HOW DOES THE CONSTITUTION HAVE TO BE AMENDED FOR AUSTRALIA TO BECOME A REPUBLIC?
It is necessary to amend the Constitution (which, of course, requires the agreement of the people in a referendum) in order to establish a republic in Australia. Changes to the Constitution for this purpose would involve provisions: • terminating the Queen’s role as head of state and establishing a new office of head of state if it is decided to create one; • dealing with appointment and removal of the new head of state and other matters relevant to the new office; • dealing with the powers of the new head of state; • dealing with the position of the States and their links with the Crown; and • making consequential changes, mostly removing the references to the Queen and replacing the references to the Governor-General with references to the new head of state, and inserting transitional provisions. The important legal issues considered by the Committee in this regard are as follows: • whether the method of amending the Constitution provided in section 128 (i.e. a popular referendum req
