Page 838 - Week 03 - Thursday, 25 March 1993
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The proponents of a republic and the moves that are being pushed through the Labor Party to get this debate running are not talking radical or revolutionary reform. We are really just severing that final link so that the Queen disappears as head of state and the Governor-General, or the president, remains. I would be quite happy to continue with the title of Commonwealth of Australia. "Commonwealth" is a fine republican term. It was coined by Oliver Cromwell when he dispatched a monarch in perhaps a rather more exaggerated fashion than we would favour. It was also approved by the robustly independent colonists of Massachusetts when they overthrew the British monarch and formed the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So the term "commonwealth" actually has a fine republican heritage, and we could well be a republican Commonwealth of Australia but with the Governor-General as head of state, not the distant Queen.
MR STEVENSON (4.03): Madam Speaker, Australia is a republic. The word "republic" in Latin is "respublica". The correct translation is "commonwealth". Mr Lamont earlier mentioned that the ACT is a republic. He could have picked any of the States in Australia and he would have been right. But on the one he did pick he was wrong. Mr Connolly mentioned that in 1986 the Australia Act severed the relationship with England, but it was for the States and the States alone, not the Commonwealth of the nation.
The State Governors now have to act on the advice and the direction of the government of the day in the States. One could say that that is a good idea, or one could say that that is a bad idea. What I would say is, "Were the people of Australia consulted?". The answer to that is a clear and ringing, "No, they were not consulted". One would ask, "Why were they not consulted?". We know why people were not consulted finally on the unconstitutional, undemocratic, unwarranted, unnecessary and impractical self-government in Canberra.
Mr Berry: That you are living off.
MR STEVENSON: Mr Berry says, "That you are living off". I took a pay decrease, effectively, when I came into this place. As I have mentioned on many occasions, I will be happy to be the last one to turn the lights out, because if I resigned first I certainly could not trust the rest of you to follow.
Mr Connolly said that I may not voice views that belong to the mainstream. I could agree with that in a number of cases. At one time, the mainstream view was that the earth was flat. At that time Mr Connolly would have been a member of the Flat Earth Society and he would have said that someone who said that the earth was not flat did not really have mainstream views. History on this planet has shown that mainstream views do not necessarily follow logic, commonsense or law.
It is worthy to note that since men began to govern themselves through elected representatives there has been a constant need, attention and desire to try to work out methods to control those elected representatives, to restrict the power of the people put in charge. Lord Acton, of course, spoke of what power does and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Prior to 1901 and Federation, the debate had been going on for some 50 years. Why the debate was going on for such a long time was that it was not unknown to leaders in the colonies and to constituents in the colonies that when you create governments, and when you put people in charge of governments, you have people who try to gain more and more power, who draw power to themselves - centralised power. They know that you can hatch something that will finally eat you.
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