Senator CROSSIN (10:15 PM) —I want to begin tonight by firstly saying that I commend to you comments from my colleague in the Northern Territory Senator Tambling. This may be one of the very few times that we stand up to speak on a subject in which we are in agreeance. There has not been a conspiracy in the fact that the two senators from the Territory are following one another tonight. There is probably something about this debate that is already starting to have a uniting influence across a number of sectors in this country.

In sharing my thoughts on the republic referendum debate tonight, I wanted to firstly pay tribute to one of our former prime ministers, Paul Keating. The discussion in this country about becoming a republic has been around now for more than six years—in a formal sense—with the Republic Advisory Committee meeting for the first time in 1993. I believe it was Paul Keating's vision and his courage that gave this debate energy. When he announced in 1995 that Australia should become a republic by the year 2000, he managed to stimulate this debate, which I believe has not had that kind of passion since that date.

We know, according to The Macquarie Dictionary, that a republic is a state in which the supreme power resides in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them. In particular a republic refers to a system of government that has no hereditary monarch—a person who holds political or constitutional office purely as a birthright. In Australia our head of state is not an Australian citizen, and under the present system they never will be. In fact, they don't even live here. Like the Australian Republican Movement, I believe that this arrangement is no longer appropriate nor suitable for Australia.

Nearly 100 years have passed since Federation and Australia still does not have its own head of state. But as a nation we have matured. I believe we have moved on from wanting to be attached to the colonial mother country and we are ready to recognise that we are a diverse nation and that we should have a head of state that is one of our own. It is time that our head of state were chosen on merit, not on birthright, that that person should be an Australian citizen, one who lives in Australia but, more importantly, one who knows what it means to be an Australian. That goal can only be achieved by Australia becoming a republic.

I do not want to wake up in the 21st century knowing that Australia's head of state lives in London and is required to be an Anglican. I want to see that all Australians, whatever their religion or class or ethnic background, have the opportunity to aspire, if they so wish, to becoming Australia's head of state. Currently that opportunity is denied to each and every one of us under the present system.

I am also not often one for quoting my colleagues from the government side, but on this occasion I want to repeat some of the comments that were made by Senator Vanstone recently on the question of whether Australia should become a republic. She said:

National symbols are important. They should unite a nation. They should touch its heart.

She said:

A British monarch as our symbolic head of state no longer touches the heart of most Australians.

On this I agree with her. Australia is a very different place today compared with what it was like 100 years ago. The British monarchy is not relevant to an Australia moving to forge an independent identity for itself as we enter the 21st century. Few Australians would argue that the monarchy is still the central symbolic force in Australia or that it still embodies our symbols, our values, our ideals or even our sense of place. That is why many Australians now find the symbolism of foreign dignitaries toasting our absent Queen of Australia fairly uncomfortable and why it now seems odd that our parliamentarians swear allegiance to the British Crown and not to the Australian nation and its people.

Australia needs a revitalised and relevant symbolic force at the centre of its community and democracy. That can be achieved through Australia becoming a republic. The world has changed. There is no longer a British Empire and there is no reason why Australia should not have an Australian head of state. In his article in the Australian last week, Dennis Shanahan reminds us that in 1993 the Queen deliberately and publicly made the point that she expected Commonwealth countries to continue to evolve into republics.

To quote Paul Kelly from the Australian, the proposed model is `cautious, conservative and safe'. Instead of being a Westminster monarchy we would become a Westminster republic, with an Australian as head of state who is both impartial and a non-politician. The Prime Minister and his government will continue to run this country. As we know, the proposed model allows for a process which will involve the Australian people in the presidential appointment process through a public nomination process. The model will ensure a bipartisan appointment by requiring the support of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

The appointment of a President will require the approval of two-thirds of the members of both houses of parliament. The President will have the same powers as the Governor-General currently has. Under the proposed model, the Prime Minister will be more accountable for his actions, if he chooses to dismiss a President, than he currently is with regard to the Governor-General. If he does decide to dismiss the President, he must go back to the parliament within 30 days to justify his decision or instead face a general election. While the Prime Minister can remove the President, he cannot replace the President with a political appointment.

But, in announcing that a referendum would be held to determine whether Australians wanted change, the Prime Minister claimed that, even though he was personally opposed to any changes to the current system, he would not actively campaign against it. But it is obvious from his actions that he is being somewhat disingenuous. In reality, he has sought to undermine and obfuscate the republic debate where possible. The issue of the wording of the referendum question highlights his attitude. No-one believes him when he says, `I don't want anyone to say that it was defeated because of trickery with the question. There was never any trickery intended.' Sure, he is now prepared to amend the question so that it adopts some of the concern, but the question remains.

So why is he so determined to ignore the advice of the committee, which believes that their preferred wording of the question more accurately reflects the outcomes of the Constitutional Convention? I tend to agree with some of the sentiments I read a few moments ago from a press release of the Democrats that makes the statement—I believe, quite accurately—that the process of how the President is elected should be determined and conveyed to people through the education campaign and not on the ballot paper.

As Prime Minister, John Howard has shown a lack of leadership, I believe, not necessarily by not advocating that Australia become a republic, even though I believe that Australia's interests could be best served by him doing so. He should demonstrate leadership by encouraging rational and factual debate on whether Australia should become a republic. So far, I do not believe that he has done so, and that reflects badly on him, whatever his personal feelings on the matter may be.

I want to spend some time tonight making a number of comments about indigenous Australians and the republic referendum. It is an area that I believe the media has not paid particular attention to, particularly during the last couple of weeks. There are, of course, a variety of indigenous views on a range of matters associated with the republic, such as the method by which the President should be elected or the appropriate amendments to the Constitution.

