Republic Advisory Committee
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The Republic Advisory Committee was a committee established by the then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating in May 1993 to examine the constitutional and legal issues that would arise were Australia to become a republic. It was asked to consider issues such as
- a name for a new elected head of state;
- the method of selection for the head of state;
- what powers he or she should possess;
- the constitutional amendments and legal changes required to replace the Queen of Australia and Her Representative, the Governor-General of Australia by an elected native head of state.
Monarchists state that it is a matter of public record that when non-republicans requested to participate this was refused. The reason given was that the committee was only to explore republican options. Consequently critics alleged that both the Committee and its remit were observably framed to exclude non-republican input from preparing matters to go before the wider public, in effect if not in intent. (This effect cannot now be examined, and questions of intent are too subjective to go into.) It is certainly notable that many of the members of the Republic Advisory Committee (listed below) were people who had campaigned for, or expressed a clear opinion in favour of, an Australian Republic, and that none had opposed one.
Contents |
[edit] Republic Advisory Committee membership
| Malcolm Turnbull | chairman (and leading Australian republican campaigner) |
| Nick Greiner | Former New South Wales Premier |
| Dr. John Hurst | La Trobe University, Convenor of Australian Republican Movement |
| Mary Kostakidis | media presenter, SBS TV; member, Constitutional Centenary Foundation |
| Lois O'Donoghue CBE, AM | Chair, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission |
| Susan Ryan | Former Labor Party senator & Education Minister |
| Professor George Winterton | Professor of Law, University of New South Wales |
| Dr. Glyn Davis | School of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University |
| Naomi Dougall | solicitor |
The Republic Advisory Committee submitted two Volumes (Volume I - The Options and Volume II - the Appendices) to the Australian Prime Minister in late 1993. Part of Volume II was concerned with the international experience in moving from monarchical to republican headships of state. Six international reports were commissioned from local experts; four of the countries were former Commonwealth monarchies, while two had experienced their own regime change when their own monarchies (the Hohenzollerns in Germany, the Habsburgs in Austria) were replaced by republics.
[edit] Reports commissioned by the Republic Advisory Committee
| Country | Report by | Qualifications |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | Professor Bernhard Raschauer | Professor, Institute for Public and Administrative Law, University of Vienna |
| Germany | Professor Klaus Von Beyme | Professor of Political Science, University of Heidelberg |
| India | A.G. Noorani | Formerly at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, now working as a freelance journalist |
| Ireland | Jim Duffy | Author of major study on the Presidency of Ireland and political commentator/analyst |
| Mauritius | Madun Gujadhur | barrister at the English, Indian & Mauritian bars and Chairman of the Mauritian Law Reform Commission |
| Trinidad and Tobago | Sir Ellis Clarke | former Governor-General of Trinidad and Tobago, who went on to serve as its first president |
The recommendations made by the committee were never voted on by the Australian people. A Constitutional Convention was held in 1998, resulting in a slightly different proposal which was rejected by the Australian electorate in the 1999 referendum.
[edit] Additional information
Copies of the Reports were published under the following ISBNs
| Volume One - The Options | ISBN 0-644-32590-9 |
| Volume Two - The Appendices | ISBN 0-644-32589-5 |
[edit] External links
- Republican History - the Republic Advisory Committee
- http://www.dadashopping.net/work.php?code=republicanism_in_nz_%20and_australia
Paper on the failure of the 1999 republican referendum
