Now move to an earlier or later file for Lost Worlds - 2017 The Year of Donald Trump - Year 2018 - Republicanism in Australia) - Future for Environment

Lost Worlds Year 2018

Or, Australia as a republic (getting rid of the absurdity of Monarchy)

This page updated 12 March, 2018

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The Australian Republic - how and where and why to find out more about it

It really must be asked: how have so many Australian republican movements won so little traction with Australian voters??????? When the issues are so obvious!

Part of creativity is playfulness. So let's play with a few ideas about renovating Australia and making it fitter for its republican future!

Australia, the world's largest island-continent, with a national anthem that mentions "girt by sea" but having a population that perpetually ignores its own maritime history. Australia Felix, south-eastern parts of it have been called long ago, in the days when urbanisation in Australia (such a "wide brown land") was beginning to stretch world records. The Land of Down Under. The Lucky Country, it has been called ironically. Land of the Long Weekend. Possibly, one time, The Great Southland in the mystery of the South Seas? Australia, where the 2017 political debacle before the High Court of Australian meant so many Federal politicians in Australia have dual citizenship, proving impeccably if nothing else that Australia really, trooly-rooly, is a land of immigrants (except for the Australian Aboriginals).

But maybe Australia should be called, The Land of Non-Republicans?

Producer of this webpage, Dan Byrnes

	Dan Byrnes: Member off and on of Republican Party of Australia. I first joined this party on 16-1-1987.

It used to be, before the end of 1775, before the American Revolution, that London in England was the capital of North America. So if Australia still defers to the British Monarch, (on which, consult any coin that is legal tender in Australia) the question is: is London still the real capital of Australia? (Think about it!)

Yes, what the Australian Republican has got to do is boot the British Monarch off all Australian coinage, abolish the term "Crown Land". In short, to Get Real and Get a Life!

Monarchical Australia is over-governed, is just one point to make. Australia, a huge island-continent of 7.692 million square kilometres, with today a small population of only 24 million greatly concentrated in coastal cities originally sited by British naval officers, a population of which about 26 per cent was not born in Australia, a land then of migrants and their children, a splendidly multicultural mix.

That Australia is/was overgoverned was the 1980s opinion even of Noel Park, MP for Tamworth, NSW (now deceased), a National Party politician. If a NSW-state National Party politician thought this at the time, what on earth was a republican from NSW like myself supposed to think? Australia, with its about 640+ municipalities (what is called, the local government level), two territories and five state governments, plus a Federal Government. Australia is over-governed. Why is it still a Monarchy? Why is it not yet a republic?

A great mistake the Republican Movement has often made in contemporary Australian is to give far too much attention to the question of the derivation of the Head of State as a representative of the Australian Government, and of the Australian people, and too little attention to questions of better day-to-day management of all sorts of issues for ordinary Australians, perhaps even for ultra-wealthy Australians. In a few words, Good Government, Better Government, has NOT been laid elegantly and confidently on the national agenda by modern Australian Republican movements. (By the way, this is said as the Australian prime minister, unbelievably or not, a Liberal, at present is a drastically-failed Australian Repuhlican named Malcolm Turnbull, who sadly has given Australian Republicanism such a bad name.)

The Australian world's most-photographed failed republican ... What a loser!

	A study in horrible contrasts. Failed Australian Republican and Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Trumbull, taking a selfie with noted US Republican, Mr. Barack Obama, once President of the USA. Photo credit: who cares?

This has meant that "republicanism" for media audiences has come to always mean re-adjustment at allegedly "higher levels" (the elite level?) regarding issues, and that decent or healthy-minded republicanism in Australia, and for Australia, has not been pitched at the more realistic level of a republican outlook on mundane issues, such as on Waste Management (see below) or Education (on which see below) or on Science, management of ... (see below).

The absurd ideological posturing from the political right and left we have seen for the past 15 years or so in Australia we don't need. What we need is better management as we move into the future. Australia is indeed one of the world's most successful mixed economies, a useful and even creative mixture of government-aided and private enterprise activity. There is no reason that this should not continue for such a large continent with such a small population, and so I assume this as we proceed ...

