diva, Pauline Hanson, or whoever had anything approaching sufficient public support to be a serious contender in a direct election for President (and the organisation and financial backing required to build such support) they would also be well placed to become Prime Minister, or exercise a decisive influence on who became Prime Minister and what their policies would be – a much bigger prize than a largely symbolic presidency. There is no structural safeguard against such a possibility which would be compatible with representative democracy. The only safeguards are political and cultural: the existence of an informed voting population and a political culture of critical discourse across partisan boundaries. If these safeguards exist there is no problem with direct election of the head of state; if they don’t, the method of electing the presidency will be the least of our worries.
Just in response to Mike Pepperday’s assessment of the realpolitik of the republic debate, even before the 1999 debacle there was a strong direct election lobby within the ALP including people like Lindsay Tanner, Peter Beattie, Geoff Gallop, etc., who support it in principle, and people like Robert Ray who doubt (with good reason) that the masses will vote for any other option. The 1999 result has swelled the ranks of the latter, and Latham is a known direct election proponent. At a republican conference sponsored by Griffith University and The Australian in 2002, Jenny Macklin made it clear that direct election was Labor’s preferred option. Also our Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis, whose preferred option is a republic with parliamentary appointment of head of state, nonetheless offered the judgement that direct election is the most likely option and that the debate needs to shift to the specifics of a direct election model.
As for the mooted difficulties of codifying the reserve powers of the head of state, most republics have been able to satisfactorily codify the role and powers of their presidents, and there is no logical reason why Australia shouldn’t be able to do the same. The debate on this issue is clouded by (a) a conservative Anglomorph constitutional tradition in Australia which is generally hostile to written constitutions, bills of rights, etc., altogether; and (b) what I suspect is the ghost of 1975. What I mean by the latter is that any debate on codification of the powers of the head of state would imply a judgement on the actions of Sir John Kerr and their consequences for subsequent Australian history. This judgement could in turn be seen to delegitimise the legacy of one side or other of Australian politics.
John, yours is – uncharacteristically – a masterpiece of obfuscation. And what it has to do with Malcolm Turnbull isn’t immediately clear.
The real issue here, I’d suggest, is that a man manifestly ill-suited to the role of Tasmanian Governor was appointed to that role for the worst possible reason: to be some sort of international attention drawcard, ostensibly. Butler’s complete inappropriateness for the position was canvassed at length when the appointment was annnounced. The fact that he was everything that a potentially satisfactory state governor was not, was dealt with in extraordinary detail. The Premier proceeded nonetheless.
I’m a republican but while we have them, I see no point in amending the current constitutional arrangements to fix a problem that doesn’t, in essence, exist. Bacon’s was a foolish and ill advised decision that stood out as such from the beginning. Overwhelmingly, the system works OK – that’s how we all knew that Butler was a foolish choice. Death has saved Jim Bacon from being accountable but his successor’s extraordinary decision to buy the guy off and offer no reason for doing so should ensure that he won’t evade responsibility.
As regards Turnbull he and Butler have regularly been linked by monarchists (and quite a few republicans) as examples of arrogant republicans. Do a Google and you’ll find plenty of examples like this. I’ve also encountered the same linkage in general conversation.
I don’t think winning a safe Liberal seat, when you the preselected Liberal candidate, is a good indicator of likely success in a national presidential election.
Direct elections would produce no more duds than the current system which relies on the judgement of the Premier or Prime Minister of the day. We have had some good Governors General but John Howard has hit low spots twice.
As for sporting stars – Governor Marjorie Jackson is doing a great job in SA and everybody loves to have her come to an event.
“Governor Marjorie Jackson is doing a great job in SA”
I thought she lived in Lithgow
Paul Norton said:
Just in response to Mike Pepperday’s assessment of the realpolitik of the republic debate, even before the 1999 debacle there was a strong direct election lobby within the ALP including people like Lindsay Tanner, Peter Beattie, Geoff Gallop, etc., who support it in principle…
Yeah, yeah.
Not long after the 1999 referendum opposition leaders Beattie, Rann and Gallop had a meeting in Adelaide and seemed to endorse election. And what have they done as premiers? There’s no referendum required for constitutional change in the states. Why don’t they get on with it?
Beattie had his choice for governor discussed in parliament – a single chamber which is entirely the creature of his executive.
In 2000 when the Lib-Nat WA govt appointed a new governor, Gallop said that the governor should be elected. He made it an election policy and he got elected in February 2001. What has he done? He has been pursued over it in the newspapers, and asked questions in parliament (by One Nation MPs – who else) but it’s water off a duck.
We will never, never have an elected governor or governor general.
Governor Marjorie Jackson-Nelson is living in Government House in SA.
There is no reason why a plebiscite couldn’t give us an elected option to support or reject.