Gatjil Djerrkura, in his speech to the Constitutional Convention last year, said:

It is ATSIC's view that Australia should now with pride recognise and acknowledge the cultural diversity of its peoples.

He went on to say that we are a very different country today than when the federation was formed and the Constitution drawn up. During the convention, Nova Peris-Kneebone said, and I quote from the Hansard of the Constitutional Convention for 11 February:

The people I meet are often surprised and confused to learn that our head of state is also the Queen of England. I have talked with my team mates about these things, and I believe they share my experiences and concerns.

She went on to say:

But we are suffering an international identity crisis. I am offended, my team mates are offended and the viewer at home is offended when we are mistaken for New Zealanders or some other nationality. Why is this, why are we not immediately recognised for who we are?

At the Indigenous Constitutional Convention held in Canberra in March this year, there was a call to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have an informed vote at the forthcoming referendum.

I want to pay particular attention tonight to a section of the report of the Joint Select Committee on the Republic Referendum that was handed down yesterday. Recommendation 14 relates to the education campaign. The recommendation says that the information requirements of Australians in remote locations, of those with limited English skills and of young voters should be especially catered for by the education campaign associated with the proposed referendum in November, and that sufficient resources be allocated for this purpose.

So why is it important that this recommendation be drawn out during this debate? I do not believe that, to date, some of my colleagues have done this. Let me say something about my experience in the Northern Territory in last year's statehood referendum. Setting aside the outcomes of that and the way in which it was handled, there were some things about that statehood referendum that have become fairly obvious to those who were involved in it.

Most of us would have received today some research conducted by a multicultural communications organisation in association with NewsPoll. In particular, the pamphlet entitled `Indigenous Research Report' of May 1999 makes some very interesting—and, I believe, fairly accurate—statements. The research related to 30 telephone interviews with community leaders and a number of group discussions Australia-wide. Their executive summary and the points that they come up with are quite accurate. They say that the referendum is distant and removed from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, that there is very little awareness of it or when it will be held.

In my recent travels around the Territory to remote communities, Aboriginal people have been saying to me, `We voted last year on some constitutional thing. Why do we have to vote again this year?' So clearly, in my mind, there is confusion, particularly in the Territory. Last year the statehood referendum was held and people should be told that that was quite different from the referendum that they are going to be asked to vote on in November. So the role that the education campaign will play in this is particularly important. Young people, in particular, lack knowledge. There are, of course, older people in the communities who remember the 1967 referendum, which contained a question on whether Aboriginal people would have the vote. So there is, in their mind, another similar referendum. We need to pay particular attention to the simplicity of the message that we try to get across to people during this campaign.

This research also found that there is an inherent distrust of government and its policies and procedures, and a belief that any change initiated by government may ultimately be bad for Aboriginal people. That came out last year during the statehood debate when a number of politicians were pushing for a statehood referendum. The outcome was, I believe, the reverse of the outcome that they were seeking because, in the minds of Aboriginal and indigenous people, attention was focused on those people as being members of the government and that distrust came out. My fear is that a similar thing may occur this time. Unlike some of my colleagues in the Labor Party, particularly those in the Northern Territory, I believe that as politicians we need to be very careful about the kind of campaign we seek to run in support of the yes campaign. I think Aboriginal people will relate more to, and identify with, Aboriginal people who push the message; Aboriginal people who stand up there and speak for the yes case on behalf of Aboriginal and indigenous people. I am thinking of Aboriginal sports people, identities or personalities that people know, as opposed to politicians.

I say to the people who are about to embark on the education campaign that some of this research that has been done is worthwhile reading. I would also suggest that they use material that is simple and uncomplicated. The question that will be before us will be a particularly difficult question for some people in the Northern Territory to understand—as I think will be the case in most remote communities across this country. It will not be an easy question for those people to decipher. We are talking about a Governor-General being replaced by a President. We do not say an Australian President. We are talking about that person being appointed by a two-thirds majority of members of the Commonwealth parliament. If English is not your first language—in fact, English may be your second, third or even fourth language—understanding what a two-thirds majority of members means is a difficult concept.

Tonight I say to the people who are putting together the education campaign that you must remember the people in this country who have a non-English speaking background. You must particularly remember indigenous Australians, particularly those people who live in the Northern Territory, when you put together the education campaign. It is important that Aboriginal people are involved, that Aboriginal people have input. It is important that you are mindful of the fact that in the Territory last year there was a vote on statehood. That is not the same as the referendum question that people will be asked to vote on in November this year.

Before I mention something that Nova Peris-Kneebone said during the Constitutional Convention last year—Nova is a constituent of both Senator Tambling and me because her country is in the Northern Territory—I want to say that I will be voting yes on 6 November and that I will be assisting wherever I can in the Northern Territory with the yes campaign. But I do have reservations in that I do not believe, given our experience in the Northern Territory, that politicians should be leading the fray and leading the argument up there. That is probably somewhat a different stance to that of some of my other colleagues in the party. Nova finished her speech at the Constitutional Convention by saying something which captures the thought I would like to finish on tonight. I think it captures what is in the hearts of most Australians as they either firm up their position on the republic or slowly come to the realisation that this is the way of the future for Australia. Nova Peris-Kneebone said:

And I would like to see a model for a republic that gives an indigenous woman—perhaps my daughter—the chance of becoming our head of state.

If the future of this country lies in our children, then what a great opportunity we would provide for them if one of them, one day, could put up their hand to become our Australian head of state.