Fed: Republic, charter of rights hot topics for summit

AAP General News (Australia)
04-17-2008
Fed: Republic, charter of rights hot topics for summit

By Maria Hawthorne, Chief Political Correspondent

CANBERRA, April 17 AAP - Should we change the way we change the constitution?

That's one of the questions the 100 delegates taking part in the governance stream
of this weekend's Australia 2020 summit in Canberra will discuss.

An eclectic group of academics, students, media types, politicians, public servants,
students and a former governor-general will debate four main topics over a day-and-a-half
of discussion.

Public administration, public accountability, civic rights and responsibilities and
parliamentary reform are the broad discussion areas.

A charter of rights and a republic are certain to be the two hottest topics.

And session co-chair Maxine McKew doesn't expect anyone to come to an agreement, particularly
on the charter of rights.

The country's peak human rights body has called for a charter; federal Attorney-General
Robert McClelland has already ruled out the idea.

Ms McKew, the parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, said all ideas
would be on the table.

"I'm certainly going to be saying to the group when we open up on Saturday morning
that I want a robust debate but I want it conducted in a civil fashion. I'm sure it will
be," she said.

"But I would not expect that there would be agreement on that issue."

Another issue of contention will be whether to hold another constitutional convention
- or even a series of regular conventions.

The most recent constitutional convention was the 1998 talkfest on the republic; before
that, one was held in 1985, another in 1983, and three were held in the 1970s.

Ms McKew expects there to be agreement on holding the convention, but not on what it
should discuss.

"One view would be that a convention should simply be called to argue whether we should
change the way we change the constitution," she said.

"There's a lot of paralysis in our system about changing. We are not a country that
embraces change when it comes to the constitution, it's happened very rarely, and that's
because we require this majority of a majority.

"It may be that a fundamental question is do we have a convention to argue whether
we should change that process."

The summit delegates do not formally meet until the weekend, but they have been actively
reading and discussing each other's submissions to the summit in the meantime.

"Believe me, there has been a flurry of caucusing," Ms McKew said.

"We're debating the country's most important document.

"That arouses significant passions. I'm not surprised that the people who spend their
lives and have developed great scholarship around this issue have been furiously ringing
around saying, okay, what ideas are we going to put on the table?

"And some of them might even be - shock horror - trying to orchestrate an outcome."

One of the main problems facing delegates is the lack of time available for individual views.

While the summit spans two days, the actual time for debate within each stream is essentially
seven hours - about 4min20sec for each of the 100 passionate, informed and articulate
speakers to make their cases.

Ms McKew says she and summit chair John Hartigan, the News Ltd chief, will run a tight ship.

"We're going to be flat out, quite frankly," she said.

"There are a lot of people in our sessions who are going to have a lot to say so the
trick will be saying, three minutes, okay, and really keep it moving."

AAP mfh/rl/apm/mn

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