Page 839 - Week 03 - Thursday, 25 March 1993
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The Australia Act, as I said, did not make the ACT a republic. The ACT is a creature of the Commonwealth, not of the States, so it remains part of the Commonwealth - or, as I said before, a republic, respublica. I think we can agree that, if people in Australia want to sever their constitutional ties with England, if they wish to become something other than a republic, other than a commonwealth, then they have the right to decide that. However, I believe that it should be an informed decision. Not all things are as inevitable as Mr Lamont and others might think. He might say that something is inevitable, but that is a statement that has been used by Fabians for a long time. They believe in the inevitability of gradualness. They say, "We will slowly creep up on them, make little changes bit by bit, and before people are aware of it we will have introduced an Australia Act that destroys the constitutional protections in the States. We will not ask anybody". If you went out and surveyed people in Canberra or around Australia today and asked them whether they knew that there was such a thing as an Australia Act, they would say no. If you asked them whether they knew that the parliament of this land destroyed the constitutional protections of the States, they would say no.
Mr De Domenico made the point about who started it off, but unfortunately the Liberals all agreed with it. There was just one member of parliament in the entire country that stood up for the people. One lone - - -
Mr Connolly: Who would that be, Dennis?
MR STEVENSON: If I had been here it would have been me. One member from Victoria whose name escapes me at the moment had the courage to stand up for the right of the people to have constitutional protection. If we are to have a debate on a republic, those people who would like more power, who would like to centralise power and remove the protections the people have under our constitutional monarchical system, will find - and they may not like it - that the debate will inform people of just what the protections are. The people will begin to be informed that we have a unique situation in Australia. It was not so long ago that the major parties that control the government were having a bit of difficulty between themselves, and the Governor-General said, "If you cannot make up your mind and govern the country, I will take the power from you". Mr Whitlam was understandably upset by that, and we had an election.
All over the world in tin-pot dictatorships and republics there are coups that take power away from the commonwealth, federal or major government. It happens all the time. Inevitably, when that happens, the person who takes the power away keeps it and says, "I have solved the problem of the dictatorship. Now I will make sure that things go right". Did that happen in Australia? No. We have one of the most remarkable systems that mankind has ever seen. What Governor-General Kerr did was hand the power back to the people. It was a truly remarkable situation. He said to the people, "What do you want done?". They got the Labor Party and Mr Whitlam and went bang, and he has not come down since. The people were given the power by our constitutional system to say, "I think it is appalling that this happened and we are going to put the Labor Party and Mr Whitlam back in because we agree with what they are doing". That was not talked about by people in the Labor Party and by many others for a long time, but that was the situation. It is a remarkable system.
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