The middle ground

For Australia to become a republic (ie terminate the monarchy), someone has to take over the Queen’s job of appointing the GG.  The well-known rival republican “models” are politicians’ appointment of the GG/president and popular election of the GG/president.  The first was attempted at the 1999 referendum; the second exists in the imaginations of the majority (probably) of supporters of an Australian republic.  These are the two ideas kept in front of the public.  Carefully kept there because although the politicians’ appointment model was rejected by the voters in 1999, the pollies would like to try it again. 
 

The propaganda has it that politicians’ appointment is “minimal” but this is untrue.  Both models are extremes.  The first is a process of secret dealings by a tiny clique of party power brokers; the second entails the wild hoopla of a national election campaign. 
 

The moderate middle ground is quite easy to find.  Instead of leaping from “politician” to “popular” at the same time as leaping from “appointment” to “election”, we move one at a time.  The result is two genuinely minimalist models, either: 
 

politicians’ election
or
popular appointment 
 

The first, politicians’ election, is what happens in Germany and Italy.  It was not mentioned by the urgers who drove the agenda in the 1990s.  The parliament meets and elects one candidate from a short list of nominations.  Contrast this with the 1999 plan whereby the machine men of the two major parties would haggle over the candidate in the backrooms and then, when all the quid pro quos had been sorted, they would hold a combined sitting of the houses and the politicians – our so-called representatives who’d had no say in any of this – would obediently follow the party line and approve the candidate. 
 

Nor was the other option, popular appointment, mentioned by the 1990s movers and shakers.  Yet in the case of Australia, it is the obvious way to become a republic.  A republic is supposed to be a place where the people are sovereign.  The only sovereignty our present sovereign has is the power to appoint the GG after the PM has recommended someone.  So to turn this monarchy into a republic it would be logical to transfer this sovereignty from the old sovereign to the new sovereign, ie the people.   
 

The power of the sovereign to appoint the GG is in sections 2 and 4 of the constitution.  All that is needed to transfer this sovereignty to the people is to replace the word “Queen” by the word “People” in three places.  (For exact wording see the “Change the constitution” page.)  That’s it.  The people would then hold the power to appoint the GG.  Nothing else to be done. 
 

Except, of course, become a republic.  On that, all options would still be open. 
 

What transferring the sovereignty would do, though, is to totally solve the problem that has been the hold-up on the republic for the last 13 years or so. 
 

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