Fed: New republican push based on forgotten hero of constitution

AAP General News (Australia)
12-08-1999
Fed: New republican push based on forgotten hero of constitution

By Don Woolford

HOBART, Dec 8 AAP - A society commemorating the "real" author of the Australian Constitution
has been formed to help push the republican debate.

The Andrew Inglis Clark Society will try to engage grassroots Australians in constitutional
questions, one of its founders, professor Peter Botsman, said today.

He was launching his book The Great Constitutional Swindle, published by Pluto Press,
which argues that Clark was the principal author of the Constitution.

Professor Botsman, the former head of the Evatt Foundation, is professor of public
policy at the University of Queensland and executive director of the think-tank the Brisbane
Institute.

His book is an anti-triumphalist view of the original constitutional process.

He sees the Constitution as a swindle at three levels - Clark was swindled out of his
rightful place in history, the vote accepting it was highly undemocratic, and a small
minority locked it into concrete.

This helps explain, he said, why the republic referendum and many earlier ones failed.

The people see it as a document belonging to jurists and politicians rather than to them.

Clark, a Hobart lawyer and politician who remains well-known in his home state through
the Hare-Clark voting system, has been recognised by historians as having played a significant
role in framing the Constitution, even if he is the only major figure in the process not
to have a Canberra suburb named after him.

Professor Botsman takes the story further, arguing that Samuel Griffith, universally
recognised as the chief author, could not possibly have done more than an editing job
on what was overwhelmingly Clark's document.

The editing was done over a brief period on the Lucinda, a Queensland government vessel,
during the 1891 constitutional convention.

Professor Botsman also made a close textual analysis of Clark's original draft (which
was found by the eminent historian Henry Reynold's father in 1958) and concluded that
88 sections of the Constitution, or 92 per cent of the whole, came from it.

"It was only because of Clark's comprehensive draft that Griffith was able to produce
a document so quickly," he said. "It was this that gave Griffith his glory."

Professor Botsman was scathing about the 1899 federation referendums.

He said only 422,788 people from a population of 3.6 million voted, while most of the
84 per cent who did not vote could not.

"In the last Queensland election Pauline Hanson obtained a higher proportion of the
vote than the vote that founded the nation," he said.

Among those who could not vote were women (except in South Australia), indigenous and
Asian peoples, and people with no adequate means of support or fixed address.

On the other hand, the ballot accommodated the elites, with most landed groups having
extra votes because of the property they owned. One Queenslander was known to be entitled
to more than 50 votes.

"The triumphal historians proclaimed that this ballot was extremely liberal for its
time, but so what?" professor Botsman said.

"If you want to build a nation then 11 per cent is not a consensus, it is not enough
to build the consciousness of the nation."

Professor Botsman said the Clark Society would hold forums around the country to try
to help ordinary people understand how the Constitution works and how it actually effects
them.

He said the forums would try to reach and involve ordinary people by being held in
outer suburbs and the country.

Professor Botsman, an ardent republican, said all royalties from the book will go to the society.

AAP dw/cjh

KEYWORD: REPUBLIC CLARK

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