Philip,

What happened in 1975 was that the GG caused an election to be held at which the people expressed their approval of the GG's actions.

That's democracy at work.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between the role of the GG as currently occurs and the theoretic role an elected president might play. The powers conferred on the GG under the constitution are enormous but are not used because of convention and because the GG lacks legitimacy in terms of using its power. But let me give you a fore-taste of what the nation might look like under an elected president.

Assume Australia became a republic in 1999 with an elected president. The first few presidents were nice polite people who did the same role as the previous GG's.
But now its 2016 and Mr X-LaborPM is running against Kylie Minogue. Kylie's main promise it that she'll wear her 'Can't-Get-you-outta-my-head' dress (https://i.imgur.com/11V3jLS.jpg) at all public events and consequently she's forecast to get 103% of the male vote and agood portion of the transgender vote. She'll win easily. But wily Mr X-LaborPM has a trump card. He knows that the electorate is scared about a possible new GST. So he announces that if elected as president he will use his powers to refuse to sign any new tax into law. He has that power and can override any bill passed by parliament by just not signing it.

While the electorate really likes Kylie's dress they dislike the GST more and MR X-LaborPM gets elected. The parliament then passes the dreaded GST increase and gives it the president to formally sign it.

As per his promise and in accordance with the constitution the president refuses to sign the new act into law. The government tries to find a way to force its will through but there is no such power.

/cont

/cont
Now the new president is feeling pretty strong and decides that the majority of his supporters would like to allow asylum seekers already here to be not forced to go back to PacificSolution Island. So he calls in the ImmigrationMinister and tells him to make it so. The minister refuses such a request. So the president uses his constitutional power to sack the ministerInstead he appoints Ms RefugeeAdvocate to the position with the express purpose of changing the regulations to allow them to stay. Even though Ms RefugeeAdvocate isn't a MP, she is allowed to sit as minister for 3 months - more than enough time to make the required changes. Even if the changes aren't finalised after 3 months, Mr President simply appoints Mr RefugeeLawyer to the role and continues to implement the desired changes.

All the while the government is trying to work out how to regain control of policy making. Finally they decide that the President needs to be sacked via a parliamentary vote. But before that can happen the president simply refuses to allow parliament to sit and then prorogues the House causing new elections. Even if those election don't go exactly the way he wants, it'll be another 5 months before parliament sits again and meanwhile he continues to rule by decree. And so on and so on....

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With an elected president, whether by the people or by parliament, the above won't happen in the first generation after a republic is declared. But it will happen. The power is there and its inevitable that it will be eventually used.

So, if you want a republic, the options are:

* be prepared to have a new system of government where the president has unfettered power for his term or

* remove all his powers as part of the referendum. But that requires re-writing about 10% of the constitution - good luck getting that through.

If the proposed Republic makes so little difference, then we should not have to continue wasting time and effort protecting our constitutional monarchy from the nonsense of the republican movement.
Surely the republicans can find something useful to do with their pointless lives.
I still remember the feeling of relief when Googh was sacked, and have been a staunch supporter of our constitutional monarchy ever since.