The Menzies government sought to define Australia in terms of a pre-WWII identity. It looked to Britain as the Empire, race and foundation of Australian nationalism. By the time Menzies retired and younger politicians such as Harold Holt and John Gorton took over, it was obvious that was no longer a description which could tie the polity together. It was in this environment that Donald Horne and Geoffrey Hutton wrote their arguments for an Australian Republic. Their call was fairly limited, and argued very little in change. It was mainly remove the Queen and Britain as the centre of Australian politics and nationalism. The Australian Republican Movement has adopted this same philosophy, but Republicanism is built on universal values of liberty and governance. The Dutton/Horne view of a Republic is too small for the Australian people to accept.

Single Issue Republicanism

Mark McKenna writes of the Republicanism of the 1960s;

... when Geoffrey Dutton and Donald Horne raised the question of a republic in 1963-64, the parameters of the modern republican debate were already evident. What Dutton and Horne said in the early 1960s did not differ greatly from what republicans would say in the 1990s.

That style of republicanism rested on;

• Australian nationality was not British, and Australia required an Australian head of state.
• The Queen was an obstacle to an Australian identity and perpetuated " a culture of political, economic and cultural dependence ".
• Australian and British foreign policy and economic interests were diverging. A British head of state weakened Australia's identity in these areas in Asia.

Mark McKenna also added the final point that republicans of the 60s and 90s agreed that; " The Australian Republic was inevitable ". Those points mimic exactly the message that the Australian Republican Movement took to the people prior to 1999 referendum. This is a pretty small view of Republicanism, and ignores much of the intellectual ground work done in Australia by Republicans such as Dunmore-Lang, Deniehy, Harpur, Vosper etc. It also ignores much of the development of Republicanism by international figures such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The ARM view of Republicanism suffers a poverty.

Universalism

Republicanism, both Australian and international, carries universal values. The most obvious of these is the absence of political and social privilege under government. A monarchy has no place in a Republic as it entrenches constitutionally the privilege of political and social position. The position of King or Queen is achieved without merit, or periodic popular vote. The main claim to a monarch's position is accident of birth.

With the entrenchment of political and social privilege often comes entitlement, impunity and soon after, tyranny. When Dan Deniehy fought against the bunyip aristocracy and squattocracy he was fighting for universalism, egalitarianism and merit. When Charles Harpur wrote his preface to the Tree of Liberty he was arguing for the universalism of individual virtue and how an unmeritorious political system filled with privilege can pollute that virtue.

Universalism is an Australian Republican value, for after all, Republicans are Democrats too. This principle has often guided the discussions on South Sea Republic. For instance; Avocadia's Bill of Rights does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, or more importantly; citizenship. Individuals under the jurisdiction of a government have universal rights that are a result of their being an individual. There is no privilege attached to being a member of a majority or minority. This is an intrinsic value .

Suffrage is another universal Republican value. I have edited the Electoral Act in a previous article to ensure Universal Enfranchisement . We are both an immigrant nation and diasporic people at the same time. Migrants are constantly coming to Australia and remaining, while at the same time Australians are leaving our shores in ever-increasing numbers to work and live overseas. Neither group should be denied suffrage due to geographic circumstances of birth, or present location.

Other Australian Republicans have argued for a more universal approach; Wayne Hudson argued for Planetary Republicanism while Peter Botsman wrote in the Great Constitutional Swindle that;

... it is important for Australia to make the leap towards a broader concept of citizenship. The global citizen must have roaming rights. He or she must be entitled to certain indivisible rights wherever they may be in the world: a vote of equal value, the right to stand for political office and to advocate a cause or a positions, the right to liberty, free speech, freedom of association and the right to basic social, economic and cultural living standards. If multiculturalism has a positive endpoint it is this one.

I disagree with this final rights to, they are better expressed in liberty, rather than a right to. For instance, you have the liberty to pursue your own social, economic and cultural interests. Rather than guaranteeing a living standard. But other than this, Botsman approaches the issues of the universality of an individual under any government in typical Australian Republican terms.

Head of State

Dunmore-Lang and numerous other Republicans railed against the divine-appointment with a monarch as Head of State. The Australian Head of State poses an issue because of the poor separation of powers in the Australian parliamentary system. Separation of powers is a strong Republican value which saw it expressed in utilitarian form by James Madison in the American Republic.

The Westminster style of embedding the Executive in the Legislature is hack, or a patch, to route around the Executive power of the monarch while maintaining their ceremonial power. It is entirely unnecessary in the Australian system to maintain the monarch, but some fluidity between the constitutional monarchy and republic will need to remain. The Australian Parliamentary system has also proved fairly stable. It would be unwise to throw it all away in a revolutionary moment, far more prudent to adopt an evolutionary approach.

Australians want to elect the Governor-General, but an individual appointed to that position by direct election might clash with the Prime Minister over who has ultimate Executive authority. Currently the Prime Minister advises the Governor-General, but this can lead to what software developers call a race condition. This was seen in 1975 when the Governor-General gazumped the Prime Minister and democratically elected government.

Universalism demands a Bill of Rights which limits government's intrusion into individual liberties is present in a Republican Constitution. Any Parliamentary based Republican system also requires a firm separation of Executive responsibilities between the Governor-General and the Prime Minister. As a result, the Governor-General should be constitutionally required to defend individuals from laws which conflict with the Bill of Rights. The Governor-General becomes a Rights Referee .

This would stop the Governor-General and Prime Minister stepping on each other's Executive toes. It would give the Australian people the reason to vote for the Governor-general based on who will ensure their rights are protected (the GG however can only veto bills which directly contradict the Bill of Rights). The Governor-General becomes an elected representation of Republican and Universal virtue. This is a very positive role model and structure for liberty.

