Modern Australian Republicanism is predicated on the supremacy of the individual, and the government deriving their legitimacy to make laws from the consent of the people. The basis for this consent is void when individual rights are violated by the government. Rights exist for all individuals under the jurisdiction of the government's ability to make and execute laws - a right is not unique to a citizen, nor an individual from a majority - they are universal to all. Torture is a contravention of an individual's rights, and an individual's consent to the civil legal system; consequently it represents government tyranny. Torture is a vehicle of state oppression and intimidation. It has no place in an Australian Republic.

Torture

Torture is the affliction of severe physical or psychological pain for the purpose of intimidation, coercion or punishment. The UN Convention Against Torture describes torture as;

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

The conundrum with government in a liberal democracy is relinquishing the perfect freedom of the individual in a trade off for an ordered society. If all individuals are perfectly free, not only in their person and possessions, but also in their ability to inflict their arbitrary will on others, then it can lead to a chaotic society. The consistency in a society comes through the consent to the "rule of law".

Individuals in a society, presumably consent to government in order to have their person and possessions free from the arbitrary will of others. To achieve this, government is granted a monopoly to create law and enforce it. Vigilante justice is frowned upon as it is the arbitrary creation, and enforcement of law. To ensure the consistency of the law, the enforcement and judgement are moved to separate arms of government, the police and judicial.

This compact between government and people is done through an individual wilfully giving up their ability to impose their arbitrary will on another individual. While government is given a monopoly on coercion through legislation, it does not gain a monopoly on arbitrary legislation and enforcement. The government cannot impose their will arbitrarily, in the same manner that an individual cannot. If the government does, it has fallen into tyranny. With this step from the rule of law, the compact is broken and the individuals, whose consent gives the government legitimacy, do not need to follow the laws of the government any longer. With tyranny, the government is illegitimate.

Inviolable Rights

Modern Australian Republicanism contains in its doctrine the principle of inviolable rights. Inviolable rights, codified into a rule of law body of legislation, protect the individual from the tyranny of the state, and the arbitrary will of government. At its very core it is an individual being secure in their person and property. This includes freedom from torture by other individuals and the state.

Any government which practices torture is practising tyranny. Australian Republicanism is about removing the capability of tyranny from government - that includes torture of anyone under the jurisdiction of the state.

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A Town Hall meeting in 1887 ended in shock, when a motion to establish a Jubilee fund was rejected by the members of the meeting, and instead a motion passed censuring the undemocratic nature of the monarchy. What followed was farce and tyranny as loyalists first attempted to stack a meeting, which ended in a riot, and then, through Premier Henry Parkes, free speech was curtailed and a third even more exclusionary meeting held. Parkes would not tolerate NSW being disloyal to the British people and was prepared to act tyrannically to ensure it.

Preparations for the Jubilee

Queen Victoria is the longest reigning British Monarch, surviving Queendom from 1837 until she died in 1901. Victoria's Golden Jubilee was celebrated in June, 1887. In Australia, the ever-present colonial loyalists, went round drumming up support to stage events to display Australian fealty to the crown. It was unthinkable that anyone would disagree with something as natural as being a subject to the crown.

On June 3rd of 1887, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Alban Riley, and several other prominent Sydney-siders held a meeting in Town Hall. On the agenda was the raising of money so school children of NSW could join in the Jubilee celebration. The meeting's organizers expected the motion to be passed unanimously - unfortunately for the monarchists, several Republicans objected, and an opposing motion passed which proclaimed; "to impress upon the children of this colony[NSW] the value of the Jubilee year of the Sovereign is unwise and calculated to injure the democratic spirit of the colony".

The loyalists and monarchists were agape, but outnumbered. Their response was to set up another Town Hall meeting the next week, and this time control it as tightly as George Bush's public appearances. Only tickets to known loyalists were handed out, and they were admitted by the side door - the end result was a riot. Republicans, openly and blatantly being discriminated against, swamped Town Hall.

The Second Town Hall Meeting

Paul Norton was a rabble-rousing Republican [PDF]. He saw that tickets were only being handed out to loyalists, so in a flash of inspired larrikinism, he printed forgeries of the invitations. At the meeting, and before the forgeries were detected, Republicans surged in and filled the every seat and spare standing space.

When the Mayor, Alban Riley, tried to start the meeting, he was drowned out by the Republicans; fights quickly broke out between Loyalists and Republicans. The media and dignitaries, including NSW Premier Henry Parkes, scattered from the platform, and cowered backstage out of the ruckus. Loyalists tried to drown out the Republicans by singing "God Save The Queen", but Republicans countered with shouts for "the Australian Republic" and "three cheers for liberty!".

