This document is part of David Moss's Australian Politics Resource

The Republic Issue

Once you are familiar with the Constitution you may wish to participate in discussions about changeing it.

Constitutional Convention

A constitutional convention will be held on 2nd - 6th February 1998 and on 9th - 13th February 1998 to discuss issues relating to whether Australia should become a republic.

The ABC has put together a Special WWW feature on the Constitutional convention, and I recommend the site to anyone seeking information about the Convention.

The questions which will be discussed at the Convention are:

Our government has promised that if the convention reaches a consensus on constitutional change it will be put to the Australian people to decide at a referendum and the government will promote the consensus view.

The convention will be made up of 152 delegates.
40 parliamentary appointments and 36 non-parliamentary appointments have already been made by the Prime Minister. The other 76 delegates will be elected in a national voluntary postal ballot.

Input to the convention is not limited to the appointed and elected delegates. The Prime Minister has arranged for comments from the public to be collected, summarised and provided to all delegates at the convention. Comments can be mailed to the Prime Minister, or e-mailed to convention@dpmc.gov.au.

Any Australian citizen over the age of 18 and entitled to vote in an Australian State or Territory is entitled to be a candidate for that State or Territory, unless they are already an appointed delegate, a member of Federal or State Parliament, or an MLA in the ACT or NT.

Candidates had until midday on 8th October 1997 to nominate. 609 people nominated, they are arranged into 80 groups and 176 ungrouped nominations.

The AEC will be compiling statements from each group and candidate and material should be mailed out to voters between 3rd November and 14th November depending on printing considerations.

Close of poll is set down for 6pm on Tuesday 8th December 1997 and we should have a certified result by Tuesday January 6th 1998.

For more detailed information on the election process please visit the Australian Electoral Commission's presentation.

The Official Convention page is maintained by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The Australian Politics Resource will be following the election of delegates so keep checking back for hyperlinks to the candidates.

Many candidates will belong to organisations which can provide them with WWW pages, but some will be ordinary Australians without the technical skills to publish a WWW page. The Australian Politics Resource has a special offer to these people. I will provide WWW space and authoring services free of charge (1 A4 equivilant page of text and 1 photo) to any candidate who provides their information in electronic format.(e-mail, floppy disk, by ftp etc). Special consideration will be given to candidates without computer resources, or special factors which prevent electronic submission and some scanning of text and photos will be available. E-Mail me now for further information on this offer, which is open to all candidates regardless of their politics.

The Candidates

I have clipped the biographies of the Government appointments to the Constitutional Convention from a press release and included them in the resource.

A list of Parliamentary delegates to the convention has also been released.

Campaigning has now begun for groups seeking representation in the Prime Minister's Constitutional Convention. 609 candidates have put themselves forward to contest the remaining 76 places on the convention. They have arranged themselves into 80 groups and 176 ungrouped candidates.

© 1997, David Moss
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