Ministry of Secrets

[Music] Hello and welcome to Secondary Rules for the weekend of Saturday the 20th of August, the Ministry of Secrets edition. I'm Joshua Nioh, I'm Ryan Gosh and I'm also secretly Joshua Nioh. We are brought to you as always by the A&U Law School with new episodes out every Saturday. Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. So, as in each episode of Secondary Rules, we pick something from my legal theory class this week and something from Ryan's public law class this week and we bounce between them to see what we can learn from each other about law and maybe about the world beyond the law. And don't forget you can find some links for further readings in our show notes. That's right, there will be lots in the show notes today in particular. Thanks to everyone who's been in touch giving us feedback on the show and the several listeners who are apparently keen for this to turn into a Lion King fan podcast. We'll work on that in season two maybe. Let's get started today. This week in our first segment we'll look at Rousseau and think about Rousseau. And then after the break in our second segment we were going to talk about Parliamentary sovereignty this week but Scott Morrison had some other ideas. So we will think about secret ministers after the break. But first let's get rolling with Rousseau. Now Joshua we read a bit of Rousseau for this week and we'll put a link in the show notes to some relevant passages for listeners to have a look at. I found this hard going. I don't know if it was because it was translated. It was more recent than some of the things we've been reading for the podcast, but I found it hard going. So it is a difficult text that perhaps you can use this show now to try to unpack what Rousseau was trying to do. I've not released for me, let alone our listeners. Because I mean, you go, Joshua. So if I can educate you on Rousseau, I'm sure I'll listen. We'll be in good position to understand Rousseau. You stand in for the listeners. You do your best. So if we think about it this week, this week last week we did a bit of a thought experiment. In fact, we met the thought experiment. We encountered the thought experiment. And Hobbes talked to us about his state of nature, the notion that if you imagine a situation where you don't have a government, you don't have state, you don't have law, what would that be like? And he talked about the constant fear of being competed with, of being killed, of having your things taken away from you in the absence of government law or the state. And he said that life in that context would be nasty, brutish, and short. We thought about Hobbes, we talked about him last week. Does Rousseau give us another way to think about that state of nature, that period before law of the government and the state? Yes, Rousseau gives us a good example of how to do internal critique. That is, Rousseau accepts the thought experiment. That is actually quite difficult to do, to take another person's thought experiment and work with it and show how within that thought experiment that Hobbes came up with, there are internal contradictions and how the theory that comes out of it does not work. As opposed to coming up with a different thought experiment. So he's the same thought experiment we are dealing with, imagine, nor state, nor government, nor law. And did was Rousseau explicitly responding to Hobbes, he was aware of and was responding to Hobbes, always he just responding to a similar sort of idea. He was responding directly to Hobbes, named and shamed. I should have read it more closely clearly. So what his critique, what does he think Hobbes missed? What does Rousseau say that Hobbes didn't? So he says, let's begin by imagining now we are in the state of nature and Hobbes thinks that we will kill each other in the state of nature. We will kill each other in our sleep and take each other's stuff and compete it ruthlessly and endlessly and endlessly. Correct, so let's start with the first assertion that we will kill each other. Rousseau says, but why do we think that? Look at animals in the wild, animals are in the state of nature. We don't see animals killing each other. I have watched a lot of cat videos on YouTube. I can't imagine cats killing one another, let alone in their sleep. Well, we shouldn't try to biology or zoology or whatever it would be. I mean animals could like eat each other, but that's not the point. They eat the members of the same species. They eat members of other species. I'll take your word for it. I only eat members of other species. I don't eat members of my species. What do we do with that observation? What does Rousseau do with that? He begins to loosen that preconception that we will be nasty and brutish instead of nature. We can now begin to imagine what else my hops got gotten wrong. One of it is the fact that we will kill each other and we look at other animals that are in the state of nature. They don't seem to be killing members of the same species in a way that hops imagines we would do. Not only in absence of killing, but they might cooperate with each other, they might look after each other. This sort of thing. Correct. And the second assertion hops makes is that there will be endless competition for resources in the state of nature. And Rousseau says, well, that's not quite right. Let's not imagine we are in this state of nature. And I really like to eat rabbits. I will go out and hunt for rabbits. It doesn't seem to make sense to accumulate rabbits. If I hunt 50 rabbits and I accumulate a horde rabbits, now I bring back 50 dead rabbits. That is accumulation, right? Competition for resources. I go out into the wild. I take resources from nature and in Rousseau's view, we will want to accumulate more than my neighbor and hunt more and more rabbits. The problem with that is what do I do with 50 dead rabbits? There is a clip for the social media. What do I do with 50 dead rabbits? There is a point of diminishing returns. Is that what you are