Follows a list of topics, themes, sectors, operations of social necessity (such as maintaining a police force), which would be or might be better off if Australia was a republic ... with a Federal Government and economically-sustainable provinces with borders set by Australians for modern conditions, not servants of the British Crown seeking not to rock the boat.

Aboriginals (indigenous) ...More to come -Ed

Australia Day1: Follows an item posted on 15-1-2018 on one of my history fora at Linked-In ...

What's wrong or right with Australia Day, 26th January? When I was aged 25 years old or less, in the halcyon days of Australia The Land of The Long Weekend, Australia Day was celebrated by our taking our public holiday and relaxing; the relaxing was the celebration. But things “Australian” have changed. Also when I was young, ignorant young hoons didn’t wrap themselves in the Australian flag and think it virtuous. Local government has gotten into the show, holding citizenship ceremonies and so on.
By now, Aboriginals are calling Australia Day, Invasion Day. One might say, Australia Day has been spoiled as an innocent holiday by efforts to give it specific meaning(s).
But I'm a republican, and so I don't define being an Australian by my willingness to celebrate the arrival at Sydney of about 770 hapless convicts and their guards.
Nor do I define being an Australian as being only an Aboriginal. I want Australia Day to celebrate us as a nation, so it would be a celebration of when we federated. (Australia Day can't be on some day which marks our transition to being a republic, as this hasn't happened yet.)
Has Australia Day simply become Irony and Disagreement Day?

Australia Day II:
EXCLUSIVE. Story by Adam Gartrell for The Age, re-posted by crikey.com on 18 January 2018

A majority of voters would not mind if Australia Day was shifted to a different date and most don't know why it's currently held on January 26. New polling also reveals that only about a third of Australians – 37 per cent – realise the date is offensive to many Indigenous people because it represents the beginning of the dispossession and violence of British colonisation.

Indigenous MP Linda Burney has weighed in to the debate to change the date of Australia Day from January 26. As the political and community debate about the "change the date" movement continues to intensify, the Research Now survey of 1417 people suggests nearly all Australians – 84 per cent – think it is important the country has a national day of celebration. But 56 per cent say they don't mind when the day occurs, challenging the notion that Australians see January 26 as sacred or untouchable.
The polling also reveals 77 per cent of people believe – incorrectly – that the celebration has always occurred on January 26, the date the First Fleet arrived to Sydney in 1788.
The date was in fact not adopted by all states until 1935, and has only been celebrated in its current form since 1994.
The polling commissioned by the progressive Australia Institute think tank was conducted among a nationally representative sample in December 2017. "This polling shows that while Australia Day is important to most Australians, most people are laid back about the date we celebrate on," said deputy director Ebony Bennett.
Given 11 multiple choice options, 38 per cent correctly identified the event January 26 marks. And just under half knew it had anything to do with the First Fleet at all.
Others believed it marked the day Captain Cook first sighted Australia, the day the constitution was signed or the day Australia became independent. About 37 per cent of people did not believe the date was offensive to indigenous people. Meanwhile, Labor's MP Linda Burney agrees January 26 is a "problematic" date for many Indigenous Australians.
Four per cent of people linked the date to events that have not actually happened, including becoming a republic or signing a treaty with Aboriginal Australia. Asked to nominate what date would be the best to celebrate Australia Day, 70 per cent preferred a date not associated with the First Fleet. And fewer than a quarter (23 per cent) selected the landing in Sydney Cove as the best of a range of options.
Only 37 per cent of people agreed the current date was offensive to Indigenous people, even though many Indigenous leaders have long been calling for change. Nearly half of people – 46 per cent – disagreed the date was problematic. Asked if Australia Day should not be on a day that is hurtful to Aboriginal people, 49 per cent agreed and 36 per cent disagreed.
The polling came as Indigenous Labor MP Linda Burney said January 26 was "extremely painful" for many first Australians and represented "an attack on sovereignty" - although Labor does not support a change to the date. Ms Burney wants a renewed focus on constitutional recognition and is advocating for a national public holiday to recognise first Australians. She also criticised the increasing "jingoism" creeping into Australia Day. "I don't think it makes you any more Australian if you wrap a flag around you and tattoo the Southern Cross on your neck," she told ABC radio.
But Ms Burney – a shadow minister and the first Indigenous woman elected to Federal Parliament's lower house – also criticised the Greens, saying its new campaign to change the date "could end up being more divisive than helpful". This year's Australia Day debate kicked off in earnest earlier this week after Greens leader Richard Di Natale announced a new campaign for change, signalling it would be one of his party's top priorities in 2018.
"Australia Day is a day on which the overwhelming majority of Australians – all but a handful – are proud of Australia and its achievements," the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told 2GB radio.