Alban Riley adjourned the meeting for a week, and for the next meeting to be held in another location - but he did so to a rioting crowd, and dignitaries who had by now retired to a private room upstairs. Extra police were rushed in to quell the situation.

The Self-proclaimed Great Liberalist Himself

In the room upstairs above the din, Parkes decided that the NSW colony must be seen as loyal British people, and could not stand for these dissenters that call themselves Republican. Parkes first step to eradicate Republicanism, was to target free speech itself. He shut down the Sydney theatres on Sunday and threatened the owners with having their licenses revoked if they opened their doors. Many of the progressive groups had been gathering at the Sunday theatres, giving and listening to lectures.

The next Sunday, Parkes had policeman stand as a barrier infront of the theatres. This drew a large crowd, including Loyalists, at Hyde Park who protested Parkes' attack on the freedom of speech. Meanwhile the preparations for the next Loyalist meeting was underway, and with more restrictive and exclusionary practice. Parkes ensured the outcome would be pro-royalist by stacking the crowd and marginalising the protesters to a small hallway. The Governor's wife, Lady Carrington, accepted the gift of jubilee fund in person. Numerous motions were passed, all professing NSW's loyalty to the Queen, Crown and Britain. Republicans were left to protest outside the hall, their demands for Liberty unheard inside.

Parkes maintained the farce by sending a cable to the Queen with the motions that the meeting in Exhibition Hall had passed. The Queen was gratified. Once again, the bunyip aristocracy forced their will on Australians, this time by attacking free speech and democracy.

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Mark McKenna has been the most prominent Australian Republican historian in the dead tree media during the last fifteen years. This book, Australian Republicanism: A Reader was edited by Mark and Wayne Hudson. It can be probably viewed as a primary source complement to his book, The Captive Republic .

I picked up my copy from the National Museum. The book is not new, having been published in 2003, but has a such a wealth of historical material in it, that it will not age, nor become out-dated quickly. The editors divide the book up into;

• A Deep Undercurrent of Republicanism that will Someday Burst Forth and Astonish the World (1788-1856)
• A Commonwealth for the British Race, a Commonwealth Under the Crown (1856-1901)
• Still Captive After All These Years: Imagining The Republic (1901-2001)

The first section contains wondrous sources such as Deniehy's Bunyip Aristocracy speech, Harpur's Tree of Liberty, Dunmore-Lang's Deceleration of Independence for Victoria, plus numerous other articles from newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and People's Advocate. I am a fan of Harpurian Republicanism, and this section contains much of the exuberance and hope of republicans who saw New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland making the transition from colony to Republic.

The Commonwealth Debate

The second section is dominated by the conflict between the loyalists and the republicans. Ultimately the loyalists enforced their views on Australia through the constitution in 1901 and effectively made the monarchy and Australian nationalism entwined. Often this was achieved through brutish and illiberal means .

Nationalism was often mixed with racial purity, especially to do with the Briton race. This period contains the nationalist writing of Henry Lawson, George Black and William Lane. For instance an article in the highly pro-republican and pro-nationalist Bulletin was titled, "A Republic Without The Chinese".

But this was not unique to the republicans, the monarchists and loyalists were just as heavily of the Briton view - one of the reasons the Australian Constitution does not have a Bill of Rights is so the government wasn't restricted constitutionally against discriminating against the Chinese.

This section also covers the republicanism in Queensland during the second half of the 1800s. In Charters Towers the firebrand Frederick Vosper ran the local labor newspaper. Queensland being provincial and independent minded even back then, had republicans in all walks of life, from workers, to writers, to judges. McKenna notes that Vosper's writing often made Eureka look tame;

The men [shearers strike of 1881] - they must either have BREAD or BLOOD - WOOL OR HEADS - and if the government be not careful they will have BOTH ... The government ought to know that in no country is revolution so easy as here; and once let the masses be roused, then good-bye to capitalistic domination and the sham royalty that is inflicted upon us now, and hurrah for the Republic.

To be fair to Vosper, Horace Tozer enacted laws that allowed strike organisers to be shot on sight . Despite Tozer making the government of Queensland and the Squattocracy an easy target, Vosper had a revolutionaries zeal, he claimed to have been involved in two revolutions in Bolivia before coming to Australia. Despite this this, the journal he edited was distributed widely in Brisbane, and was met with approval by other Queensland republicans.

Inevitability

The third section contains the republicanism after the establishment of federation. It all became inevitable - an inevitability that is yet to be achieved. There is some source material from the first half of the century, and a good chunk from the 1999 referendum.

Great collection of source material. The only thing I would ask for is Mark McKenna to either set up his own website/blog or join an existing one (such as SSR) and start writing on Republican history for the internet as well as dead-tree media. His voice is needed on the internet.