saying? There is even a bigger problem than the point of diminishing return. It is that in the state of nature there is no refrigerator. The 50 dead rabbits would rot. Right? I would have 50 stinking rotting rabbits. Oh, right, you make the point. There may be children listening to us. What's the significance of this? Because then we are obliged to share it or we have no choice but to share it. We will only take what we need for the day. When I go out to hunt, I just hunt for what I need for that day. Because any more will rot. Even if I don't need to be morally virtuous, I just need to be self-interested. There is no point in me taking more than what I need for that day. And I am just even on a purely self-interested view of things. So, this desire of accumulation resources, I do not know where Hobbes got it from. It's clear we will not occur in the state of nature. And I do not want to have rotting corpses. -Rabbit corpses. -Sure. At home, what led to this desire for accumulation? It is not natural, it is a result of human invention. So, Russo concedes, or maybe it is not a concession, but Russo acknowledges that today, after the state of nature, there is competition. People do want things from other people that they do want to accumulate things, maybe if they accumulate for its own sake. But that is not necessarily a feature of the state of nature. That's right. Now, then he investigates, how did this greed, this desire to accumulate a rise? It would arise when we can store the day rabbits, when we have storage facility. Now, then, there is a reason to accumulate. But there is even another more groundbreaking invention, social invention, which leads straight to this desire for accumulation. It's going to be lower, isn't it, Joshua? We'll get that. But there is another more important invention, which allows for limitless accumulation, where we can just accumulate and accumulate and accumulate, we don't have to worry about storing, about space, about refrigeration. The sky is the limit. Money. Exactly, right? Money. Such a brilliant invention. Money allows me to accumulate. I don't have to worry about it, spoiling. I can convert your dead rabbits into cash. Into cash, exactly. And cash. I can have as much money as possible. And I really love money. Don't you love money? Maybe not as much as you. And money is just a number on my NAP app. Yes. It doesn't take up space. Right? I could have infinity. Okay, so if we link that to law, or if we think about law, law facilitates the existence of money and facilitates trust in money presumably. state facilitates money and trust in money in an organized way. I mean, we can think about cryptocurrency and the like. Currency isn't. As a store of value outside and beyond the state, but it's going to be easier with a state and law and governance around it. Is that part of our thing? Correct. And that all come with society that use that hops identifies are the result of so-called civilization. They are the result of social inventions. So we invented and things, money, law and storage facilities. All that then led to greed, accumulation, wealth. That is not natural. None of that is natural. So hops got it wrong. Hops imagined that in the state of nature, we will have all this social sickness that only society brings. Even the desire to kill. The murderous instincts that we see today, do-all-was-aluming trap of nuclear war, resources, that's all society. That's not natural. And so for Hobbes, law of the state, governance was part of the solution for residing. It's part of the problem where it's causing the problems in the first place. It's causing the problem. And there is a sense in which the natural condition is a pristine condition, is paradise. And we have fallen out of that pristine condition. Yeah, so how much is Rousseau thinking about the Garden of Eden and the biblical ideas and the Christian ideas that we spoke about a few weeks back? I think very much so. And he imagines that we start off in paradise, in a place where there is a kind of natural freedom where we roam around freely in nature. Society, it's the result of the fall. Now we are constrained by society and hence its famous line. Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. The chains are social chains. Even the family-- and this is quite a revolutionary idea-- even the family is a social invention that constrains us. Because there was a view that the family is the most natural form of social organization. If there is anything natural in our mode of relation, it is in the family. And Rousseau challenges that too. So he says, if you look at how animals interact, they don't have partners and families for life that come together, they're made, and they go on their separate ways, after caring for the young for a-- But I think we might have some science student and homelessness who would query where Rousseau's description of the animal psychology or animal sociologies accurate in the 25th century, as it was in the 17th century. Oh, no. Ice cycle to work every day. Yes. Around the lake. I have observed ducks and ducklings on my cycle. Well, you're practically a scientist. And I'm a particular scientist. I'm a minzological observation. And this ducks and ducklings on my right to work. It seems that the parent duck cares for the duckling for a short period of time until the duckling is able to fend for itself. Yes. After that, the duckling and the parent duck go on their separate ways. And I think, even if they were to bump into each other, a few months later, and Rousseau says this, no, we'll not recognize each other. And the lesson, the parent duck, will not know that this other grown duck is the offspring. The duck discussion is very fitting, given the logo for our podcast as well. But I mean, surely it's possible we might say to Rousseau that this is one of the ways in which human animals and other animals are different, even in the stage of nature. Oh, correct. So the difference Rousseau says, because we invented this social