Abbott attacks Shorten’s republic plebiscite

Tony Abbott says Bill Shorten is ‘giving people more and more reasons to vote against him’.

Tony Abbott: ‘This … is just the latest instalment in the green-left’s war on our way of life’. Picture: AAP.

Tony Abbott has blasted Bill Shorten’s push to hold a plebiscite on an Australian republic as a fraudulent political exercise aimed at winning votes while putting at risk the integrity of the democratic system.

Writing in The Australian today, Mr Abbott warns that Labor’s plebiscite risks the trap of galvanising opposition to Australia’s existing constitutional arrangements without proposing a viable alternative model for a republic — a situation he suggests is politically untenable.

The former Liberal prime minister and constitutional monarchist says the Opposition Leader’s idea for a plebiscite is meaningless unless he offers a preferred model.

This would involve a choice about whether a president would be directly elected or appointed by parliament — the dilemma that sank the 1999 referendum — with Mr Abbott attacking both options as problematic.

“If his (Mr Shorten’s) proposed plebiscite were to pass because the people had been persuaded to support the republican principle but no particular republican practice, our Constitution would be discredited even though the means of choosing a president remained far from settled,” he says.

“Shorten is hoping to maximise support without making the hard choices that becoming a republic would involve. It’s fundamentally dishonest.”

Speaking to the Australian Republic Movement gala dinner on Saturday night, Mr Shorten confirmed that if he won the next election, he would ask Australians whether they supported becoming a republic. If the “yes” vote prevailed, details on the most appropriate constitutional model could be thrashed out in the following parliamentary term.

“We will put a simple, straightforward question to the people of Australia: Do you support an Australian republic with an Australian head of state?” Mr Shorten said. “What we cannot afford is to be caught in a referendum like the one we had before ... A lot of people voted ‘no’ because of the model, not because of the republic.”

Mr Abbott slams the logic as disingenuous and constitutionally dangerous, presenting it as evidence of a growing arrogance. “Bill Shorten must be getting cocky and taking his opinion poll lead for granted because he’s giving people more and more reasons to vote against him,” he says.

He also takes aim at the “hypocrisy” of Mr Shorten’s support for a republic plebiscite while opposing one on same-sex marriage. He argues that Labor’s republican push is an attempt to make political mileage by “exploiting grievances for votes”.

“This attack on the monarchy is just the latest instalment in the green-left’s war on our way of life that Shorten-Labor has largely made its own,” Mr Abbott says. “There’s same-sex marriage which, after this term of parliament, every Labor MP will be bound to support; there’s the assault on Christianity (such as the strictures against scripture classes) that’s most noticeable in Labor states (and) there’s the attack on the traditional family epitomised by the social engineering, gender fluidity Safe Schools program.”

Malcolm Turnbull, who led the case for an Australian republic in the late 1990s, has reaffirmed his support for a republic but argues it is unlikely to happen until after the Queen’s reign. Speaking in December, the Prime Minister — a co-founder and former chair of the ARM — said at the organisation’s 25th anniversary dinner that change would need to be brought about via an “advisory plebiscite”.