“Australia is in no requirement of a US-style presidency with its grandiosity and propensity to throw up individuals of the Donald Trump variety,” Mr Keating toldThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age. “Australia is safer and better with the diffuse and representative power structure it currently enjoys.”
Mr Keating said under the ARM’s proposal released on Wednesday,power would be “purloined to an individual,who alone would possess the popular mandate and with it,the primary political authority the mandate would bestow”.
He said a republic built upon the election of a president by a popular vote across the states would represent “a massive shift in the current model of power” and would “change forever the model of representative governance that Australia currently enjoys”.
“With the power of a popular mandate,a new president would render subordinate all other officers of state,including the current office of prime minister and that of the cabinet,” he said.
Mr Keating said he remained in favour an Australian head of state being appointed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Parliament - the model rejected by voters at the 1999 referendum.
Another former prime minister,Tony Abbott,a staunch monarchist and central figure in the 1999 “No” campaign,shared Mr Keating’s concerns about an elected head of state,saying such a person would be a rival to the prime minister while being unaccountable to the Parliament. “It’s a dud option at the worst possible time,” Mr Abbott said on Thursday.