institution called the family, we lock two individuals together in a permanent long-term relationship and we tie children to their parents in a structure that we create. None of this is natural. Family law is not founded on any natural pattern of behavior. Yes, OK. So when we think about this vision of humans before the fall or this vision of humans in the state of nature, when we think about it as law, the state governance, creating problems, creating the world we have today, how do we compare that? Who's right for you, for this sort of view, and the Hobbesian view we met last week? Now, I think it really depends on my mood on any given day. OK. I think if we look within ourselves, we will see a nasty sight to ourselves, but we will also find a noble sight to ourselves. If we introspect, we sometimes feel that we are naturally good, we sometimes feel that we are naturally bad, and both Hobbes and Rousseau continue to dominate our imagination and our way of thinking about politics and philosophy, because it speaks to something deep-seated, very intuitive about how we view our natural selves. What a great note to end that first segment on Joshua. We'll be back thinking about the nasty and the noble after the break, and you can stay tuned for more rabbits and duck developments next week. We'll see you after the break. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back for anyone who has been under a rock this week. What is this secret minister's business all about? What did Scott Morrison do and how did we find out? Yeah, so it's been big news over the last week or so, and we are still learning more about this. So we're recording this segment on Friday lunch time, and for all we know, there may be more developments in this story between now and when you're listening to this podcast. But as far as we know at the moment, beginning in March 2020, so at the early stages, the pandemic, but continuing up until the recent election, Scott Morrison, who was the prime minister at the time, was also appointed to be a number of other ministers in the federal cabinet by the governor general. Those appointments weren't made public. They were kept secret until last weekend. And they initially came out because it seemed Scott Morrison or his people had been collaborating with some journalists who were writing a book. And the story came out that he'd been appointed to these roles through the initial book release, and then over time, the new prime minister up and easy did a review and discovered that there were a number of other such appointments. So this week, then, everyone has been trying to figure out what was happening, why it was happening, and how to make sense of the role of the prime minister, the role of the governor general, what the constitution has to say about this, what law has to say about this. And it's just a really weird situation, Joshua. I think that's been the overriding reaction, at least at first, is just that it was all so weird, but also problematic. And we can think about why it might be problematic. So when you say weird, you mean unusual, out of ordinary because on its face, there is nothing illegal here, right? I mean, the prime minister gave an advice to the governor general, the governor general, ex on the advice of the prime minister, and if the prime minister advises the governor general to appoint himself as the minister for health, the governor general ex on the advice, and appoints the prime minister as the joint minister for health. So what exactly is the problem? - Yeah, so let's unpack that a little bit. I think you asked why it was weird. I think the reaction of weirdness was linked to the fact that as far as we know, it hadn't been done before. It was unique in the way that this was done, in the way it was kept secret. I think people thought it was weird because it wasn't quite clear and still the former prime minister hasn't quite, he's offered a number of explanations, but haven't quite explained why it was done and why it was done in this particular way. And some journalists have done a bit of work in showing how various explanations, so intention with one another, if not outright contradictory. So there is all sorts of weirdness here, but a come to your point about, was it legal, I think you asked? As far as we can know at this stage, and I'll come to why I'm putting that caveat on and in a set, there isn't a legal problem narrowly defined. There isn't a suggestion that someone broke the law, that someone should go to jail, that someone should be hauled before a court. That's, I think, for the most part, not what we're really talking about. The caveat I put on it before, that's the Prime Minister asked the solicitor general, who, as many of all this as well know, is that the Commonwealth Government's top barrister, essentially, has asked the solicitor general to look into the legality of this whole thing, the solicitor general we expect will report back early next week, and we expect that will probably be made public. So we will get some sort of formal legal advice, legal opinion from the solicitor general next week, but look, I think, most of the commentary this week doesn't suggest there is a legal problem per say. There certainly seems to be a political problem. There might be a constitutional problem. We can talk about why we distinguish those things. But yeah, in legal terms, I think standing here at Friday lunchtime, there isn't much of a suggestion that the law was broken to put it in those terms. So the Prime Minister asked the Solicitor General and I ask you, so what does the Solicitor General know? You are the Associate Professor of Public Law here at the A&U. So you please a caveat on the legality/constitutionality. What might emerge in the process that might cast doubt on the legality/constitutionality of it all? Well, the caveat is simply that I have, I'm far less knowledgeable and far less experienced to kind Joshua than the Solicitor General. So I'm interested to see what he says. I think if