Your genial correspondent Hugh Piper (Letters, January 25) offers Conventions as a fresh approach to the Constitution and its interpretation. We are already misruled by conventions Hugh.
We had a constitutional decision based on convention in the John Kerr adventure into Fascism. The imagined convention was so widely rejected that Kerr hid for a month on the Great Barrier Reef after he dismissed Whitlam
There is a crusty old rule in Law which says that powers, the exercise of which have important consequences, must be expressly given by Statute. The destruction of a government enjoying a majority in the Lower House is an important consequence.
Hugh wants a new Constitution enacted to suit all interests. Here lies the nub of the problem Hugh, and it explains why Britian does not have a written Constitution. A fused church and state travels well in Iran, but what would the enlightened world say when they saw it in lights in a codified British Constitution. How could Pat and Paul continue to deny it? How would conservatives legitimate their vested interests and how would progressives get the numbers? Conservatives market their vested interests as the national interest, while progressives are left with the truth, a commodity often hidden in politics and seemingly of secondary value.
Hugh mentions Pat and Paul. They have guile aplenty. They just don’t get up early enough. They try to keep a colonial constitution because that is where their monarchy, their flag and their religion thrived. Equality could be a tad testing for them. They so like an advantage.
In the Post Colonial Republican era they will come face to face with equality. So they put the era off.
Hugh’s conventions wont work. Pat and Paul and I will have to do this the hard way. Undoing vested interests is hard work which is why Constitutions are hard work.
Monarchy is a perfect example of conservatives selling their vested interest as the national interest.
John Bergin
