I personally suspect it's the dichotomy of directly elected president or a chamber elected symbolic president which functionally is what the governor general is. Basically the republican vote was split while the royalist vote was clear behind one outcome.
I voted for a republic. I wouldn't have, if the intent was to make it a direct election. I prefer the bicameral chambers to do it, a symbolic minor depoliticised role is better to me, than a standard strong popular elected president.
Also, referendum being expensive there was another question about a preamble to the constitution recognising aboriginal Australians. Again, this had divided support because of (in my personal opinion) a dishonest claim it discriminated between Australians. Two questions has some evidence causes higher no votes to both questions than one simple question.
There would be no harm in directly electing such a person, and it would be good to prevent the government of the day using its majority to elect a president who just rubber-stamps whatever they want.
The advantage of having a directly elected president, is that they can act as a check and balance against a government which concentrates executive and legislative power into the hands of one party and effectively one person, the Prime Minister.
By limiting the president's powers to just vetoing legislation and resolving confidence/dismissal issues, these levers of power would be available for use, sparingly, and in a democratically accountable way. In return, parliament would have the ability to impeach the president or call a new presidential election. This would prevent the president from interfering unduly in the day-to-day running of the country.
Plus, I think you misunderstand the role of a symbolic president, they are not meant to be the arbiter of fit laws passed in vote by parliament.
The kind of role I was imagining is one that could have a legal continuity with the GG role (and could keep the same name), but their mandate would come from the people, and not the monarch.
My point was, by limiting their power, they would be very different from a US style executive president, and ideally (if the government of the day was doing its job properly) this president would indeed find themselves only performing symbolic/ceremonial functions.
While royal assent is technically a power held by a GG they don't actually wield it in practice, once that power were given to an elected office then the elections would become about the use of that power and the role would be very different.
Giving this power a democratic mandate and legitimacy may make the role "very different", but that doesn't mean the constitutional dynamic would be worse.
I feel it is self-evident that the new dynamic created by an elected GG would be worse. If you have a person at the head of government whose only job is to say no to things and resolve constitutional disputes they are left with only those tools to differentiate themselves from other candidates.
That creates an incentive system for this person to veto and manufacture constitutional strife in order to create a profile for themselves. It is a role built specifically for political arsonists.
On the other hand, I think such a belief requires one to hold quite a low view of the public and democratic processes generally. You might say that experience supports such a low view, but I would counter that it applies equally, or more so, to the status quo, where all power is held by the prime minister, who has every incentive (and much greater ability) to create these crises (especially just before elections) and tell the country that they have to unite behind the government to survive.
The fact that such a strategy is already possible under the current system just confirms to me that there needs to be different roles, held by different people, with different incentives, to stop these extreme edge cases. I think that what is self-evident is that concentration of power leads to abuse, while diffusion of power leads to moderation and representativeness.
I look at the American political system and imagine a version of it where the president was the president but did not in fact operate the executive, that person's only job was the power of the veto - it seems like a nightmare.
The idea that a PM has some incentive to manufacture a crisis is true I suppose, but that is a very high-risk strategy. Real-world experience indicates that popular support is a product of good economic conditions and the rare exceptions to these instances (i.e. GWB post-9/11) stand out because they are very extraordinary. (And usually end very badly!) Every political body at every level has the power to manufacture a crisis and benefit from it, but that isn't very effective because the electorate understands that they have the power to address the crisis, or prevent it in the first place so the existence of that dynamic doesn't prove much of anything from my perspective.
Personally I don't see why it would be a nightmare if the US president didn't operate the executive. I think voters would be a lot less worried about the "wrong" person getting elected if the president couldn't declare war or appoint SCOTUS judges, so this change might reduce some of the tribalism.
As you say, every political body has the power to create crises, and the electorate should quickly see through any deliberate attempts to create one, so there seems little risk that the minimal-president role I am suggesting would attract people motivated to cause trouble.
However the president is a nomination confirmed by the parliament, so it’s not exactly the same thing. The Vice-President gets a vote split but that is also rarely used (once a decade maybe).
In my perspective, it adds additional bureaucracy, overhead, and administrative expenses for very little gain.
The Irish President cannot veto legislation outright. If they have concerns about the constitutionality of legislation, they can refer it to the Supreme Court for an opinion on its constitutionality; they do not sign the legislation while the Court opinion is pending, but if the Court upholds its constitutionality, they must sign, and then the law enters into force anyway if they refuse.
They also have a never-used power to refer legislation to a national referendum instead of signing it. They cannot exercise this power on their own initiative, only when presented with a petition signed by a significant minority of Parliament. They’ve never been presented with such a petition. If they were, they’d have discretion whether to accept the petition and refer the legislation to a referendum, or ignore it and sign it anyway.
I think, if Australia was to have a directly elected President, we should copy the Irish model and grant the President only this limited veto power. The GG’s current power of veto is rather pointless in that it has never been used and it seems unlikely ever to be used. It is hard to conceive of a scenario in which a GG could use that veto power and survive in their office.
What is wrong with the Irish model? A President who is directly elected, but also largely apolitical, a mostly ceremonial role with strictly limited powers. A key element of the Irish model is tough nomination criteria - to run for President, one must be nominated either by 20 members of Parliament (9% of the total), or by 4 county/city councils (almost 13% of Ireland’s total). (A former President can self-nominate, although a President can only serve two seven year terms in their life.) This helps stop Presidential candidates coming from the political fringes.