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Gary Rosen is the editor of Commentary and a self-confessed neo-conservative. He has a book-review of Francis Fukuyama's new book. The article is titled; The War Among the Conservatives. A leading neocon thinker breaks ranks with his former allies over Iraq. The review itself is boring and doesn't help me decide to read the book or not, but the second half of the article is all refutation. That is where it gets interesting.

Fukuyama is no fly by night neo-conservative. He was one of the signers to the Project for a New American Century [PNAC]. His thesis that liberal democracy and free-markets represent the highest form of human organisation possible was espoused in his book, End of History and The Last Man . This served as the moral backing for the projection of American principles and values into areas of the world that were still mired in despotism, mercantilism and theocracy.

This thinking came from a Cold War perspective where liberal democracy and capitalism were more efficient at providing prosperity than communism and central planning. In my opinion this is where the neo-conservatives misjudged the lesson of the cold-war. Rather than a state backed organisation method winning through the moral authority of the nation-state; it was the triumph of systems that were more decentralised than their opponents.

Humanity is a technological species and endlessly innovates. Organisational innovation is just as valid a technology as an iPod or Space Shuttle. We are witnessing the rise of a destructive form of decentralised organisation in the Middle East in the insurgency and terrorism.

There are numerous examples in science of people making loud proclamations that we now know everything about the atom, or that everything that can be invented has been. When Ernest Rutherford presented his conundrum of the electron whizzing around the nucleus of an atom without its orbit degrading and crashing into the nucleus, you get an idea of some of the mental gymnastics people have to go through to wrap their head around the change.

Richard Feynman commented on atomic behaviour in the 1960s with;

Because atomic behaviour is so unlike ordinary experience it is very difficult to get used t and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, both to the novice and to the experienced physicist.

The same parables can be drawn with western civilisation since the Westphalian agreement. We have become used to nation-states with heavily centralised authority and sovereignty occasionally battling it out on the world stage. The last century has been dominated by nation-states head-butting in a permanent state of conflict ending with the Cold War.

Now we are facing non-state actors who have destructive purposes and are capable of creating massive disruption to the overly centralised institutions and structures of the modern nation-state infrastructure. Basically, anything that is centralised is vulnerable. Government, energy, etc. Note that after the September 11th and New Orleans disruptions the economy was one of the least affected areas. This is because of its decentralised nature.

Back to the Book Review

According to the book review, Fukuyama is now advocating soft power, rather than the hard power of military might for change that is part of neo-conservative doctrine. Irving Kristol wrote ;

Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-a-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. ... And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you.

The military is a central component in neo-conservative foreign policy and moral force for change in other nation-states. I wrote that this use of a military was unwise and unsustainable in August of 2004 . It appears the Fukuyama has joined that opinion.

But Rosen is not convinced of soft power's ability. Neo-conservatives distrust the meta-national institutions and agreements such as the United Nations preferring unilateral action or bilateral agreements. What Paul Keating called "American exceptionism". Rosen asks;

But can such "soft power" succeed without sterner stuff behind it? Is it an answer to the multiple pathologies of the modern Middle East? Short of military intervention, it is difficult to see how any sort of democratic spark could have penetrated Iraq's police state.

For that matter, in a region flush with petrodollars, dominated by strongmen and sheikhs, and threatened by Islamist insurgency, reform-minded leaders are unlikely to emerge anywhere without considerable pressure from the outside -- at the very least, of the economic and diplomatic variety.

Fukuyama prefers carrots -- "our ability to set an example, to train and educate, to support with advice and often money" -- but the job plainly demands sticks as well if we hope to see results in our own lifetime.

Rosen does not look at Iran which was making steps toward liberal democracy and was the greatest threat in the region to do an Indonesia and overthrow the theocracy and hard-liners through elections. Rosen does not take note that the soft way into Iraq was through the elections that Hussein held. This is a massive vector of weakness - as Suharto found out.

Rosen writes;

Fukuyama himself remains committed to the promotion of democracy, but not through the policies of the Bush administration, which have "overemphasized the use of force." His own tool of choice is what foreign policy types call "soft power" - the less coercive means at America's disposal, from foreign aid and election monitoring to the sort of civil affairs know-how that was so conspicuously lacking when U.S. forces arrived in Baghdad.

Election monitoring? South Sea Republic covered that in February 2005 with; The International Electoral Commission . Fukuyama is discovering Australian Republicanism. Good on him.

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The Madisonian view of Republicanism was that the constitutional and representative structure of the Washington System ensured that the rights of the minority were protected from tyranny by the constitution, while the will of the majority would be accepted through the representative nature of the system.

