Saving conservatives from their myths, fables and foibles can be a thankless task. However your correspondent Jay Nauss is a myth busters dream, so I will press on undaunted. He tells us. (21-12) that the Australian Constitution is a time honoured document.
The Australian Constitution is an Act of the British parliament. It represents little more than an accommodation between some colonial fiefdoms and British monarchy as to who would have what powers in the new Commonwealth of Australia.
A stream of Constitutional Decisions by the High Court since the Engineers Case 1923, demonstrates how unworkable the allocation of powers were and the merits of vesting as many as possible in the Federal Government. Seven constitutional amendments demonstrate how irrelevant the Constitution was and is, to existing and emerging needs.
That it was assented to by an electorate that had never been to school, hardly marks it as an enlightened document. We don’t need states and we don’t need monarchy. We need national government and powerful local authorities.
Manpower and organisation needed for the Second World War was impossible, because the federal government had no power to raise the necessary money. How clever was that Jay?
Like all conservatives, Jays myths keep him in chains as Rousseau would say. These myths were created by those who Jay most admires. A pretty trap.
John Bergin,
Armidale
