The Queensland Legislative Council chamber has been gathering dust since 1922 – and now Premier Peter Beattie is considering constitutional amendments that Clerk of the Senate Harry Evans has described as “dangerous and unnecessary.”

Oddly enough, the issue hasn’t been covered in the Courier-Mail. Instead, the yarn has popped up in The Independent Monthly, a newspaper assembled by journalism students at the University of Queensland.

Beattie wants to amend Section 34 of the Queensland Constitution. It currently reads “Ministers hold office at the pleasure of the Governor who, in the exercise of the Governor’s power to appoint and dismiss the Ministers, is not subject to direction by any person and is not limited as to the Governor’s source of advice.”

The proposed wording unveiled last month reads: “Ministers hold office at the pleasure of the Governor who, in the exercise of the Governor’s power to appoint and dismiss the Ministers, must, in accordance with constitutional conventions, act on the advice of the Premier.”

There are already few checks and balances in the Queensland political system, with Premier Peter Beattie enjoying a healthy majority in the one house of parliament. Constitutional experts and political scientists fear the proposed amendment will hand more power to the executive branch of the government.

“The conventions of the constitutional arrangement known as responsible government contemplate that in some circumstances the representative of the Crown may properly reject the advice of a premier in order to preserve the integrity of the system,” Evans has told The Independent Monthly.

“The example which is usually given of the appropriate exercise of the reserve power of a governor is that of a premier who has lost his or her parliamentary majority, or lost the support of his or her party, and attempts to cling to power by advising the governor to prorogue the parliament or dissolve the lower house for a second election.

“There are, however, other circumstances in which the reserve power may legitimately be exercised.

“One of these is where a premier has lost the support of his or her party and advises the governor to dismiss some or all other ministers in an attempt to cling to power. This situation occurred in 1987 with Governor Sir Walter Campbell and Premier Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen.”

David Flint, the former University of Technology Sydney law school dean and head of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, has also weighed into the debate.

“The problem in Queensland is, as it stands, the state government can do as they please. This will be compounded if the reserved right of the governor is revoked with the proposed changes to Section 34 of Constitution of Queensland Act, 2001,” he says, with uncharacteristic succinctness.

Process and Queensland Labor have not always gone hand in hand.

“A referendum on the question of abolishing the Council (rather than reforming it) was held in 1917 was overwhelmingly defeated,” The Independent Monthly writes. “Not to be deterred, a few years later the Theodore Labor government took the opportunity in the absence of the Governor to appoint the Speaker of the House as Lieutenant Governor.

“He then appointed sufficient new members of the Council to ensure a Labor majority in the Upper House on the condition that they vote themselves out of existence.

“The ‘Suicide Squad’ did as it was bid and on March 23, 1922, and the Legislative Council ceased to exist.”