Opposing-isms

The universal values of Republicanism bring it into direct conflict with conservatism and nationalism. Both of which seek to use the legislature to entrench privilege for majorities and minorities that fly in the face of liberty.

Donald Horne's book, The Lucky Country was a significant book of political and social commentary when it was released in 1964. Parts of the book are highly dated as Australia has progressed through the decades since its release, however some of his insights remain pertinent.

Donald Horne's book contains a section on the Australian Parliaments in the 1960s, this is an extract;

Parliaments

It maybe have been noted in that in a chapter devoted to politics the institution of Parliament has not so far been mentioned. There are enough of them in Australia - an Upper and Lower House in every state (except Queensland where they make do with one) and two Houses in Canberra - but it is is hard to escape the conclusion that in Australia Parliaments are now mainly of ritualistic significance and that the significance of the peculiarly parliamentary part of Australian democracy is quite slight.

A political leader achieves leadership through his party and normally he then uses his position and power of patronage to dominate, or attempt to dominate his party machine; and rebels work through the party machine to try and affect the policies of the leaders.

In this power situation Parliaments are subsidiary; it is through the parties that political changes are effected - if they are effected at all.

Power within the parties is not gained by any significant appeal to mass membership. These isn't a mass membership. Party branches are small and, with exceptions, moribund.

Power within a party is usually gained by secret contrivance and manipulation. Except in the sense that the rival party machines have to submit themselves to regular parliamentary elections the idea that Parliament represents the people is simply one of the fictions of Australian public life - as is the idea that Parliaments have any particular relation beyond a ceremonial one to the administration of the Commonwealth and States.

All that happens is the people have a veto; they can keep one of the party machines out of office - at the cost of putting the other party machine into power.

And when a party gains power it uses its Parliament as its legislative and propaganda instrument.

The checks on an Executive's non-arbitrariness are mainly non-parliamentary (although considerable): there are checks within the party machine itself, there are checks from pressure groups, there are the checks of publicity and exposure (here Parliaments are of some significance, but of perhaps less significance than the Press), the checks of regular elections, the checks of the Constitution and of conventional standards of behaviour.

There is no lack of checks on Australian governments - although a better informed and more active legislative body such as the American Congress might provide greater checks because of its ability to acquire information through committees then act on the information.

Just to break for a moment, it is interesting that the federal Senate has adopted a Committee system and the American Congress has fallen into party discipline and allowed an Executive of the same party to operate with little oversight.

As an example of how important the Senate Committee system has become in Australia, this is a graph of hours spent in committee and in parliament by Senators;

Source: Senate Brief No 4 , July 2004

Donald Horne continues;

What seems to be almost altogether lacking in Australia is a channel for the invigoration of the political parties, The political structure tends to ossify.

Parliaments are all but useless for the invigoration of the parties. With one of the Party machines in control of parliament and the Executive in control of the party machine there is no prospect of Parliament - as Parliament - having any effect on administration, unless - as sometimes happens - a rival party machine controls one of the Upper Houses. But again this is not a parliamentary check - it is a party machine check.

The sheer dreariness of parliamentary life - its lack of political meaning and its old fashioned rituals - repel many of the kind of people who might make good members of an Executive and also the kind of people who like to acquire information and to probe into the process of government (and would make good parliamentarians).

An able man in the prime of life is usually not prepared to make the sacrifice of listening day after day to speech after speech of almost complete drivel.

The fiction that Parliaments are hotly debating whether they will pass a bill as if they were still made up of eighteenth century squires, combined with the demands of party discipline and the general poverty of parliamentary candidates have produced a banality in 'debate' that is world class.

It is doubtful there are any parliaments anywhere in the world where the standard of speaking is lower than it is in the Parliaments of Australia.

Apart from the windbags who get a sense of relief from opening and shutting their mouths life can assume useful meaning for an Australian M.P. only in his constituency. Here he performs a useful if rather menial job getting telephones, jobs, or pensions for constituents, and, in general, trying to pull strings in government departments.

Sometimes he corrects an injustice; more often - by gaining a privilege for a constituent - he may create an injustice for others.

It is fashionable to blame Menzies for the decadence of Australian Parliaments but since the same processes can be observed in the State Parliaments and were already in operation in the Federal Parliaments before Menzies began his long period of power this seems a trivial assessment.

One can certainly make criticisms of Menzies: he has not made any attempt to strengthen parliament; on the contrary he has always acted to suppress any attempt by a parliamentarian to assert himself as a parliamentarian.

He has been the boss, and he has let everyone know it. To him, Parliament appears to be merely an occasional sounding board for his own oratory.

There is one simple fundamental weakness in the Australian Parliaments: they haven't go enough to do. And there is fundamental weakness in the system of providing an Executive from the ranks of parliamentarians: most of them are not good executives.

The kind of man who is prepared to sit through years of boring ritual in parliamentary sessions before he is rewarded with power in Executive office is not likely to be a good political leader.

And the kind of man who is likely to be a good leader finds it impossible to break through quickly into public office - so he doesn't try.

The last two paragraphs describe Malcolm Turnbull's situation well. He was an accomplished businessman who led a political campaign - the Republican Movement - which was external to Parliament and nearly successful.

He joined politics where he acted in what Horne calls a parliamentarian manner, providing an alternate tax policy to the Treasury's. He has since been silenced under Executive discipline by being given the minor and politically insignificant position of Secretary to the Prime Minister for Water Policy.

It was a political move by the Prime Minister to bring Turnbull under Executive control.