John Smith wrote on Jan 26
th, 2016 at 5:11pm:
Neferti wrote on Jan 26
th, 2016 at 5:01pm:
Aussie wrote on Jan 26
th, 2016 at 4:39pm:
I reckon it boils down to a couple of questions. What do we want (assuming the Monarchy is booted, and the Parliamentary position is left unaltered...with a PM etc as we have now?)
1. A purely ceremonial figure-head.
2. A ceremonial figurehead with some declared/clearly defined power to exercise political influence on rare occasions.....and on what rare occasions.
WRONG. Totally. WRONG. IF Australia is to become a REPUBLIC (and thus getting rid of the Monarchy) we want to be able to VOTE
we should first have a vote on republic or not, so that the matter is settled, with the particular model to be voted upon at a later stage.
There's no need to rush it, tie the referendums in with elections if it means we save money. Decide the one question in conjunction with one election, decide on the model at the next one.
we should first have a vote on republic or notIMO this is the worst possible process and the one that the Government and pro republic crowd want.
This is the method that potentially locks us into a republic model that we would vote against in preference to what we have.
In this stage one is to remove the very good system we have and to then leave us at the mercy of the unknown options later put on the table.
This is a process that would be very likely to leave us locked into the option of choosing the best of a poor selection of options at the end of the day. We could easily find that we a left with a vote of
A) Terrible option
B) Just as bad
C) Almost as bad as A and B
This could end up as an ambush designed to force us to take a republic model that they know we would never really vote for against the current system.
If I am going to vote for a new model I want to see the model up front and I want to have it stand against our current system. If it is good enough it can win.
Having a stage 1 vote where our current real system foibles and all is standing against some theoretical utopian make believe fairy tail is just a dishonest trick designed to remove the current system without telling us what the real alternatives look like.