this week has taught us anything, there are some things we don't know what we don't know to use Donald Rumsfeld's term. So I'm just being a little bit cautious. But yeah, as of today, no legal problem as far as we can. And the secrecy, if you like a political, so far as far as we know it, the secrecy is politically unsound, politically strange or weird to use your term. But there is no constitutional requirement, is there, to publicise ministerial appointments? Well, I'm not sure I would go that far. And this is where we get into the difference between a legal problem and potentially a constitutional problem. So as many of our listeners will know, our constitutional system, like many others, rests both on constitutional law, written in the constitution, written in legislation, enforceable in courts and the like, and constitutional conventions, constitutional conventions being this weird, I use that word again, unusual species of social rule that our system is embedded in built on expectations of responsible government, of ministerial responsibility, we can talk about those things. These aren't rules you can enforce in a court. They're not always necessarily written down anywhere. They're not rules that if you break it, you get thrown in jail or convicted of trees and or anything of the sort. They are nonetheless extremely important to our system works. And there are big questions I think this way about whether those conventions have been broken. So what exactly is the convention that might have been broken? Yeah, I can think of two candidate conventions that might have been broken. Okay, you fire away. First, the prime minister can't hold other ministerial jobs. Now that doesn't seem right to me. I mean, there are examples of prime minister holding other ministerial jobs. Second, that ministerial appointments have to be publicized. Is that the constitutional convention that have been broken? The second one? I would put it a little bit differently, but let's talk about both those things. The first point is you're right. It's not unusual for ministers to hold multiple portfolios. Tony Abbott, when he was the prime minister, infamously, was also the minister for women, for at least some of his time in the prime ministership. So it is not necessarily a problem to hold more than one ministry. It is unusual for someone to hold, to share a ministry with someone else without the shareer being aware that they were sharing the ministry. And we can talk about that. I think the real problem here, when we think about you mentioned secrecy, the real problem here is this. Our system is built on a system of responsible government. That means that ministers and the prime minister, and all the ministers, are accountable to the parliament. The parliament must be able to scrutinise them, ask them questions, hold them to account, demand they explain what they've done and why they've done it, demand that ministers account to the parliament for their administration of the department for decisions they've made or not made things they've done or omitted to do. It is impossible for the parliament to hold a minister to account, to hold a minister responsible if no one knows that that person actually is a minister. And that's a real difficulty. Responsible government is one of the bedrock features of our constitutional system. And the risk is here, you're thwarting it if you have people who are secretly ministers, because how can parliament know who it should be asking questions of? How can parliament know who it should be holding to account? And to put it another way now that we know that these secret ministers existed, if it happened again, how does parliament know whether or not there's more of them flying out there at any given time? So the constitutional convention that might have been broken here is potentially the convention that parliament has to be notified of who the relevant ministers are at any given point in time. Is that the convention? I mean, I would say that Ministers are responsible to Parliament. And therefore? No, no, no. But let's not get to the publicity of the secrecy in a sec. But I think before we even get to that, Ministers are responsible to Parliament. Right. Ministers are accountable to Parliament. And in this instance, we had a number of ministerial appointments in which that minister was not responsible or accountable to Parliament could not be accountable to Parliament for the administration of those portfolios. And the ministers could not have, in this case, the prime minister holding multiple ministerial portfolios could not have been held to account for these other portfolios because Parliament did not even know that he was holding this other portfolio. That's right. Right. So that is a constitutional convention. It is not qualified. It is not. It has not been turned into law. That's right. So how might we turn a constitutional convention such as this into law? Yes. So we have various examples in Australia and around the world where things that were constitutional conventions get turned into law. We could write them into our constitution. We did that in 1977. There was a constitutional convention about the appointment of senators to replace senators who passed away and things like that. So we put it into the constitution in order to turn it into law. And after that, it's not a convention anymore. It's law. In the United States, there was a convention that President has only run for two terms as president, FDR, broke that convention, ran and was elected four times. After he passed away, they then changed the constitution to put a term under the two. So we can easily do that. And I think various people this week, and we'll put some links in the show notes to some suggestions, have made suggestions for hopefully relatively easy changes to law that the Parliament should consider to avoid some of these problems in the future. Not necessarily the sharing of ministries because as we've talked about that isn't necessarily a problem, but