Monarchists May Challenge Legitimacy of Next Republic Referendum

6 November, 2019

In 1999 the Australian Monarchist League submitted to the then government that Section 128 of the Australian Constitution (the process for constitutional change) was, in itself, not competent to be used to remove the Crown and that for this to be done all States had to vote to agree by a simple majority in each State. The advice from the Attorney General’s office was against our submission meaning that our only course of action left to us was to seek to appeal to the High Court but that was something we could not afford to do at the time.

Furthermore, we believe that there are a number of impediments written into the Australian Constitution and the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act of 1900. For instance, the preamble to the Constitution specifies that the States “…have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown…” If you remove the Crown, do you also remove the ‘one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth?

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The Constitution also provides that “No alteration … otherwise altering the limits of the State, or in any manner affecting the provisions of the Constitution in relation thereto, shall become law unless the majority of the electors voting in that State approve the proposed law.”

Removing the Crown from the Australian Constitution, we submit, does affect each State which, although each have their own constitution under the Crown, all States form an integral part of the Commonwealth of Australia. Furthermore, each State would have had to agree to remove the Crown within that State.

Accordingly, this means that each State would need to agree because removing the Crown from the Federal Constitution, we submit, will alter ‘the limits of the State’.

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