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TASK I. Give arguments for and against monarchy, use the following phrases:
TASK II. a) Match the verbs with their definitions, then paraphrase the sentences:
make up to support something or someone
put forward to give or leave to people who are younger or come later
back up to form (something) as a whole
die out to have existed since
date back to/from to cease to exist, disappear
pass down to offer, suggest (something as an idea) for consideration
b)Use the above verbs in the following sentences:
1) We need further facts... our statement.
2) A suitable answer has already been... by the chairman.
3) This style of music … ten years ago.
4) The custom has been … since the 18th century.
5) The custom … the time when men wore swords.
6) Different qualities … a person’s character
7) Contained in 12 books, the Code is one of four works that … what is now called the Corpus Juris Civilis.
8) If you are moved to anger by insults, you spread them abroad; if despised, they ….
9) Although the most Significant environmental crime statutes were passed in the 1970-1975, they … the late 19th century.
10) It is the Constitution’s “rootage in popular will” and the doctrine of judicial review to … this will that preserved the status of the Constitution as higher law.
11) A national government is keen to … responsibilities during hard times and Government passes powers and responsibilities to the sub-national level on the belated assumption that devolution means giving power, as well as responsibility, away.
12) Michael Detmold has … further arguments to show that judges necessarily have authority to invalidate statutes.
TASK III. Express the same in other words:
1) Given the strength of royal tradition in Britain it is unlikely that such ideas will be included in any party manifesto in the immediate future.
2) Some supporters of this form of government, known as "republicans", argue that, apart from being more democratic, it is also cheaper to run.
3) Critics of the monarchy say it is out of keeping with modern democratic principles.
TEXT 7. Referendum set to back the Queen of Australia*
Final poll suggests 47% will vote to retain the Queen as head of state, with 41 % supporting the proposed republic and 12% still undecided.
Christopher Zinn and Duncan Campbell in Sydney
There was almost the taste of victory in the sausage, bacon and eggs served up for the Australian supporters of a constitutional monarchy at the exclusive American Club in Sydney yesterday morning. In their final gathering before their compatriots file to the polling booths today, they clearly believed that they will not wake up tomorrow morning to a new republic.
The bright young hope of the monarchists, Julian Lesser, 23, told the breakfast that the republicans had only succeeded in dividing Australians: "It's time we told them we have one of the best constitutions in the world. It's time we told them you can buy the media, you can buy the celebrities, you can buy the politicians but you can't buy the Australian people."
This is the moment that Australian republicans had hoped would finally signal the Last Night of the Poms, the farewell of the "cultural cringe".
A few weeks ago it seemed that they had pulled it off and there was already speculation as to who might become the first president of Australia. Now the dream seems to have slipped through their fingers like the sand on Bondi beach.
The final opinion polls indicate that the Yes vote for a republic is trailing with 41% for and 47% against, with 12% undecided. It is these floaters amongst the 12.3m electorate on whom both sides are concentrating their final firepower.
The republicans' latest weapon is the US president, Bill Clinton. Footage of him toasting "the Queen of Australia" at a banquet in Canberra is being used in the Yes campaign's final television advert.
The republicans hope that this will reinforce their argument that there is international confusion about who is really their head of state. Tony Blair and Robin Cook have been quoted by Australia's former UN ambassador Richard Woolcott as saying that they think it "strange" that Australia is not a republic. The Guardian poll indicating that Britons now feel Australia should be a republic has also been much reported.
In final exhortations in the press, which is solidly in favour of a Yes vote, voters are being urged to take what is presented as possibly the last chance for a generation to bring in a republic. "Let us be forthright and confident in our choice," yesterday's Sydney Daily Telegraph said. The Australian, which like the Telegraph is owned by Rupert Murdoch, said: "To join the international legion of proudly independent states, let us vote Yes." It went on: "The key issue should be whether we want to express our independence by letting slip the final symbol of our historical development and appointing our own head of state, not one appointed... by bloodline."
Senior politicians have also weighed in with final rallying cries. The prime minister, John Howard, a supporter of the No campaign, said: "To suggest that we have got to vote Yes to be Australian is absurd."
One of his ministers, Tony Abbott, spoke of "the Crown which was with us at Gallipoli, the Crown which was with us at Kokoda [where Australian troops fought the Japanese in New Guinea in the second world war], the Crown which is with our soldiers in East Timor. Voting Yes means ripping the royal out of the Royal Australian Regiment, which is currently in East Timor."
For the Yes campaign, the leader of the opposition Labour party, Kirn Beazley, said: "The one consequence of a No vote on Saturday is that for the foreseeable future, and we mean by that a substantial period of time, [the Queen] will continue as our head of state." The federal treasurer, Peter Costello, the leading republican in the conservative coalition government, said: "My main fear is if on Saturday Australia votes No, the country which is overwhelmingly republican in settlement will be constitutionally a monarchy.”
He said he believed that Australians feel republican in their hearts and heads"
The secondary vote on a new preamble to the Constitution has all but been forgotten in the argument over the republic. The preamble which was partly composed by the only Aboriginal parliamentarian the Democrat senator Aden Ridgeway, recognises for the first time the role of Aborigines in the country. A poll yesterday showed that 40 per cent of the electorate has not read it and it is likely it could fail to pass out of confusion, although most voters, when told what it means, back it.
It is this confusion, coupled with a lack of apparent excitement about the issues, that has caused the republicans’ problems.
A visitor from outer space would barely be able to tell that a historic landmark in a country's future was on the eve of being decided.
Yesterday on Elizabeth Street in central Sydney, the only sign of the referendum was a bearded man carrying a placard that read "God vote No” to the general indifference of passers-by.
More than 200 years ago a ballad, about the convicts being transported from Britain to Botany Bay, cheerily recorded that “They go to an island to take special charge/ Much warmer than Britain and 10 times as large".
The temperature and the acreage remain the same. What strikes many as remarkable is that so many years later a British Queen is still, if only in name, in charge.
The republic at a glance
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