the secrecy around it, the lack of information around it, the thwarting of the any possibility that Parliament might be able to hold the ministers to account. Now counterfactually, if there indeed was a genuine emergency requiring the sudden exercise of Ministerial Power as Scott Morrison claimed, having it as constitution just gives that degree of flexibility in the case of a genuine emergency where secrecy might indeed be required. Yeah, so infernously to the former Prime Minister, he says that the pandemic was happening, things were pretty crazy. He wanted to, in American terms, we'd refer to it as continuity of government. He wanted to make sure that if decisions had to be made, there were backups in case someone got sick. Now that sort of reasoning is a little bit odd in various respects. Why would he be the only one who couldn't get sick? Why wasn't there a backup for him? Why weren't there a backup for the other ministers that didn't have secret ministers appointed to him? It was, the rationale I think needs a bit of tidying up. And then why did it need to be secret? But I think it is easy to imagine that in a genuine crisis, that the legislation could be written in such a way to allow for the appointment of additional backup ministers or whatever we would call them, and to allow there to be a short delay before the announcement. If you needed a short delay in time of invasion or insurrection or something like that, potentially we could think about that. But I think we're letting the tar wag the dog a little bit there. But keeping it as a convention doesn't immunize the prime minister or a former prime minister from criticism, right? The Scott Morrison is being heavily criticized at the moment. The division between convention and law is not that one can be, even is merely a convention, it doesn't mean that you're immune from being criticized. There are still political costs to bear. Absolutely. It keeps the flexibility in it. Yeah, and there are also benefits to constitutional convention. They're not bad. That's why we've kept them in so many respects over time. They allow for flexibility. They're not always vague or unclear either. Sometimes law is vague and unclear, and conventions are clear as Nick Barber at Oxford has written about in various other people. So they're not necessarily a problem. We don't need to scrub the constitutional textbooks of every convention. But in this case, we could make an easy legal change to say, whatever you do in terms of sharing ministries, whatever you do in terms of emergency, whatever you want to do in terms of backup ministries, you make it public, reasonably so in afterwards. Shall we switch now from the prime minister to the governor general? Yes, let's do that. Because you are a diehard and a died in the world, Republican. You're guilty, yes. And the governor general is a man just as representative in Australia. And the governor general had a part to play in all saga. What can you tell us about the role of the governor general? So the governor general signed off on the various appointments of Scott Morrison to these various ministries. There were five ministries. He did it in four batches, two in March, 2021, one April, 2021, one May, 2021. And the governor general signed off on them. We don't quite have complete knowledge of exactly what happened in the circumstances around that. It seems possible it was all done by email to the governor general's official secretary from the prime minister's department. possible that weren't meetings that's possible. there weren't conversations. The Governor General issued two statements this week. Never a great sign when you're issuing two statements on successive days of the sort of thing. But in the second statement, the Governor General said, when he did these appointments, he, quote, had no reason to believe that the appointments would not be communicated. That is to say, he had no reason to think they would be kept secret. And so this week, a lot of debate has centered around, well, what should the Governor General have done? And I think initially a lot of people thought the Governor General must have known they were secret. He must have been told they were secret. He must have been brought in on the plan. The Governor General says that wasn't the case. And at Friday lunchtime, that's the state of our knowledge. So let's take him out his word. I think the difficulty he faces is, he would be fine to say that he didn't know they'd be kept secret the first time, maybe even the second time. But the third and the fourth times? But even then, the Governor General must, by convention again, on the advice of the Prime Minister. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is where we get into good, useful territory. Because I think a lot of people have been saying that Governor General should have told Morrison, no, he should have turned him away and, and, or sacked him and these sort of things. When we want to, when we wish for an activist Governor General, we better be careful what we wish for. We get co-. We get John Kerr in 1975. And a lot of the same people who are criticizing the Governor General on that score this week, would certainly criticize John Kerr. But I think that misunderstands the Governor General's role a little bit because he's, it's not as though his only option is to say no Scott. He also has the option to warn the Prime Minister, to delay the Prime Minister, to encourage the Prime Minister to consult his Cabinet colleagues. And so I think there is a, there is a good school of thought that says, after the first time, maybe even after the second time, surely someone in the Governor General's office, maybe not the Governor General, maybe he was busy doing something, but someone in the Governor General's office might have kept track of those official documents he signed and whether they were published, might have kept track of political news, and seeing that these things weren't reported in the news when surely they would have