Aviation: Situations vary around the nation and anyone seeking a core to things here could easily mention the Royal Flying Doctor Service for The Outback ... But I have come to believe, being from Northern NSW, that small aviation for local air transport to Sydney and Brisbane, should be nationalised, run by government for the good of Northern NSW, since private enterprise seems not up to the job. The situation is that in the 1980s, the region's respected air carrier, East West Airlines, fell victim to an asset stripper and nothing has arisen to replace East West Airlines as a reliable operator. Since the 1980s, small aviation in the region has fallen victim to an inefficient and often-disappearing private sector ... It would be far better if the sector was operated by a Federal Government agency for a few decades, till population grows to the point where private enterprise can survive well enough in the region and make a success of small aviation. At least the local population would be better-served in the interim.
On 20-2-2018 it is reported by regional TV news that QantasLink has cancelled 10+ flights per week for Sydney-Tamworth due to many factors including pilot shortage. (Doh, no one could see this coming? - Ed)

Building Regulations: More to come

Broadband - The NBN. Oh Gawd, why did I list this? Sorry, humble apologies. Talk about a national disaster. A National shame. Blame PM Malcom Trumbull for all of this, and/or his Cabinet. What a technical and financial disaster! I mean, how internationally embarrassing?! Should we all get a life or should we just get a life?

Business and Law guiding Business - more to come,

Business and exports: One of the single most-interesting and thought-provoking remarks I have ever read about modern Australia is unfortunately for me a lost citation. But it was a commentator one day in The Australian newspaper. A male writer, it was a male I recall, criticized the Federal Liberal-Coalition of the day (I forget if they were in government or not at the time) as being knowledgeable about business, but ignorant about markets. Profoundly ignorant, by the way. I thought about this, and the more I did so, the more true it seemed. Our Liberal-National Party people are ok at accountancy, as one might well expect from the inheritors of situations once run by British investors and their Australian lackeys. But these people don't understand markets. Especially, it seems to me, markets in Indonesia, China, India, near-neighbours geographically, and we have been in touch via the maritime with India and China since 1788. These countries all have enormous populations and so enormous markets. Why Australia isn't the main supplier (for example) of European-style foods of all kinds to such countries remains a mystery to me. And so on. As the TV ad once used to say: Please consider.

Campaigns, national, various. Queensland premier Palaszuk calls for a national campaign against school bullying. Let's hear it now for an Australian republic. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but if it is broke, fix it soon.

Coast Management: (of an island-continent and more so at a time of climate change)

Copyright: Of books, music, theatre, plays, dance, computer software, apps. I have never heard of a modern Australian republican group wanting to revise conventions on copyright. Why not?
Why why why? Tell it to the jindyworobaks!

Education: (primary, secondary, tertiary)- More to come here - Ed

Electricity prices: Too high electricity prices mean the complete failure of the Australian political system, to date, in an end-game kind of way. The old political system has reached its use-by date. It is now time for a clean-out, and it seems as if the bigger the clean-out, the bigger the benefit. Politicians in Australia are simply out of touch. As an indication, we can quote a NSW politician named in The Daily Telegraph and crikey.com on 9-1-2018. Blackouts are just "par for the course" says Energy Minister Don Harwin during NSW hot seasons. And this politician's sins amongst others are with keeping too short a memory - there used to be a time when NSW DID NOT have blackouts during hot periods. We need to ask: why do we keep paying politicians who get things so wrong and can no longer deliver basic services at a reasonable price? Because we are unimaginative? Why do we pay these so-called politicians to get it so wrong when we could just as easily, and for much less trouble, pay them to get it right? Why? Why? Why? Tell it to the wombats.