Australian Republicanism is far more dynamic, finding it expression in the maximum republican, democratic and social organisation possible at any moment in time.

Madison did not fear faction, he saw it as a natural outgrowth of liberty, but he did fear the violence of faction. Madison believed that a republican model of representation was better at controlling the violence of faction than pure democracy .

This is the rule of many by the many , as opposed to the rule of all by all .

The Australian Republicans have not limited themselves in this manner. The history of Australian Republicanism has been one of both republican and democratic advance.

To Australian Republicans, republicanism is a starting point that finds it full expression in the democratic nature of political institutions.

Quite simply, Australian republicans are democrats too. It is arguable from Australian Republican history that republicanism's greatest achievement has been the advance of Australia democracy, enfranchisement and representation.

We see this philosophy in Charles Harpur's writings. To Harpur, republicanism was an expression of the highest form of obtainable social organisation at any one instance of time.

Republicanism is not static in Harpur's world. Nor can it reach any end of history . Republicanism is a perpetual process of constant improvement that represents the highest achievement of liberty, representation and prosperity.

Rather than Madison's republic that was rooted in the social, technological and educational limitations of the 18thC, Harpur's republic carries no absolute limit on who rules who. If society and technology can support it, all by all variants of democracy such as crowd wisdom are valid.

The Republic becomes not only an expression of current achievement, but future dreams. The Republic is defined by the optimism, hopes and prosperity of all who simultaneously drive and nurture it while concurrently being driven and nurtured by the Republic.

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Malcolm Turnbull in 1998;

Our Constitution read in isolation provides a most misleading and inadequate description of our system of government. Is it too much to ask that our most important law should be written in a manner that makes sense to people who are not lawyers and politicians?

That is a strong statement which correctly identifies the biggest problem in Australian federal government and the strength of Australian Republicanism; its formal grounding in constitutional issues.

Yet this strength, the recognition that our constitutional arrangements are largely in court law, rather than the constitution itself, was politely ignored during the republican referendum.

Monarchists took what Turnbull called an ain't broke don't fix it "cave-man conservatism", while many influential republicans decided that a pragmatic stance of language change was best but no effort to address the problems in the constitution itself.

In 1992, during a speech to the National Press Club, Turnbull said;

.. some conservatives fail to come to terms with the debate. The most common defence of the monarchy is a shoulder shrugging 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' cave-man conservatism.

Consider for a moment where human progress would be if that approach had been taken to art, literature, technology or politics?

The truth is that all human progress has been based on the desire to make something which is better.

Societies that have turned their back on social or political progress have invariably atrophied and collapsed.

That is a very Jeffersonian and Harpurian statement. It shows the republican belief that constitution is not only a progressive document which must match its people, rather than its political elite, but also that it must represent that maximal social and political achievement that is possible.

Thomas Jefferson covered this issue in great detail in a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816;

Some men look at constitutions with a sanctimonious reference, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.

They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it.

It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book--reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions.

I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects.

But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.

The colonial Australia at Federation, which was enthralled by its British ancestry and found its sense of meaning and purpose in the Commonwealth and under the Crown is long gone.

The same mindset which feared a popularly elected Head of State, a Bill of Rights and other constitutional innovations is also long gone.

People don't fully trust politicians, or Canberra meddling in constitutional affairs, and quite rightly too. At best it is mildly self-serving, at worst blatant. Despite the difficulty of constitutional amendment forced by the constitution, Australian referendum results have shown a distrust of Canberra, with very few making it across the line.

The referendum for Federation in 1899, given its low franchise, would not pass muster under today's constitutional arrangements.

One of the challenges for Australian Republicanism will be having public opinion come around to the viewpoint that the constitution can be trusted as a working document in the hands of republicans.

In the letter, Jefferson comes to a quite logical point of view, that of constitutional sunsetting;

And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, nature herself indicates.

By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation.

Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before.

It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure.

It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables inform us, that, within that period, two--thirds of the adults then living are now dead.

Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will, and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two--thirds, who, with themselves, compose the present mass of adults?

If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation.

They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority.

That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves.

In that passage Jefferson shows his faith and trust in future generations.

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Freedom of religion is a common issue in liberal democracy. How does religious liberty equate inside the framework of Australian Republicanism?

Australia is not a particularly religious nation [PDF] . In Sydney 'no religion' is the third largest faith behind Catholicism and Anglican. Adelaide is Australia's least religious major city with no religion accounting for 21.4% of those polled and religion inadequately described being another 12.4%.

As a consequence, those with non-denominational religious beliefs are a significant minority.

Globalisation has had many effects in the allocation of capital, the movement of labour and the the transferral of goods and services. It has also had an effect in unifying political movements.

