Republic Advisory Committee

The Republic Advisory Committee was a committee established by the then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating in May 1993 to examine the constitutional and legal issues that would arise were Australia to become a republic. Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944 was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, from 1991 to 1996 For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. It was asked to consider issues such as

a name for a new elected head of state;
the method of selection for the head of state;
what powers he or she should possess;
the constitutional amendments and legal changes required to replace the Queen of Australia and Her Representative, the Governor-General of Australia by an elected native head of state. TalkCommonewalth realm.-->The monarchy The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia of the monarch of Australia (currently Elizabeth II Queen of Australia)

Monarchists state that it is a matter of public record that when non-republicans requested to participate this was refused. The reason given was that the committee was only to explore republican options. Consequently critics alleged that both the Committee and its remit were observably framed to exclude non-republican input from preparing matters to go before the wider public, in effect if not in intent. (This effect cannot now be examined, and questions of intent are too subjective to go into. ) It is certainly notable that many of the members of the Republic Advisory Committee (listed below) were people who had campaigned for, or expressed a clear opinion in favour of, an Australian Republic, and that none had opposed one.

1 Republic Advisory Committee membership
2 Reports commissioned by the Republic Advisory Committee
3 Additional information
4 External links
5 See also

Republic Advisory Committee membership

Malcolm Turnbull	chairman (and leading Australian republican campaigner)
Nick Greiner	Former New South Wales Premier
Dr. Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954 is an Australian politician the current Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament, and parliamentary Nicholas Frank Hugo Greiner AC (born 27 April 1947) was the parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party in New South Wales, John Hurst	La Trobe University, Convenor of Australian Republican Movement
Mary Kostakidis	media presenter, SBS TV; member, Constitutional Centenary Foundation
Lois O'Donoghue CBE, AM	Chair, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission
Susan Ryan	Former Labor Party senator & Education Minister
Professor George Winterton	Professor of Law, University of New South Wales
Dr. Mary Kostakidis (born 1954 was an Australian newsreader for the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS Susan Maree Ryan AO (b 10 October 1942) is an Australian educator who served as a Senator for the Australian Capital Territory Professor George Winterton LLB (First Class Hons LLM (WA JSD (Columbia Barrister (NSW Barrister and Solicitor (Vic and WA is Professor of Constitutional Law at the University Glyn Davis	School of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University
Naomi Dougall	solicitor

The Republic Advisory Committee submitted two Volumes (Volume I - The Options and Volume II - the Appendices) to the Australian Prime Minister in late 1993. Part of Volume II was concerned with the international experience in moving from monarchical to republican headships of state. Six international reports were commissioned from local experts; four of the countries were former Commonwealth monarchies, while two had experienced their own regime change when their own monarchies (the Hohenzollerns in Germany, the Habsburgs in Austria) were replaced by republics. A Commonwealth realm is any one of 16 sovereign states within the Commonwealth of Nations that each have Elizabeth II as their respective Monarch

Reports commissioned by the Republic Advisory Committee

Country	Report by	Qualifications
Austria	Professor Bernhard Raschauer	Professor, Institute for Public and Administrative Law, University of Vienna
Germany	Professor Klaus Von Beyme	Professor of Political Science, University of Heidelberg
India	A. G. Noorani	Formerly at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, now working as a freelance journalist
Ireland	Jim Duffy	Author of major study on the Presidency of Ireland and political commentator/analyst
Mauritius	Madun Gujadhur	barrister at the English, Indian & Mauritian bars and Chairman of the Mauritian Law Reform Commission
Trinidad and Tobago	Sir Ellis Clarke	former Governor-General of Trinidad and Tobago, who went on to serve as its first president

The recommendations made by the committee were never voted on by the Australian people. Jim Duffy (born 12 April 1966) is an Irish historian political commentator and a policy advisor to the Irish leader of the Opposition Fine Gael Sir Ellis Emmanuel Innocent Clarke, TC, GCMG (born December 28, 1917) was the second and last Governor-General of Trinidad A Constitutional Convention was held in 1998, resulting in a slightly different proposal which was rejected by the Australian electorate in the 1999 referendum. In Australian history the term Constitutional Convention refers to four distinct gatherings The 1999 Australian referendum was a two-question Referendum held on 6 November 1999.

Additional information

Copies of the Reports were published under the following ISBNs

Volume One - The Options	ISBN 0-644-32590-9
Volume Two - The Appendices	ISBN 0-644-32589-5

External links

Paper on the failure of the 1999 republican referendum

Contents

Republic Advisory Committee membership

Reports commissioned by the Republic Advisory Committee

Additional information

External links

See also