Employment: (Laws of ...)

Environment: More to come

History: Let's hope Australia never sinks so low that it feels it has to have a Federal Minister for History, a role which has lately been adopted variously by Geoffrey Blainey, John Howard when he was prime minister, and Rupert Murdoch's absurdly propagandist excuse for a newspaper and an old man's grizzle sheet about the future, The Australian. Thin as The Australian newspaper has become due to a dire lack of advertising of late, History is, and should remain, a matter of continual debate, a perpetual discussion, a vexed matter of resolved and unresolved opinions; a question of people opening their mind, and not closing it. But C'est la vie, we get what we get. Stasis. Tell it to the wedge-tail eagls.

Law: (more to come)

Medicine: Nursing: Australia, particularly NSW, is on the verge of suffering a shortage of nurses and midwives. Once again we should ask about our politicians, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to pay them to get it right instead of paying them to get it wrong? What on earth is wrong with them, fear of the future? (Australian TV News, 12-1-2018)

Medicine and Pharmaceutical: (more to come)

Monarchy, British as ruler of Australia. When should Australia start to become a republic (if not yesterday?) This webpage feels, not when the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II dies. Why not tomorrow, or the day after, while she is still alive and can admire the Australians for their spirit and maybe even so say on public. Queen Elizabeth II is not against Australia becoming a republic, and if so, this means that Australian Monarchists just yearn for the status quo, probably at about the time she acceded to the throne. Waiting till Elizabeth II dies is a false courtesy, a cop-out, an absurdity that means the price of courtesy to an indivudual means a brake should be placed on the political progress of the nation. None of this is good enough, or soon enough.

Power, political: Is political power given or taken? It's your call.

Population policy: A Four Corners segment on Australia's population and population changes says that Australian under its current government has no population policy. This is because the major parties, the Liberal Party and the Labor Party, are too thoughtless to be able to develop such a policy. Australia's Republicans need to be considering such a policy. But are they? How Nineteenth Century can you remain by 2018 anyway? (ABC TV Australia, Four Corners, 12-3-2018)

Religion: So hallelujah, let Australia have religious freedom by all means, even tax breaks for particular faith-holders, as long as all of us retain the freedom to believe what we like as regards religion. God save us, Liberal/Coalition politicians and Treasurer of Australia, Scott Morrison, went on record in December 2017 (admittedly in the silly season) by saying he wanted to protect Australian faith-holders from mockery in the media. (So, watchers of The Vicar of Dibley, beware, things dire could befall you when you least expect it!!)
God save us, Morrison here forgot perhaps (and wasn't reminded by the Australian media) that Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere. That no one knew where it was until 1770 when it was mapped by the Britisher, Captain James Cook. Mr Morrison needs lessons it seems. All religions in Australia (except the religion of the Australian Aboriginals) has been imported since 1788. That's right, Anglicanism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Jainism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Rastafarianism, Seventh Day Adventism, The Uniting Church, are all imported to this Southern Hemispherean paradise named Australia. So Maybe Mr Morrison needs to rethink his position as Minister for Religions Imported into Australia since 1788?

Royal, the end of ... Imagine the changes. All those hotels named Royal, what will happen to them? What about royal national parks? What will the Royal Flying Doctor Service now call itself? The Royal Australian Historical Society ... what will it now call itself? What will the Ist/15th Royal NSW Lancers call themselves? Getting rid of the term, Crown Land, would be good. Did you know that the following organisations were incorporated by royal charter in this country? Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Australian Academy of the Humanities. Australian Academy of Science. Australian Institute of Building. Australian Red Cross Society. Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in Australia. And really, hasn't Australia been romanced enough by the royals? Royal princes and their wives, royal babies. Royal photograph releases to sycophantic media. Tell it to the kookaburras!

Science: Partly because of various sorts of climate denialism still prevalent, Science in Australia probably needs a protector apart from the protection that Australia's 43-odd universities can give Science. Why not a national Dept. of Science (Minister for Science)? Headed by a Minister respected in Parliament who can report regularly on new developments in Science, particularly regarding discoveries made by scientists working in Australia, so dignifying scientific discovery with the prestige usually given to Hansard as a record of parliament's doings? And let's have no more cutbacks to the CSIRO, ok. Why not let the adults run Australia, not the children of the Liberal Party/National Party coalition? Tell it to the kookaburras.