The United States has bucked the trend for major industrial nations in becoming less and less religious as they have become more prosperous. As a result the religious conservative movement in America is a well organised and well funded.

With globalisation their message reaches many empathic ears in Australia and is often absorbed as political issues or platforms by Australian Conservatives.

When Australia was a closed, protected and isolated nation-state the power of an international conservative movement did not have the political strength in Australia. Any religious movement had to be home-grown and face a significant non-religious minority in the polls and elections.

Globalisation has changed this dynamic. Issues are no longer as local as they used to be, and domestic public opinion can be swayed internationally through powerful groups that are well-funded and well-organised.

That is not to claim that a worldwide religious conservative movement is repugnant, rather to point out that a well funded and organized super-minority can skew issues and politics with global reach under globalisation.

For this reason, liberty needs double assurity of protection and entrenchment, especially liberty of religion.

Religion and Republicanism

The highest form of social organisation that is obtainable in this day and age is Liberal Democracy, and as a consequence is a principle of Australian Republicanism. That may change in the future, but for now remains true.

Theocracy is an inferior form of social organisation which entrenches tyranny and social/political privilege. It is not compatible with Australian Republicanism.

Central to liberal democracy is secularism where executive, legislative and judicial decisions are made under common law with deference to individual liberty, the individual as the discrete and dominant political entity and the principle of empiricism.

This requires that religion cannot be entrenched in any of those arms of government. Religion cannot be carried by the coercion of those arms, lest liberal democracy become theocracy and the republic a tyranny.

Republicanism is predicated on the protection of minority rights from the tyranny of the majority, while balancing representation sufficiently to ensure the minority will accept majority rule.

Given that faith follows from individual conscience, religion is a highly pluralist system. From Theism, to Atheism, to Deism, to Monotheism, to Polytheism.

Sects are also highly diverse in Australia. Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Buddhists, Muslims, Presbyterian, Orthodox and so forth.

If the state chooses a single religion to encourage, enforce or entrench then it fails as a republic as it is coercing the minority and enabling tyranny of the majority. This is by definition not a republican system.

While there are many sects and religions in Australia, if there was one uniform thought on religion would the state be able to entrench religion? The answer is again no. It only takes one person to differ from the majority and it becomes tyranny from the majority.

As this purity of religion is not achievable, due to individuals being, well individual, and of independent thought, it becomes true that the state cannot use coercion or entrenchment for any religion.

Religion and Conscience

The individual is the dominant discrete political unit in Australian Republicanism, not the nation-state or state. Liberty becomes the guiding political philosophy under such a principle.

Religious faith and belief are a very individual process, and the religious bonds between man and God very private and sacrosanct.

Individuals find great comfort, strength and guidance in their personal relationship with god. They also create strong communal and social bonds with others of the same faith.

To break, suppress or deny this personal relationship between individual and god, through coercion or entrenchment of a religion or religious belief system, is tyranny. This is not compatible under a republican form of government.

Conclusion

The only place religion has in an Australian Republic is one of maximum liberty. Freedom of religion must be an absolute.

Religious liberty must be protected from a tyrannous government system, the tyranny of a powerful minority and tyranny of the majority.

The only logical conclusion is for freedom of religion to be entrenched in the Australian Constitution; ensuring that it remains an area of personal freedom that government cannot trespass into.

There are two competing dominant political forms in liberal democracy, these are the individual and the state. Political philosophies can be divided along these lines. In Australian Republicanism, the individual is the dominant, indivisible and discrete political entity.

Conservatism and Nationalism as political philosophies elevate the state to the dominant form of political authority.

Conservatives see the history, culture and ethnic memory of the political majority as providing sustenance, and nurturement for the individual.

Under conservatism, the nation-state becomes dominant over the individual, as the cultural will and majority, expressed through government becomes more important than an individual.

In the conservative framework, an individual who upsets the apple-cart of ethnic, cultural and political memory is dangerous and acts outside of the political system of order.

For this reason, conservatives can view the rights and perpetuation of the state as being more important than individual rights.

A similar political narrative arises with nationalism. The nationalist philosophy elevates the nation-state to dominance over the individual. As a consequence the nation-state can act in a repugnant manner to an individual in order to ensure its own perpetuation as the dominant political entity.

Laws for sedition is a good example of this. They are meaningless laws in a system were the individual is dominant.

Another example is citizenship which is used by conservatives and nationalist as an exclusionary system of legislative discrimination. Citizenship as it is practiced today by nation-states can only come from a system where the state is dominant over the individual.

The philosophies where the individual is the dominant political entity are liberalism, libertarianism, progressivism and republicanism.