Although Ireland has less than one fifth of Australia’s population, its Parliament (the Oireachtas) has almost as many members as Australia’s does, so the 20 member nomination threshold would be approximately equivalent in Australia. The 4 councils nomination threshold does not translate so well, since Australia has three levels of government (federal, state or local) while Ireland has only two (national and local). Roughly equivalent would be nomination by one of the state/territory governments, or by 69 LGAs.
Nothing necessarily, as long as people understand it is a symbolic position.
It is interesting to note that of the top ten countries in The Economist's Democracy Index, eight are constitutional monarchies:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country
Ireland and Iceland are the two that are not, and Iceland changed to a republic in "only" 1944. In the top twenty, a lot of the countries also have ceremonial heads of state.
A more thoughtful response might have taken the time to contemplate the origins of government and the relationship between “absurdity,” your understanding of government and of virtuous government, and of the post-enlightenment ideologies assumed natural to our societies; in truth the vague syllogism between law and privilege you present is not some physical reality or logical QED but a gestural summation of ideas only very lately arrived to human affairs. Contemplative silence is one among many more interesting responses that were available to you.
In short: it’s obvious that ancient institutions and modern humanism are absurdly dissonant. Cleary OP meant to provoke a reconsideration, not a restatement, of the obvious.
Ironically it is obvious that one should not bother trying to rescue internet comments from their own pig-headedness - but sometimes I do sorely miss past iterations of HN.
OP asked a question. I gave what seems to me to be the obvious answer.
Well all of us have less wealth and privilege than the royalty by virtue of our birth and it's somehow enshrined in law.
No, no, no. Being against racism means you give people a fair chance irrespective of their race. It does not mean you want everyone to be equal due to the conditions of their birth.
In fact, we do not want people to be equal at all, as we need specialization, and people are highly unequal, oftentimes because of the conditions of their birth.
For example, it may well be that the condition of Sam's birth makes him a better diamond cutter than the condition of Joe's birth -- Sam might have been born into a family of diamond cutters who trained him when he was a baby, slicing apples in a certain way and whittling on wood all the time. Or maybe there is a diamond cutter gene that Sam has, which gives him superior diamond cutting skills.
We'd still hire Sam because he was a better diamond cutter. What we wouldn't do, is refuse to hire Sam solely because he was Swedish, and we don't think Swedes can be good diamond cutters, and so we wont even give Sam a chance to prove he really is better Joe.
The first sentence of the first article:
> All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
You're complicating things. I believe in republicanism (ie. not monarchy), freedom, equality, etc... The existence of a monarchy means we aren't born with equal rights and dignity.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country
And 8 out of the top 10 are also constitution monarchies. Plenty of symbolic-president republics in the top twenty though.
Whatever replacement system that is proposed needs to have a decent track record.
Forgive me if I don't trust their judgement. I'd take any western European republic's system over ours in a heartbeat.
Also, keep in mind that in Canada, our government is currently formed by the party that got the second most votes and has had so many scandals that half the leadership should be in jail, not in power (not that I'd be particularly thrilled about the Cons in power either, they're at least as inept albeit probably slightly less corrupt). We also have an appointed senate, which is basically just political patronage. Same goes for the GG spot. We have entire provinces run by oligarchs. And so on. If we're considered a 'full democracy' then I don't trust whoever made that proclamation.
I am sure, with the death of the Queen, a lot of states might reconsider formally being a monarchy, depending how her succession turns out. Even in the UK itself, monarchy is discussed and there were times in recent history, where the royal family hat little public support.
It's not so much a matter of removing the Queen as head of state as unsealing the document, so someone says while you are there, we need this, and we will fight you if we don't get it. You see how this escalates immediately, and all together within months of the Queen's death.
What are the odds of over 50 countries ever trying to rewrite their constitutions in a lifetime, and then again what are they to do that simultaneously ? Absurd, impossible odds, total black swan. Except if the Queen dies. I can only hope it will be mostly peaceful?
Why would 50 countries be rewriting their constitutions ? Only 16 "realms" of the Commonwealth actually have the Queen as head of state.
No one is talking about terminating the Commonwealth. Nor does Britain qua Britain have any role in any of this. These are separate constitutional monarchies vested in the same individual but with entirely separate governments. Britain already gave up authority over them when they became independent.
> It's not so much a matter of removing the Queen as head of state as unsealing the document
In many cases, the documents have been revised multiple times in recent decades. They aren't Holy Writ. And while a less popular monarch may accelerate Republicanism, its unlikely to trigger a simultaneous rush for the exits.
> someone says while you are there, we need this, and we will fight you if we don't get it. You see how this escalates immediately, and all together within months of the Queen's death.
I see what you arr imagining, but I don't see it as particularly likely.
> What are the odds of over 50 countries ever trying to rewrite their constitutions in a lifetime,
Pretty high. In fact, pretty much every country on Earth, of which therr are significantly more than 50, has revised their Constituion in living memory, most have done so in the last 20 years. [0]
> and then again what are they to do that simultaneously ?
Again, there are probably more than 50 working on revisions at any given time. Not unusual at all.
> I can only hope it will be mostly peaceful?
Why wouldn't it be? The (much fewer than 50) countries sharing a monarch with the UK are largely ones that have revised their Constitutions peacefully multiple times recently.