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SUPER ZEL'S ABSENCE: AN OMINOUS WARNING
by Tim O'Dwyer

"Where"s Wally?'" You may well ask this as you scan the list of candidates for the Constitutional Convention. Just about every other familiar face is there. If not the faces, certainly the names.

In Queensland you will recognise the names of ex-pollies like Killen, Bonner, Lavarch, Everingham, Macklin and Shiel. Not forgetting Clem, Sallyanne and Flo. You will find no shortage of past politicians interstate either. Old names like Wran, Withers, Chipp and Hamer Have reappeared, and a few more recent, if fast-fading, ones like Phil Cleary, Jo Valentine and Christabel Chamarette.

Non-parliamentary personalities feature not only in the crowd of 129 candidates in Queensland but also in the mega-mob of 609 across the nation. Mary Kelly, Vilma Ward, Rona Joyner and Mike Evans are among our local well-known candidates, while New South Wales voters can choose from the likes of Hazel Hawke, Jenny George, Alf Garland, Bob Ellis, Thomas Keneally and Lex Marinos.

Elsewhere the "household names" include Janet Holmes a Court , Steve Vizard, Rod Quantock, Bruce Ruxton, Kym Bonython, Lindsay Fox and Poppy King.

If "Wally" was a lawyer he'd still be hard to find among scores of legal eagles chasing a convention brief. Apart from the lawyers who have been prominent MP's, no-one legally famous is fronting in Queensland. Monarchist Ron Howatson's and republican Ros Atkinson's names may ring a bell, so might a literate Logan City solicitor's, but the rest are entering only modest appearances before the court of public opinion.

Never mind how to choose between monarchists and republicans, old players and new faces. The question on every thinking voter's lips should be: "Where's Zelman?"

"The time has come,"' Sir Zelman Cowen said in Washington last month, "in the evolution of Australia's independent national identity, for us to have a truly Australian constitutional head of state". This distinguished scholar who has served as Governor-General did not actually say, '"I am a republican", but his remarks boosted the republican cause, as he became the first former representative of the Queen to make this stand.

Sir Zelman's republican conversion did not occur quite on the road to Washington's Georgetown University. Closer to home at Griffith University he predicted last year that Australia would be a republic by early next decade.

Sir Zelman now says it is important "for an independent Australia to state simply and unambiguously our national status in constitutional terms" - a constitutionally correct way of saying, '"Australia should become a republic".

Sir Zelman first entered the present republic debate two years ago when he described the "Keating model" as "a pretty good way"' for achieving an Australian republic, but made it clear he personally supported our existing system of government.

Undaunted by someone with more than 200 letters after his name, including one earned doctorate of laws and seventeen honorary academic gongs from around the world, I had a letter published criticising Sir Zelman"s careful conservatism. After his Griffith awakening I wrote more generously applauding the change of heart "in this great constitutional scholar".

As a mere constitutional law student in I966, I first encountered Sir Zelman"s earliest cautious approach to the republic question, when he contributed to a book of essays entitled '"Australia and the Monarchy". It was possible, he wrote then, "to convert the Commonwealth into a republic... through the procedures prescribed by Section 128 of the constitution". But he was a realist.

"Measures which touch the emotions as any proposal to establish a republic would are not very likely... to surmount the formidable hurdles set up by the amendment clause of the Commonwealth constitution," he warned at a time of Menzies Monarchism - and promptly sank a republican movement ahead of its time.

Times have now changed, and so must the constitution.But where is Sir Zelman?

Why hasn't one of the most eminent citizens to advocate the end of our constitutional monarchy become a candidate for the coming convention? Is Sir Zelman Cowen's absence from this extraordinary postal election another ominous warning?

Come the republic, could the prospects of having to take part in a nation-wide election (no doubt also with optional preferential voting) dissuade the best and finest candidates from ever offering themselves as head of state? Might only yesterday's politicians well versed in the art of electioneering, or some Ray Martin or Kerri-Anne Kennerley perennially popular with TV viewers, want to compete for the favour of Australia's twelve million voters?

Whether we call our first truly Australian head of state the Governor-General, the President or something else again, the people could still wind up over the years electing some real Wallys!

(Tim O'Dwyer is a Logan solicitor and independent republican candidate for the Constitutional Convention. )

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Authorised by Tim O'Dwyer
Published by Ross Garrad, 20 November 1997