@ Aspley get rid of your feral cat , that was a protected Australian snake that it dragged in ! Stop mowing and stop listening to South Pacific Poms like David Smith waffling on about his love for feral Heads of State - we need an Australian Head of State at the top of our Constitutional arrangements .

Aspley are you really sure you're going back to "mowing" the grass...

And your point would be what, Sir David? This would have to be the most disappointing monarchist article I've seen in the last ten years, and there have been some real failures in that time. After ploughing through a weak and deceptive introduction consisting of one lot of paraphrasing after another, telling us what various republican sympathisers supposedly said way back when, I was waiting to get to the actual article. Except there isn't one. No addressing of any real issues whatsoever. And his "saddest case of gross misrepresentation in order to advance the republic" is merely an arcane argument between constitutional lawyers, containing no interest or relevance to anything really. Just like this article.

Ummm... Monarchy? In Australia? Isn't THAT the myth?

Monarchy/Christianity... Both just given lip service by government to keep people still living in the dark ages happy.

You have no hope of getting intelligent coments about republicism.
The other side say if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Have you ever tried to get a stick out of the mud after it has dried.
Monarcists dont know the word debate when it comes to republic.
It's all tooo hard.
It's ok for AU to be tied to dear old England.
Me i recon it's time AU had its own ID.

Damn, here I was hoping for a good opportunity to thrash the severely low quality of this article and everyone beats me to it.

Just thought I would repeat this closing statement by davrosz because it is so true;
"This is the laziest, shallowest, article since...well...since the last article written by David Flint, I guess."
I was actually thinking the exact same thing.
Surely in 10 years of looking at this very site, Mr Smith could have picked some actually relevant statements about, say, the implications of becoming a Republic, instead of some 11 year old remarks and possibly the odd joke by a few dingbats and enthusiasts who have likely since retired from the movement anyway. He was careful to avoid many of the other suggestions and implications other than the very pettiest points nobody even bothers arguing about.

It would be like the Euthanasia debate and focusing solely on the people that think this the beginning of Soylent Green and ignoring tougher points by people arguing legal implications.

Also Peter Piper, I'm sure you've said that same phrase before. But tell me, in light of recent events in parliament, define what "Broken" is, and how we'd get there by "fiddling with it" but not what has happened with our system since?
There is an interesting saying;
"One does not know their country, from what only their country knows".