been newsworthy, and surely the Governor General's office would know enough about politics to know that they would be newsworthy if the Prime Minister was being sworn into other ministries, and surely someone might have noticed after the first, second, third or fourth time. And at that point, the Governor General might be entitled to say, Prime Minister, can I warn you that this doesn't seem like a great idea? Can I suggest you consult your Cabinet colleagues? Can I suggest you go away for a week and think about it and come back and ask me again? All of which were options open to the Governor General? And, and I think to put it another way Joshua, if he didn't know, and if he and no one in his office were paying attention to the Government Gazette, and if he and no one in his office were paying attention to the political news and noticing big things left out of the political news, what are they doing over there? What is he spending his time doing? Even had he known that? Isn't his job to be above politics just as the Queen? So he, he is standing here in the same position as the Queen. I can't imagine the Queen in the UK going behind the Government's back and publicizing information. No, but no, no, that's not what I'm saying. The Queen and the Governor General is understood to have this power to advise, to consult, to warn. The Prime Minister? The Prime Minister. So it is entirely within the Government General's role as it is with the Queen's, to warn the Prime Minister that what they're doing may be unwise, might not be sensible. If Morrison was to have come back, if the Prime Minister was to have come back and said, yep, I thought about it. I really want to do it. I love this secret minister's stuff. Sign me up for a few more. Then we would get to the point where the Governor General, yes, would have to accept that advice and could not stand in the Prime Minister's way. But it is within the power of the Governor General to say, are you sure? Bring me some legal advice. Go away for another week and think about it. Can you assure me you've consulted with your Cabinet colleagues about this? Not necessarily even the ones who as ministries you're now sharing without them knowing, but just your other Cabinet colleagues. Have you talked to them about it? Go away, talk to them, come back in a week, and then I'll sign off on it if you tell me that. And that warning, it would be done in private, in a private meeting with the Prime Minister, right? You are not suggesting that the Governor General could publicize this warning. Correct. It would all be done potentially behind closed doors. There are some people who have called online this week for him to have held a press conference or published things himself and done these sort of things. I don't think that's within our traditional understanding of the role that you're suggesting. No, no, no. And I think when we wish for those things we could better be careful what we wish for, because again we end up with potentially sit John Kerr. Right, so your suggestion is a warning to the Prime Minister by the Governor General in a private meeting and as far as we know even that had not occurred? Yes, as far as we know that had not occurred and the Governor General's statement said he had no reason to think the appointments wouldn't be communicated, so that suggests the issue had an arisen. Scott Morrison refused to comment on the discussions between the Governor General and the Prime Minister. That's fair enough that he's a tradition that people don't just talk about it afterwards. But I think it is not, it would not be unexpected if over the next week a pressure grew on the Governor General and people asked, what are you doing over there? If you're not paying attention to the Gazette, that is to say the official documents which you sign, many a year, but which you sign, if you're not paying attention to political news and noticing what is and isn't reported and wondering what that might be. Then what's happening over at Yorlama? What's happening at Admiralty House? What's happening at these two? Very nice residences that the Australian taxpayer has pay for. If not keeping an eye on politics and keeping an eye on the official documents that we pay to sign. So Ryan, I'll give you a final minute to peddle your republic. Well, I think the irony perhaps is this. I think some people look at the events of the last week and say, wow, this really puts a spotlight on this job, this role, and might make people wary of a republic because they might be wary of the consequences of putting in someone in this position without the benevolent hand of the Queen on the person shoulder. I suspect it will in fact, it could tighten attention on the role and thinking about, well, what is the point of this Governor General Office and indeed what is the point of the monarchy in Australia? Could we do better? Could we design this differently? Crucially because almost any move to a republic would involve some writing down, legalizing or constitutionalizing of some of these conventions at least, which might give us all greater certainty and greater confidence in the exercise of those powers. So Ryan, we'll be sending this podcast at a solicited general. I mean, you have to do so. I don't think he needs my help. So secondary rules will be back the same time, same place next weekend. And next week we'll be talking about secondary rules and parliamentary sovereigns. Today's program was produced not less than 100 miles from Sydney by Jacko Byron and Tom Fiorin. Now thanks to the A&U Law School, as always. If you'd like to know more, don't forget to check out today's show notes. There's plenty on both of our topics that will be available there as links. Now theme music is by SoulShifters. If you like the show, please don't forget to follow or subscribe. And even leave us a rating as some of you have been doing wherever you get your podcasts. We are Joshua Neo and Ryan Goss. Thank you Josh. Thanks Ryan. See you all next week. [BLANK_AUDIO]