Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-30T22:48:51.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Role for Republicanism? A Reply to Andrew Fraser

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2025

George Williams
George Williams*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, The Australian National University; Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory and of the High Court of Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Andrew Fraser has made a valuable contribution to the debate over the role of republicanism in Australia. He has raised an important, and generally ignored, question: would Keating's model for an Australian republic achieve a republican republic? A corollary of this is a further question: is it in any event desirable that an Australian republic be based upon the strong republicanism favoured by Fraser? On the former question, I would agree with Fraser that Keating's model would not imbue the Australian nation with Fraser's version of republicanism and that, if Fraser's version of republicanism were to be accepted, Australia would remain an unrepublican republic. However, as to the latter question, we would disagree. Fundamentally, I do not see Fraser's version of strong republicanism as being viable.

Fraser has significantly broadened the discussion of republicanism and has widened perceptions of what the ideology, for want of a better word, might encompass. However, while much of his criticism of my article, “A Republicanism Tradition for Australia?”, is explicable on the basis that he and I obviously share very different starting-points and approaches, I feel that he has misconstrued my argument in some respects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Federal Law Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 376 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 The Australian National University

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Republic Advisory Committee, An Australian Republic: The Options (The Report of the Republic Advisory Committee, 1993), 2 vols; Prime Minster Paul Keating, An Australian Republic: The Way Forward (7 June 1995).

2 (1995) 23 FL Rev 133.

3 See J M Williams, “'With Eyes Open': Andrew Inglis Clark and Our Republican Tradition” (1995) 23 FL Rev 149.

4 G Williams, above n 2 at 134. See G Winterton, “Extra-Constitutional Notions in Australian Constitutional Law” (1986) 16 FL Rev 223.

5 CR Sunstein, “Beyond the Republican Revival” (1988) 97 Yale LJ 1539.

6 P Pettit, “Republican Themes” in Legislative Studies (Vol 6, No 2, Summer 1992) 29.

7 Cf A Howe, “The Constitutional Centenary, Citizenship, The Republic and All That - Absent Feminist Conversationalists” (1995) 20 MULR 218.

8 (1992) 177 CLR 106. See also Attorney-General (Cth); Ex Rel McKinlay v Commonwealth (1975) 135 CLR 1; Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (1992) 177 CLR 1; Theophanous v Herald & Weekly Times Ltd (1994) 182 CLR 104; Stephens v West Australian Newspapers Ltd (1994) 182 CLR 211; Cunliffe v Commonwealth (1994) 182 CLR 272.

9 See G Williams, “The High Court and the People” in H Selby (ed), Tomorrow's Law (1995) 271.