Well, its actually not that new but there is another model for an Australian republic that is not that well known by the public yet. This new model is an elegant approach to the problem of how to change Australia from a constitutional monarchy with the Queen of Australia (who is better known as the Queen of England – Elizabeth II) as our head of state, into a republic with an (elected) Australian as our head of state.
An elegant model for an Australian republic would naturally have a number of people arriving at the same kind of approach independently. Just as the competition early last century to design an Australian flag was won by five people who had independently designed similar flags, David Latimer identified five submissions to the 2004 Senate Inquiry into an Australian Republic which all suggested this new elegant approach for an Australian republic. It is a simple idea and it can be expressed in just a few sentences. These new models for an Australian republic propose that we replace the role currently held by The Queen in our Constitution with an elected Australian, while maintaining a role similar to that of the Governor-General to act as the head of state’s representative.
Most other attempts to change Australia into a republic have tried to roll the roles of the Queen and the Governor-General in our Constitution into the one role for the new president, and this can only be done with a major rewrite of the text of the Constitution.
The new models for a republic would not give an elected Australian head of state the power to dissolve Parliament: the reserve powers would remain as they do now with an appointed ‘Governor-General’, or whatever the title for that role in a republic will be. There would need to be new titles for both of these roles in an Australian republic, but even that could be done through Acts of Parliament.
There are many different ways that an Australian could be elected into the role of head of state and there are many other questions as to the length of a term of office, for example. Yet these new models offer a safe and conservative way to change Australia from a Constitutional Monarchy into a Constitutional Republic. We have decided to call these new models for an Australian Republic Copernican Models because, as with the Copernican Revolution, the new approach is more a change of perspective and change of framework than anything else. In effect, the Australian Commonwealth has been operating under this kind of model since Federation as if we had an absent Australian head of state (apart from the occasional Royal visit to Australia by Queen Elizabeth II).
These new Copernican models for an Australian Republic would maintain a continuous link with our current Constitutional Monarchy and with the Westminster conventions that form the bedrock of our Parliamentary democracy. It would also allow Australia to grow and evolve our Constitutional system incrementally once we become a republic to better suit our needs in time.
For more information about these Coperican Models there is the Copernican Republic Forum. Also as a permanent page on this blog, a submission to the 2020 Summit outlining these new models for a republic is reproduced in full. There is also a Wikipedia entry for the Copernican paradigm (Australia).
