Senator BROWN (4:53 PM) —There are three similar amendments here. There is the Democrat one that Senator Stott Despoja is putting forward, there is an amendment from Senator Murray and then there is the Australian Greens amendment, which I have put forward. All of them involve the Senate in the dismissal process. So it should be. The Senate is involved in the appointment of the President through the requirement for a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of both houses. The Senate should be involved in a dismissal, should that unhappy event come to reality.

Cloaked in what we are hearing yet again from the government and the opposition is the wish to concentrate powers ostensibly in the representatives, but that sheets it right home to power, in particular, in the office of the Prime Minister and in the office of the Leader of the Opposition. They already have an extraordinarily powerful position in the process of appointment of the President. I think it is extraordinarily important that there be a whole-of-parliament approach to the dismissal of the President. I will support each of these proposals, but it worries me greatly that the Labor Party is not going to.

I think the people of Australia would want us to support it as well, just as the people of Australia support very strongly the retention of the Senate and the powers of the Senate. I cannot help but think that the big parties are very happy to have the Senate involved in the two-thirds vote for the appointment of a President because it gives some validity to the naked reality—which is that, in the main, it is going to be left to the offices of Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition to make that appointment.

When it gets to the dis-appointment of the President—the dismissal of the President—they do not need that cloak of respectability of involving the Senate anymore, so the process is to knock it out. Senator Stott Despoja is right. The Senate should be involved in both the appointment and a dismissal if it occurs. One of these three formulas should be used. They involve either a joint sitting with a two-thirds majority, as in Senator Stott Despoja's amendment, which is the same as the appointment process, or the houses separately coming to the conclusion that, due to misbehaviour or incapacity, a President ought to be removed from office.

Unfortunately, there is the need for a dismissal process. There is not the need for the power to be concentrated at that time in the hands of the two offices of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I support this motion. If this fails, I will be supporting the one from Senator Murray and, if that does not succeed, I will, of course, be supporting my own motion on behalf of the Australian Greens.

I also say to the opposition and to the pro-republican members of the coalition that, by not adopting one of these alternatives which involves the two houses of parliament approv ing the dismissal of a President, you will make the campaign that much more vulnerable. This is its most vulnerable point. The Prime Minister made that clear the other night. He is already onto it. He made a road with potholes in it and his job now, as a monarchist and an opponent of this nation becoming a republic, is to try and make those potholes appear as deep as possible. I have criticised him before for his role in the process.

I say to the Labor opposition that this is the biggest pothole of the lot. If the campaign were not to succeed because of concentration on this dismissal process, be that on your heads. I think you are wrong. The Senate should be involved if Australia finds itself in the terrible situation of having to dismiss a President. It is as simple as that.