Southern Hemisphere: Where this webpage comes from ... Go figure, most useful things in Australia have been imported from the Northern Hemisphere. This includes all the religions, go figure.

Surveys: Recvd 16-1-2018 from one of our Republican friends: Essential poll today: support for a Republic in Australia, 44% --- Oppose 29% and No idea, 26%. [These 25 per cent really do need some work, no - Ed]

Poll Results, 21 February 2018. From Michael Cooney, CEO of Australian Republic Movement .. I'm not surprised [at these figures] and you probably won't be either - but our opponents the monarchists will be very worried indeed. Today we're releasing an opinion poll which shows that support for the monarchy is plummeting, particularly among young people, and that the celebrity news about weddings and babies is actually losing them support. Research done for us by Research Now over the weekend of 10-11 February shows that:

A thumping 67 per cent of Australians say royal weddings and royal babies make no difference to their opinion about whether Australia should become a republic. Support for the monarchy is at its lowest ever level: just 22 per cent of people disagree that Australia should be a republic with an Australian as head of state. Support for the monarchy among young people is lower still: 17 per cent of people aged 18-24 and 15% of people aged 25-34 oppose a republic. Monarchists have wanted to believe the next generation will come to their rescue - but the numbers don't lie. Cheers - and see you on the campaign trail,
Michael Cooney
CEO and National Director
Australian Republic Movement.

This email is sent by the Australian Republic Movement. [Edited by -Ed]

Transport - Road - Traffic Rules - more to come

Transport: Vehicles: And by the way, with the alleged problem of people using mobile phones while driving cars, which they do, we have all seen them do it, so why haven't the "authorities" been looking deeper into the psychological concept known as Telephone Obedience. This concept surfaced in the 1980s but has still to make its way into traffic control circles. Doh. I mean, what keeps these people as such slow learners? Why are they being paid? -Ed

Transport: Railways: (more to come) )

Waste Management 1: "It is obvious we need a national ban on plastic bags ...[of the kind issued by supermarkets]]" - Craig Ruecastle, narrator, War on Waste, broadcast on ABC TV the night of 10-1-2018.

Waste management II: It so happens that Australia has lately disposed of its waste by sending it to China. a situation which soon may change as China refuses to import waste from other countries. This includes plastics, mixed paper waste and cardboard contaminated or not with other materials, but one doubts it includes, eg., old car tyres, chemical materials. We are left with this absurd remark - "Waste companies in NSW are concerned the end of the Chinese market would strain local businesses by leaving them with no affordable options to recycle." What, if you will pardon the pun, a load of garbage. But there is a Waste Contractors and Recyclers Association to complain to and debate with if we wish. And it seems that "under NSW law, recycling centres have caps on how much waste they can keep on site and must shift it within 12 months". One imagines that laws vary absurdly on such matters from state to state in contemporary Australia. Meantime, local governments in NSW have an organisation (Local Government NSW) which has an opinion that municipalities have a bind because they have no control over domestic or international markets for recycled materials. Evidently, Local Government NSW is too helpless to be able to help anyone alleviate this situation. Meanwhile, the Federal Minister for Environment (Josh Frydenberg) sees that waste management and recycling are the responsibility of state, territory and local governments.
And so, would waste disposal be better served perhaps by being nationalised by a Federal-Republican Australian government? Australia has vast swathes of unused territory, none of this can be used for waste management? Tell it to the emus! (See article by Patrick Begley, "Export ban sparks recycling 'glut'". Sydney Morning Herald, 29 Dec., 2017, p. 3.)

And so far, so good, above are some zones where Australia might be better off by being a republic. What else springs to mind?

Australian republican organisations you can join ... (More to come)

Mr Michael Cooney,
Australian Republic Movement,
PO Box 7188,
Watson, ACT 2602,
Australia. ACN 094 419 619
http://www.republic.org.au

Questions to pursue? On why Republicanism fails to gain traction with Australian voters? On how many Australians are republican and how many are not. Republicanism in Australia, what does the 2016 Census (Remember The #Censusfail) reveal?

