[LINK] FTA and Getting out of it ..

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 11:52:44PM +1100, Tim Lister wrote:

> which become law the instant the Governor General signs them, and this has
> happened many times in our history (Now do you understand why the gummint
> likes weak, flawed and subservient GG's?).

what's wrong with that?

I like weak, flawed, and subservient GGs.  that is the main reason 
i was opposed to the Republic - having a republic and a president
would inherently politicise the position of Head of State.

at the moment, the GG *knows* that he is a figure-head whose job is to sign
whatever Acts are passed by both houses of parliament, and to have a
last-resort veto power (use of which effectively costs the job).

an elected president (whether popularly elected, or appointed by parliament)
would insist that he or she had a mandate to *DO* things....and we already have
enough trouble with politicians insisting that they have a mandate to do things
which the people clearly do not want and never did want (e.g.  GST and selling
off telstra).

that's too much power for one person.  we don't need that kind of demagoguery
in this country.

to me, avoiding the neccessity of having a president is worth keeping the GG
and the ties to the monarchy (they're basically irrelevant anyway - mostly
harmless).

> The current FTA has no popular bits, so the Senate is unlikely to budge,
> which makes a double dissolution possible; even more likely is the idea

howard would lose an election if the primary issue was the FTA.

he has more than enough potential triggers for a double dissolution that he
doesn't need to risk everything on it.  ditto with the sale of telstra, he
doesn't want that to be the primary election issue either.

> that twice denied legislation to implement a treaty can cause the GG to
> call for a joint sitting of parliament, which can then be used to pass
> ALL the existing backlog of rejected bills, by tying them in as
> amendments to the FTA enabling bill (Medicare, Uni Fees, Asio Powers,
> etc., etc).

i thought that this was one of the changes Howard wanted to make but hadn't
been able to get past the senate (i.e. it's yet another double dissolution
trigger)

craig