The duties of the "Head of State" of the proposed republic would be to appoint Ministers of State including the Prime Minister, and to chair the Federal Executive Council.

He would be responsible to sign new laws into effect - the Prime Minister cannot make a single law.

He would be responsible to ensure that the government abides by the Constitution and to call elections as necessary.

He would represent Australia to foreign nations and:

He would be the Commander in Chief of the Defence Forces.

But these are exactly the duties of the present Governor-General!

We do not call him the "Head of State" because that is a republican term.

The Queen has no power or duties in Australia - even when she is present in Australia - except to appoint and dismiss the Governor -General.

Although the Queen appoints the Governor-General he is selected by the Prime Minister and is therefore always an Australian.

We therefore already have an Australian who carries out all the functions and duties of "Head of State".

One of the duties of the Governor-General is to ensure the government obeys the Constitution.

The Constitution requires that all money for government business must be raised with the authority of Parliament.

Whitlam was raising a huge loan - some say the biggest in history - from Russia and laundering it through the Middle East with rake offs for others on the way. The story is told in the book "The Anatomy of a Coup" researched and written by two Melbourne Age reporters.

The Governor-General dismissed Whitlam but did not retain the power but gave the people the choice at a new election. In the last analysis it was the people who dismissed Whitlam at the ballot box.

Under the Constitution (S58) the Governor-General has discretion to sign a new law or not to sign it or to send it back to Parliament for amendment.

This discretion relates to the Oaths the Queen took at her Coronation in 1953. Under these she undertook to rule justly, mercifully and in accordance with the Law of God as in the Bible.

The implications of the public acknowledgment of Almighty God as Sovereign are our best protection against tyranny. In particular it implies that government is under the law and is limited in what law it can make.

This discretion would be lost in the proposed republic where the President would be required to do just what he is told by the Prime Minister.

At present the Prime Minister cannot dismiss the Governor-General - He can only ask the Queen to dismiss him. The claim is made that if Whitlam had asked the Queen to dismiss Sir John Kerr she would have had to do so immediately.

This is an untried, unwarranted assumption. It has never happened in Australia. It has however in Canada.

In Canada, I understand, the Prime Minister did once ask the Queen to dismiss the Governor-General. The Queen pointed out that if she did there would be a Constitutional crisis - as there would have been in Australia. It would have left the nation with a government who could not get supply in Parliament but with no mechanism to dismiss the government and resolve the crisis with fresh elections.

In the situation in Canada the Queen consulted with the Prime Minister and with the Governor-General and arranged an orderly hand over to a new Governor-General as the old one resigned.

In the proposed republic there would be a committee appointed by the Prime Minister to whom anyone may make nominations for President.

However the Prime Minister may select anyone he likes. It does not need to be anyone nominated. The leader of the Opposition must second the nomination and 2/3 of a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament must agree to the nomination.

But there is nothing to stop the Governor-General being selected in this way if we wished!

The most significant thing is that the Prime Minister may dismiss the President at any time without giving a reason. This has only to be ratified by a simple majority in the House of Representatives. But even if they do not ratify it the President remains sacked!

This is like giving the captain of the winning team in a game of football the power to dismiss the umpire at any time!

The effect of this would be to make the President (the umpire) a lackey of the Prime Minister.

What decent umpire (or president) would take on the job under those terms!

On the front page of the Australian of 11^th March this year, Professor Geoffrey Blainey warned that a republic means dictatorship. He said: "Hitler rode through the constitution. He became both prime minister and president. Does our new Constitution prevent this? I doubt it."

Sir David Smith, secretary to five Governor Generals, makes it very clear that Australia could not be more independent of United Kingdom than we are now. He is a man in the best position to know.

The Queen was crowned Queen of Australia just as much as she was of UK, Canada and New Zealand. She fulfils these different roles just as one person may be a director of several different companies without it making one company in any way subservient to another.

It does not in any way put us under UK.

It is interesting that the man at the forefront of the push for a republic is Malcolm Turnbull. Mr Turnbull is the local director of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest international banks, whose business is to arrange the take over by foreign and multinational corporations of Australian businesses. It makes the call for "independence" rather hollow!

Such people have stated they want a "Corporate Head". Is the push for a republic the ultimate "privatisation" of government?

We are told the flag will not be changed. But it is surely significant that many of the prominent people in the Australian Republican Movement have at some time been chairman or members of the Ausflag Committee whose stated aim is to change the flag.

The financial cost for Australia to change to a republic has been estimated as in excess of $500 million.

The political cost is even higher:

We would loose the checks and balances to totalitarian power.

The rigid party system would become entrenched in our Constitution

We would lose the Christian link to the foundations of our laws and government

What would be the benefit? I challenge anyone to tell me of one single benefit to the people of Australia by becoming a republic. Would there be one more job? Would anyone in Australia be better off?

We are also to be asked to vote on whether we want a Preamble added to our Constitution. In fact this would be added one page from the END of the Constitution. Perhaps it should be called the "after" amble (or postscript).

It contains a number of vague value statements which all sound fairly harmless at first sight.

However Sir Harry Gibbs, retired Chief Justice of the High Court, warns that these vague value statements can be very dangerous.

We are told these will not be used to interpret the Constitution or law in Australia.

However Sir Harry Gibbs says from his experience on the High Court they WILL be used by the High Court and by the United Nations to find all sorts of unknown and unexpected things in the Constitution.

As an example he says the phrase: "Aborigines kinship with their lands" could be used to undermine or destroy our system of land title in unforseen ways.

Further any such interpretation of the Constitution cannot easily be altered by government.