SOUTH PACIFIC	FEBRUARY 23, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 7
	Decision Time After two weeks of wrangling, a broadly based convention agrees Australia should become a republic. Next step: a referendum in 1999 By LISA CLAUSEN /CANBERRA nation's course can change in a day. In years to come, Australian children may learn of Feb. 13, 1998, as just such a turning point. It was then, just after 2:30 p.m., that 73 Australians, their votes collected in beige plastic trays, pushed the constitutional monarchy to within grasping distance of becoming a republic. Delegates to Australia's first constitutional convention a century ago leapt to their feet to cheer Queen Victoria when a motion from newspaper editor John Norton, the sole republican delegate, was crushed. Last Friday, a gathering of Australians including bankers, athletes, archaeologists and clergymen rose to their feet from their green leather seats to hand in their ballot slips. As the count was declared amid cheers and applause from republicans and spectators in the public gallery of the nation's Old Parliament House, Australia took another step toward removing the British monarch as its head of state. The vote means that, after years of republican rumbling, Australians will next year get their first opportunity to decide if they want a republic. It is a chance narrowly won. Prime Minister John Howard, an avowed monarchist, last year agreed to hold a referendum provided the convention produced a "clear view" on its preferred republican model. But uneasy differences in republican ranks soon became ugly splits. At times the divides seemed wide enough to make consensus unthinkable and a referendum impossible. That prospect finally united most republican delegates. Howard was satisfied his government's criterion had been met. "The matter now ought to be referred to the Australian people," he said in his speech closing the convention. "The people will decide the outcome and we will all accept that outcome with grace and goodwill." Finding common ground was fraught from the start: republicans, elected on a range of platforms, arrived with more than 20 models. Days of frenetic negotiating followed, during which the wide green-carpeted corridors and gracious offices of Old Parliament House, unused by politicians since 1988, again echoed with raised voices and hurrying footsteps. By last Thursday's crucial vote on the preferred republican model, the republicans had blended their models into four proposals. After 34 minutes of voting, only the Australian Republican Movement's model remained. Advocates of this hybrid say it delivers on three key pledges: community involvement, parliamentary appointment and no change to the head of state's role. Convincing other republicans to see it the same way was always going to be tough. Led by merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull and former New South Wales Liberal premier Neville Wran, the ARM's 27 delegates lobbied heavily from the start. As crowds watched the debate on giant screens in historic Kings Hall, delegates gathered in agitated clusters in corners and corridors. "It was all the time, everywhere, wherever delegates were," says former chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Lois O'Donoghue, one of the 36 delegates appointed by the government. The lobbying continued between courses of baked salmon and chocolate cake at the official dinner the night before Friday's vote. Says Chris Gallus, M.P., a republican from the South Australian Liberal Party: "You'd get up to go to the toilet and go through about 17 tables on the way there trying to talk to people." The republicans most opposed to the ARM model were supporters of the direct election of an Australian President. A loose coalition that formed early in the proceedings, the direct-election advocates argued that the ARM was ignoring deep community support for their model. "The ARM wants a pseudo-republic, they don't want a real republic," said Clem Jones, a former Brisbane Lord Mayor. "The people of Australia have been treated with contempt." Some direct-election supporters threatened a walkout, accusing the ARM of intransigence. But the ARM, claiming direct election would politicize the office of head of state and require rewriting the constitution to limit presidential powers, was unmoved. "We've been doing this for seven years," said ARM delegate and Victorian football commentator Eddie McGuire. "Reckon we haven't thought of that before?" Early hopes for consensus became public pleas during the final days. "A republic is not inevitable, and the current momentum will stall if republicans lose sight of their principal goal," said former Labor Federal Attorney-General Michael Lavarch. "In this endeavor the end is vastly more important than the means." Although some republicans held that postponing a republic would be better than agreeing to the ARM model, most responded to the call. Says M.P. Gallus, who switched support to the ARM model after her direct-election model was defeated: "You fight and you fight hard, but when you lose you get behind the best alternative. You don't pick up your bat and ball and go home." Just what changing to a republic would mean for the nation was hotly debated in speech after speech. For monarchists, it is at worst an attack on Australia's constitution, and at best empty symbolism--change for change's sake to a system that has never failed. "You're destroying the best system in the world," yelled monarchist delegate Bruce Ruxton, thumping the lectern in frustration. Republicans argued just as passionately that such symbols were the stuff of nationhood. Said ARM delegate Wendy Machin: "Important symbols of a society are a way of uniting the people who hold those symbols dear." In two weeks of debate that was often heated but rarely nasty, few disagreed that a referendum was essential. "There is a very strong case for putting it to the people," says monarchist and former South Australian governor Dame Roma Mitchell. "Otherwise it just goes on rumbling away." Fliers for the delegates' final gathering dubbed it the "Thank God It's Over" dinner. But the republicans' work is anything but done. Only eight of 42 constitutional referendums held this century have been successful. The ARM, buoyed by the bipartisan political support it says is critical to victory, now has to sell its model. With opinion polls showing that a majority of Australians, albeit a narrowing one, favors direct election, the ARM must convince people that being consulted is as good as voting. Says Misha Schubert, a Republic4U delegate: "You can win a numbers game on the floor, but if you alienate the electorate, they will remember." And there are signs that the electorate is listening keenly. More than 17,500 people visited the convention, with queues winding through Kings Hall each day under the portrait of Sir Edmund Barton, Australia's first Prime Minister. They came for a sense of history but also for a scent of the future. With the referendum now a certainty, it is they who will decide the next step. PRESIDENTIAL PATH --7-15 member committee submits confidential shortlist of public's nominations to Prime Minister --Prime Minister's choice agreed to by Opposition leader and two-thirds majority of Parliament --P.M. can remove President with Parliament's ratification within 30 days --President has same powers as Governor-General has now
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