Mr. Peter Warren Consandine,
National Executive Director and CEO,
Republican Party of Australia,
PO Box 843,
Castle Hill NSW 1765. Australia.

Essays Various Essays Various Essays

The Hocking view on the Australian Republic (as at 10-1-2018 )

Republic redux: Australian independence emerges as a key election issue

By JENNY HOCKING Emeritus professor, Monash University, and Whitlam biographer
(taken from crikey.com on 10-1-2018 taken from the John Menadue blig, Pearls and Irritations)

The republic is now emerging as a key election issue, with the Prime Minister a mere observer in its wake. In considering the powers of a president in a new republic it is important to affirm that government can only be formed with the confidence of the House of Representatives. If anyone had seriously thought that the year ended well for the Prime Minister, promising renewed leadership, enhanced authority and clearer policy direction, his rapid advance and equally rapid retreat on the republic would have brought them back to ground. The new year had barely begun before the reinvigorated Turnbull, buoyed by the rare success of the same-sex marriage legislation, showed himself to be no different from the previous year’s disappointing model.

On the morning of January 1, Turnbull surprised everyone by unilaterally declaring his support for a renewed push towards a republic, floating the prospect of a postal survey to gauge popular support. By early afternoon the same day, duly chastised by his internal party critics, he had rescinded it. It was an exceptionally swift political u-turn, even for this Prime Minister, and a brutal reminder of how far the once brash, uncompromising, staunch republican has fallen. In just four hours, Turnbull had revealed the extent of his political humiliation, a leader unable to control his or his party’s agenda and reduced to a supine shell of the man who had promised so much.

Turnbull has since definitively ruled out any move towards a republic before the next election. Should the Queen die within the next 18 months then Charles, Prince of Wales, will automatically become King of Australia, a prospect that has given added impetus to the republican cause. All of which leaves the republic now as an emerging election issue and with the Prime Minister a mere observer in its wake. And to think that this is the very ground that Turnbull once proudly called his own. He had taken on the British establishment and the intelligence community with the Spycatcher case and won, and had led the campaign for an Australian republic at the 1999 referendum — and lost. Although most Australians then favoured a republic, a majority had voted against the model advocated by Turnbull. It was a devastating loss and one that should have raised more questions about Turnbull’s political capacity than it did.

The republic referendum secured Turnbull’s political future, yet he had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Liberal prime minister and ardent monarchist John Howard. Howard had shamelessly used the tactics of division over the form of appointment of an Australian Head of State to fragment the republican support base, cruelling its chance of success. In Turnbull’s words, Howard was the prime minister who “broke this nation’s heart”. As for Turnbull himself, the republic had been a moment of great promise followed by even greater disappointment — something we would now see as typical.

In fact, the opposition has already taken the running on the republic. In July last year, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announced that a Labor government would deal with the question of an Australian republic in its first term of office. He followed up in October with the appointment of a shadow assistant minister for an Australian head of state, Matt Thistlethwaite, an Australian first. Shorten has proposed a two-stage process with a simple starting-point, a compulsory plebiscite with a single question: “Do you support an Australian Republic with an Australian Head of State?” It is a smart strategic move that gets directly to the substantive issue – do we want an Australian republic? – and ensures that the debate over procedural matters, including the means of appointment and the powers of the new head of state, would then carry the authority of a national vote in support of a republic.

The thorny issue that neither Shorten nor the referendum addressed was the power of the head of state. Recently released cabinet papers show that former prime minister Paul Keating was torn by the obvious need to address this critical question during the referendum debate and the knowledge that to do so would inevitably derail the debate. And so, the referendum was derailed instead over a proxy, over the mode of appointment of head of state – whether directly elected or by parliamentary nomination – leaving the related and unavoidable matter of their powers unaddressed.

We cannot continue to simply ignore this and hope that it will go away. The question of the powers of a Head of State cannot be avoided without also risking the substance of our parliamentary democracy and the Westminster system on which it is based. At the heart of this is its sine qua non, that government is formed by the party which commands a majority in the House of Representatives, “the people’s House”, not by a unilateral decision of the Head of State.

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