These all stem from the political roots of liberalism even though they use different language to describe the individual's dominance. For instance libertarians talk of individual rights, progressives of human rights and republicans of natural rights; which means the same thing.

Under republicanism the just basis for an individual consenting to be governed is that there is a sphere of liberty that cannot be trespassed on by government.

The state must always justify any restriction on the action of the individual with the default form of consent from the individual being presumed as the negative.

The basis for consent is predicated on the complete absence of tyranny in government. The constitutional and statutory structure must be developed into the most efficient organisational form to ensure that outcome.

An inefficient form of social and governmental organisation is in conflict with republicanism. Especially ones that entrench social, political and executive privilege. For instance a monarchical arrangement is repugnant to republicanism, as is a constitution without enumerated rights.

Republicanism is founded on natural rights. These are a function of being an individual and human. The consequences of this philosophy makes citizenship a universal aspect of interaction with the state. Natural rights establish universalism as a strong principle in republicanism.

Australian Republicanism is a political egalitarian philosophy. It makes no room for the social or political elevation of an individual or group through claims of divine right, accidents of birth or the physical imposition of coercion and tyranny. This leads to universal principles of political rights.

The Imagining Australia folks have a section in their book titled Poverty and Inequality ;

Implicit in the notion of disadvantage are two important, but crucially different, concepts: poverty and inequality. On the one hand, poverty refers to the inability of a person to meet the basic needs of life, including food, water, housing, health care and education. Inequality on the other hand refers to the income differential between the rich and the poor within a society.

South Sea Republic carries the byline; Freedom, Liberty, Equity and an Australian Republic . Which is a nice, perfunct statement of principle.

This site predominantly focuses on issues of political technology and organisation; infested as it is with software developers, engineers and scientists. Consequently we touch little on issues of poverty and economic inequality. I will not go into them here, they are covered better on other sites such as Andrew Leigh 's and John Quiggin 's.

The equity in the byline of South Sea Republic refers to the absence of political inequality. The forms of political and social organisation are a human choice. They are human technologies and politics itself, especially liberal democratic organisation, is a technology developed to equilibrate power relationships.

As adam commented on a site with a roped off area;

I must say I admire the boldness of asserting the nation exists but the individual does not, when readers have at least one counter-example of an individual to hand, and the nation-state is a piece of technology constructed by the Treaty of Westphalia around 350 years ago.

Too often we assume that our present condition or state is static and impermanent, having always existed the way it currently does. Constitutions, Federalism, Nation-states, etc; these are all human developed and implemented political technologies.

Technologies are difficult to develop, hard to implement and often the best technological form loses out for a myriad of social, economic and irrational reasons. There are numerous wrecks of superior technologies which have suffered darwinism at the hands of the distributor and consumer.

Since politics deals in power of the state and the public purse, those that skew the power relationships to one person or a small group usually try everything they can to maintain that advantage. Consequently, the establishment of new political technologies has often come at the hands of a revolution.

Disruptive technologies in the market often mean an entrenched competitor re-organises and seeks to capture new markets or the capital which sustained that entity is removed and passed onto a new company that is able to compete in the new market.

Sadly, this is rarely the case in politics. Australia likes to pat itself on the back by claiming it came to self-government without a revolution or blood-shed. The reason Australia achieved this was because it entrenched the interests of the existing ruling elite.

William Wentworth was the main agitator here. He wanted NSW to organise along the lines of King, Lords and Commons. This meant establishing a titled class in NSW. This was ridiculed by Dan Deniehy in his Bunyip Aristocracy speech , but the result was that NSW had an appointed upper-house.

This entrenched what Deniehy called the squatocracy into NSW politics as they could not be removed by the ballot. It was not until the 1970s that the appointed members of the Legislative Council were replaced by elected representatives.

A poor choice of technology and organisation in the 1850s took over one hundred and twenty years to remove. Harpur was not impressed either, though he was happy that self-governance had come as it was an improvement over colonial governorship;

Thank God that we at length have the new Constitution! In itself I despise it, as a disgraceful hotch-potch, that shames us by the side of our younger sister, Victoria: and awards us but a second - nay, but a fourth place in a race, in which we should have been first.

Victoria had instituted an elected Legislative Council when it came to self-governance. The other states have all faced issues of mal-apportionment in the upper houses; Western Australia is yet to solve its problems there.

Poor technology choices have long term ramifications. NSW has spent a long time flushing Wentworth from its system, just as the federal system is yet to remove the last vestiges of Deakin from itself.

Political equality is an important principle. It often exists in slogans such as one man, one vote or no taxation without representation and other proclamations of an individual's political rights, dignity and respect.

