Ways to a republic.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)

SIR." In your May editorial, "W(h)ither Republicanism?", you recommended that "We ought once again to take up, without haste and rancour (and preferably without the help of the Australian Republican Movement) discussion about the possible constitution of an Australian republic". This recommendation produced two very different responses in the June number.

David Latimer's "A Copernican Constitution" gives voice to a small but growing body of opinion that questions the assumption that has until now dominated thinking about the republic. This is the "merger" assumption, that takes it as given that the two offices of monarch and governor-general will have to be combined. Once this assumption is made, formidable constitutional problems inevitably arise. These led Malcolm Turnbull, for long the leading proponent of the "merger" position, to move from one compromise to another without ever resolving the problems.

Latimer shows convincingly that there will be more than enough for both a president and a governor-general to do. The one will act as our leading citizen; the other as the constitutional counsellor (a role pioneered by Paul Hasluck and perceptively discussed in Richard ...