ANY REPUBLIC WHATEVER IT TAKES.(constitutional ammendment, Australia)

These safeguards [in the constitution] have been provided, not in order to prevent or indefinitely resist change ... but in order to prevent change being made in baste or by stealth, to encourage public discussion and to delay change until there is strong evidence that it is desirable, irresistible and inevitable.

--Sir John Quick and Robert Garran

WHEN IT COMES to its amendment, our federal constitution prescribes one method--and method only--for change. This is the Australian referendum. (Or rather, the Australian adaptation of the Swiss referendum.)

Our Founding Fathers were well aware of the difference between a constitutional plebiscite and a Swiss-style referendum. While a plebiscite is an acceptable method of finding out the people's views on some aspect of legislative policy, it should not be used in Australia to achieve constitutional change. Why?

Because the founders knew how easily a constitutional plebiscite could be an instrument of abuse and duplicity. Napoleon Bonaparte and his nephew Napoleon III had demonstrated precisely this. The Swiss were well aware of this because Bonaparte himself had tried out the constitutional plebiscite on them--after he had invaded them. So the Swiss devised a way of ensuring that the people could never be duped. This requires the politicians seeking change to put all their cards on the table before the people vote. This is the Swiss referendum. It is this the founders wrote into the constitution.

Now we have a plan to circumvent, indeed to subvert, our constitution. According to this plan, before any referendum on a republic, we are to have the French dictator's favourite device, the constitutional plebiscite. And not one, two! That alone is bad enough. But there is worse. Remember that this plan comes from the same people who failed, over the decade of the 1990s, to come up with an alternative republican constitutional model which would work. They failed in 1993, and they failed again in 1999. Knowing this, they are now asking, they are inviting, and indeed beseeching, a vote of no confidence in the existing constitution. If successful, this will next lead, of course, to a vote of no confidence in the flag.

If they can get a vote of no confidence in the constitution they actually intend this to be followed by a constitutional vacuum to last over the decade. This is breathtaking in its irresponsibility.