Equality requires that no there be no political or social elevation for reasons of divine right, accidents of birth, coercion or tyranny. Republicanism represents political egalitarianism from which universal principles stem.

Central to republican philosophy is that prosperity is impossible without maximum liberty. A central component of maximum liberty is freedom from tyranny and arbitrary government. Responsible government sees the legislative as the dominant branch in government, republicans distrust both the executive and legislative. Republicans see both branches as equally capable of limiting liberty and enabling arbitrary government.

During Federation the likes of Samuel Griffiths, Edmund Barton and Charles Kingston eschewed republican innovations in constitutional government and instead adhered to the principles of responsible government - namely leaving out a Bill of Rights. This enabled High Court justices such as Lionel Murphy to introduce the doctrine of 'constitutional implication'.

The American Republic was essentially a repudiation of responsible government as the most effective form of constitutional order to free individuals from tyranny. The 'irritant cause' for the American Revolution was a tax, something that the legislative, ie British Parliament, leveraged against the American colonists.

It is important not to go overboard in terms of responsible government as it has been an effective form of constitutional government in its various mutations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc. However due to poor separation of powers and weak constitutionalism it is less effective than a republican constitution and government. Responsible government was built around a hack, to remove the formal executive power of a monarch without reducing their ceremonial and national power. Due to this original hack, it has become a system of patch on patch, maintained by spaghetti convention layered on top of archaic practice.

The US Bill of Rights protects freedom of political speech with a single line, from the First Amendment;

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This is a restriction on the legislative. Since the legislative can make no law abridging freedom of speech, the executive can enforce no law doing the same. Restriction of speech is inherently restrictive, and ultimately of an arbitrary form. The greater danger to republicans is that restrictions of speech will be used by the legislative and executive to silence dissenters. A constitutional right to freedom of speech becomes a just basis of any political relationship between individual and government.

Americans when faced with situations where government is contemplating the restriction can state quickly and easily, "Congress shall make no law that abridges freedom of speech". Liberty, rights and constitutional order are easily known, easily remembered and expressly available to the individual.

Australians have to wade through recent High Court decisions to find anything similar. And in this the Justices have put together a tangled web of implied suggestions from the constitution, responsible government and the basis of political government. One sentence becomes a hard to understand, not easily accessible, amorphous and intangible set of principles.

Compare this to the concrete and explicit nature of the republican language on freedom of speech. One concrete sentence.

One of the cases that has helped established the principle of 'implied' constitutional freedom of political speech is Australian Capital Television vs the Commonwealth. In this decision the justices argued that the Constitution describes representative government which cannot function correctly without informed voters. The implication of this is that political speech must be protected from legislative abridgment. Justice Michael McHugh writes;

25. The short answer to the Commonwealth's contentions is that the powers

conferred on the Commonwealth by s.51 of the Constitution are conferred "subject to this Constitution" and that the Constitution embodies a system of representative government which involves the conceptions of freedom of participation, association and communication in respect of the election of the representatives of the people.

Under the Constitution of the Commonwealth of

Australia, those freedoms have been elevated to the status of constitutional rights. The powers conferred by s.51 of the Constitution give the Commonwealth no absolute power to exclude electors, candidates, or information from the

federal electoral process. ...

26. The constitutional rights identifiable in ss.7 and 24 of the Constitution - freedom of participation, association and communication - exist so that the people of the Commonwealth can make reasoned and informed choices in respect

of the candidates who offer themselves for election. Laws which interfere with the flow of political information or a category of political information simply because it is political information are an interference with the

constitutional rights conferred by those sections.

However, the rights identifiable in ss.7 and 24 are not absolute rights. They are rights conferred

for the purpose of enabling the electors to make a true choice in a free and democratic society. They may be regulated by other laws which seek to achieve an honest and fair election process. Thus, the power conferred by ss.10, 29, 31 and 51(xxxvi) and (xxxix) of the Constitution to make laws with respect to the federal electoral process may be used to prevent fraud, intimidation, corruption and misleading information in an election without infringing the rights conferred by ss.7 and 24.

This is where I don't understand it. Sections 7 and 24 are procedural stanzas on how the Senate and House conduct their business. They are not enunciations of 'rights' as Justice McHugh is claiming. This is an attempt to graft republican principles into a constitution which does not hold them. The implied 'freedom of speech' in responsible government is a judicial construct, not a constitutional one.

The Justice's argument may be valid that this is necessary for responsible and representative government to function effectively, but it is not republican.

Representative government and its functions are not rights. They are a form of social organisation that individuals have, supposedly, agreed to in order to maintain their affairs under civil order. Representative government is an emergent effect of individuals seeking civil order. It is not intrinsic to the individual.

