[QUOTE=Astrophe;1293070]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larryp
If you are referring to the republic referendum held in 1999, it was set up by the then PM, John Howard, to fail....that's what he wanted and that's what he got.
The question as to how we should choose our head of state, is indeed relevant. A popularly elected head of state is not, IMO, desirable, for the simple reason that it will have the tendency to create two competing centres of political power....i.e. the PM and the President or GG. A head of state who is elected, will possibly believe that he/she has a mandate to exercise power, where, in reality, under our (Westminster) parliamentary system of government, the head of state is a largely ceremonial office and not in any way like the American executive presidential system, where the offices of head of state and head of government are held by the same individual. No one is proposing such a system for Australia. We would continue to have a parliamentary system of government with the PM as the head of government and the President or GG as head of state.
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Set up to fail? That was the model agreed on at the time and the Australian people needed to know EXACTLY what they were voting for.
If you want to just replace the Governor General with a president without modernising our whole system of government, then you are advocating spending billions of dollars changing currency, stationary, dept names and everything else you can think of, for virtually no benefit-absolutely ridiculous!