Sam Mostyn faces the biggest challenge of her long career

The role of governor-general requires diplomacy, finesse, toughness and a deep sense of duty. But Sam Mostyn’s appointment has had a surprising effect.

Sam Mostyn’s supporters fear she will no longer be able to advocate or achieve outcomes and will be ­reduced to a mere ribbon-cutting figurehead. Picture: Richard Dobson

The announcement of Samantha Mostyn as Australia’s next governor-general had the surprising effect of raising despair among some of her greatest supporters. While they accept that the breadth of her experience in business, law, sport, the arts, politics and the environment make her well qualified for the office, they fear she will no longer be able to advocate or achieve outcomes and will be ­reduced to a mere ribbon-cutting figurehead.

They have a point. Sir Philip Game confided in letters to his mother-in-law that the job of governor of NSW (1930-35) involved giving speeches at the drop of a hat on subjects he knew nothing about and moving food around on his plate while eating official meal after meal. He wrote: “I have not yet had to put any scraps in my pockets but one never knows what it may come to”. He was also consumed with doubt about whether he was doing any “good”. He worried that attending meetings and charitable events and making “a few appropriate but very platitudinous remarks” would achieve nothing.

Sir Philip Game was consumed with doubt about whether he was doing any “good”.

Game served as governor in Sydney during the Great Depression. In the evenings, he would take his dog Mickey on strolls about the neighbouring Botanical Gardens where he would stop and talk with the homeless men who slept amid the bushes. He became well acquainted with the personal devastation the Depression had wrought, but all he could offer was friendship and some personal financial support, which he continued paying, even after he left office and returned to London.

The difficulty with vice-regal appointments is that those chosen are usually people who are at the height of their careers – senior judges, military officers or politicians – and are used to identifying problems and fixing them. They are people who make decisions, give orders and get things done. Despite falling outside these traditional career categories, Mostyn too has a long record of addressing problems and getting outcomes.

Yet, governors-general have quite a different role. They serve, rather than rule. They are bound hand and foot by convention that ordinarily demands that they act according to the will of their responsible ministers. It is a very hard transition to make.

Much of the governor-general’s role is ceremonial and representational. It involves meeting and speaking with people, be they visiting heads of state, incoming ­ambassadors, schoolchildren or prize-winners at a country fete.

Governors-general also console Aus­tralians in times of disaster and congratulate success, commitment and bravery with the award of ­honours. They travel around the country and inevitably see and hear all the problems that need fixing. Yet, they are powerless to do ­anything about it.

Samantha Mostyn with partner Simeon Beckett. Picture: PMO

At best, they can raise awareness about issues by their presence and speeches, but they have to walk a very fine line to remain apolitical in their actions and retain broad-based public trust. For people used to action, this demands a great deal of self-abnegation. Many of the very skills that led to their career success and appointment have to be muzzled. One can understand why Mostyn’s supporters are concerned.

Yet there is another important aspect of the role of governor-general that does require the gravitas, wisdom and experience of people who have held such senior roles. It is their constitutional role.

The governor-general, at least formally, has a finger in many ­governmental pies – from being Commander-in-Chief of the defence forces, to assenting to bills, appointing federal judges, exercising executive power and appointing the prime minister and other ministers. While convention governs how the governor-general acts, ceding effective power to ministers, the governor-general has a broad awareness of what is going on, both from paperwork and chats with ministers over cups of tea after Executive Council meetings in which ministers advise the governor-general to approve executive actions. The breadth of Mostyn’s background in both business and government affairs will enhance her ability to comprehend what is placed before her and provide wise counsel, if needed.

Historically, this is described as the governor-general’s “right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn”. It functions at two levels. First, the governor-general can raise queries about matters that come before the Executive Council. He or she may delay acting on a decision until they receive further advice about its operation and effect or a legal opinion about its validity. This is an important means of picking up errors and averting possible corruption or misbehaviour.

Alex Chernov, a former governor of Victoria (2011–15), wrote about how he needed to be satisfied that all ministerial recommendations to the state Executive Council were within legal power and had been made on an objective basis.

If he had doubts about their ­legality or propriety, he would raise his concerns and refer the matter back to the government for reconsideration.

Vice-regal interventions of this kind mostly just identify inadvertent errors, which are corrected. But sometimes they raise deeper concerns that cause governments to pause and think twice.

A government can insist that a governor-general act upon its advice, if it is within the law, but more often than not some kind of compromise is reached or a proposal is withdrawn if the concern raised has substance.

At a higher level of engagement, the governor-general can offer guidance through encouragement and warning to a prime minister. This may be important when constitutional principles are being strained or tested during a crisis. The governor-general retains a number of “reserve powers” that he or she can exercise without, or contrary to, ministerial advice, for the purpose of protecting the Con­stitution and its fundamental ­principles, such as responsible ­government and the rule of law.

A skilled governor-general, who holds the respect of the prime minister, can steer the prime minister away from a constitutional crisis without the public ever being aware of his or her role. This is when the prior experience and the attributes of the governor-general become truly valuable.

As Sir Philip Game discovered, this is much harder than making platitudinous speeches or digesting a surfeit of lamingtons at country fairs. He faced a determined premier in Jack Lang, an economy spiralling out of control, the threat of insurrection by the New Guard and the seizure of state funds by the commonwealth. His dismissal of the Lang government in 1932, for issuing instructions to public servants to act contrary to a commonwealth law, remains controversial to this day. It was one of the very few occasions where the soft power exercised behind the scenes failed, resulting in a hard exercise of constitutional power that was seen, ­debated and critiqued by all.

Fortunately, few vice-regal officers face constitutional crises, but all of them need the knowledge, subtlety and skill to deal with them when they arise. So for those who ask why we bother putting highly credentialled people like Mostyn into a ribbon-cutting role, or even whether we need the office at all, the answer is that there is more to the role of governor-general than is publicly seen and a wise, experienced and capable governor-general is a great asset to the country.

Anne Twomey is a Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney and a consultant at Gilbert + Tobin Lawyers.