Justice Anthony Mason tries to explain all the contradictions between responsible government, federation and the doctrine of constitutional implication. On implication he writes;

It may not be right to say that no implication will be made unless it is necessary. In cases where the implication is sought to be derived from the actual terms of the Constitution it may be sufficient that the relevant intention is manifested according to the accepted principles of interpretation.

However, where the implication is structural rather than textual it is no doubt correct to say that the term sought to be implied must be logically or practically necessary for the preservation of the integrity of that structure.

Which is probably as succinct a description of the doctrine as can be found. One of the problems of this doctrine is that it makes the constitution unknowable and opaque to the citizenry by moving its interpretation into a body of judicial decisions rather than a simple constitutional document.

A republican principle is that the form of social organisation be easily and quickly knowable to any, and every, citizen through an easy to understand, and explicit constitution. Republican government is for the people and tries to remove the requirement for specialisation and extreme knowledge for the function, process and constitutional operations of government to be understood.

It is an extremely egalitarian form of constitutional order which attempts to fend off complexity and third order decision making. This is another republican basis for a just relationship between individual and government. Complexity of laws and second-order constitutionalism are a form of arbitrary government by elevating laws and practice beyond the understanding of the citizens.

It is the old saying, make enough laws and everyone becomes a criminal. This can be translated to constitutionalism as well; with the doctrine of constitutional implication contributing to that result.

The counter argument is that the judicial does not make laws, they only interpret the constitutionality of them, but this process invariably means that the legislative has their future room to legislate in, either restricted or expanded. It does not help that the Legislative branch often uses their powers to expand their own influence and use the judicial as a back-stop - effectively offloading the political repercussions to the judicature.

Mason continues;

The adoption by the framers of the Constitution of the principle of responsible government was perhaps the major reason for their disinclination to incorporate in the Constitution comprehensive guarantees of individual rights

"The Constitution is built upon confidence in a
system of parliamentary Government with ministerial responsibility"

They refused to adopt a counterpart to the

Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Sir Owen Dixon said Sir Owen Dixon, "Two Constitutions Compared";

"(they) were not prepared to place fetters upon legislative action, except and in so far as it might be necessary for the purpose of distributing between the States and the central government the full content of legislative power. The history of their country had not taught them
the need of provisions directed to control of the legislature itself."

The framers of the Constitution accepted, in accordance with prevailing English thinking, that the citizen's rights were best left to the protection of the common law in association with the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy

Mason is correct in quoting Owens on that issue, but Owens is disingenuous. Ballarat had seen the rise of Chartist Revolt, known as Eureka, in the 1850s. Civil unrest in Northern Queensland during the 1890s prompted Horace Tozer to pass legislation that enabled strikers to be shot on site. The military was also used for civil enforcement and strike breaking. In the 1880s Australian Republicans also came under executive and legislative tyranny during the Republican Riots in which Henry Parkes suspended freedom of speech.

The difference between the Australian and American constitutional drafters was that the Americans had been on the sharp end of executive and legislative arbitrary government from England, while the Australian drafters had been the ones wielding the stick over the prior fifty years.

Mason, despite continuing on with responsible government and the decision by the framers of the Constitution not to incorporate explicit individual rights - which he writes the court is bound to uphold - continues with the structural issue of representative government. And here Mason argues that freedom of communication is protected through the structural implication of the Constitution;

Indispensable to that accountability and that responsibility is freedom

of communication, at least in relation to public affairs and political discussion. Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen communicate his or her views on the wide range of matters that may call for, or are relevant to,

political action or decision.

Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen criticize government decisions and actions, seek to bring about change, call for action where none has been taken and in this way influence the elected representatives.

and;

Freedom of communication in relation to public affairs and political

discussion cannot be confined to communications between elected representatives and candidates for election on the one hand and the electorate

on the other. The efficacy of representative government depends also upon free communication on such matters between all persons, groups and other bodies in the community.

That is because individual judgment, whether that of the elector, the representative or the candidate, on so many issues turns upon free public discussion in the media of the views of all interested persons, groups and bodies and on public participation in, and access to, that discussion

I believe that speech and communication needs to be constitutionally protected from arbitrary government. I do not like it being done in this manner, it should be done through a 'crack your ribs' explicit constitutional statement of absolute protection from executive, legislative and judicial encroachment on communication.

That Australia is having to protect communication in this manner is an example of the inefficiency in the constitutional monarchical form of organisation and the responsible government doctrine which informs it. Our current system is an invitation to spaghetti organisation, increasing the complexity of our constitutional system and removing government, its processes, and its constitutional basis further from quick and simple citizen's understanding.

This is another path for tyranny and arbitrary government. Republicanism protects against this eventuality.

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