Good piece. But I suspect the reason we are not already a republic is not because the majority doesn't want one, but because we can't agree on the details.

This is a critical impasse, of course, because we still need to define the seat (or seats) of real power in the future. And power, or its absence, is a far greater force today than ever before, in our increasingly politician-driven culture.

If our leaders demonstrated a higher level of disinterest in power for its own sake, a greater sense of duty, obligation and responsibility to the Australian population at large, and actively subordinated their personal ambitions in favour of the common good, maybe we could trust them more with the changes necessary to form a properly functioning democratic republic.

And pigs may fly.

Ah an Australian Republic One of the great - "Who Cares" questions of modern times -

The benefits of a head of state who lives overseas is we don't need to spend up on "maintaining the trappings"

Republic or Monarchy - it is as significant a decision concerning pink versus blue toilet paper - a topic close to the heart of the obsessive and irrelevant to the rational.

It's far from clear that the Australian people have a consistent view on what kind of republic they want to be. The 1999 referendum offered a choice between keeping the monarchy, and having a government appointed head of state. Apparently, the people preferred the monarchy.

But would the result have been any different if the choice had been between a monarchy and an elected president. Not everyone thinks the latter course is desirable either. I do not favour a system where we could end up with a soapy star as president.

Some proponents of a republic suggest we first vote on whether to have a republic, and then vote on what sort it should be. That's a smoke and mirrors trick to get a republic by constructing a false dichotomy. I think many people would feel badly mislead at the end of that proceess.

The closest to a democratic solution would be a preference vote across the three options. However, to do that we'd first have to change the constitution to allow referenda to be expressed in that form.

Maybe it's all too hard, and not worth doing anyway. Would the change affect my quality of life at all?

I doubt it.

Sylvia.

If we changed to a republic we would lose one of our main means of measuring the moral worth of our federal politicians, the oath of allegiance. This oath is written into the Constitution, and cannot be removed without a vote of the people. When one of our hard-core republicans gets up in Parliament, as they did in February, and swears on oath they they will be faithful, and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, we can make a judgement, as to whether he is being truthful and sincere, or whether he is lying in his teeth. Why is it so difficult for the political elites in this country to realise how the people feel about politicians? How wonderful it is to kick the establishment in the teeth with a "NO" vote in a referendum; how lucky we are that Switzerland is the only other country where the text of the Constitution can only be changed by the people.

Only a complete moron (and here please I am not referring to the author at all) could possibly believe we are still in thrall to England, in fact the poms are probably 'enthralled' by us, given how many want to live here..

Using an analogy between written independence and a medals tally only serves to emphasise how separate we really are already from Great Britain. We love sport, we love beer and we love this country -who needs to go on and on about it? There are so many more vital things to worry about today. Formal separation in the form of a republic will no doubt come soon enough as the paperwork slowly catches up with what we know already.

And anyway, I dislike constant battering of the poms, just because some of us want to move out of home, doesn't mean we have to be rude to our parents when we do it. We have a lot to thank them for, not the least for the westminster system, a self-deprecating sense of humour, scepticism of politicians, the cricket (bloody hell, they beat us this week!!@#$%)and of course, sending us out here in the first place - good one.

I liked how it was put during (not at) the republican convention a few years ago...

Head of State...Whaddya want, a figurehead or dick head?

Can someone tell me why we can't have a group of people as head of state? I once read that Fiji has an indigenous council which acts as head of state. I think we could do something like that in Australia. What a great way to reconcile with Australia's Indigenous people and honour all of our nation's true beginnings? These representatives (say ten) could do the usual rounds and they could spread the load across the nation. Don't go and get all stroppy on me all you monarchists - my Dad had the flag draped over his coffin - just throwing ideas into the wind. To be truly reconcillitory we need to include the monarchists. I think you are wrong to exclude the monarchy Peter. I think the stable example that monarchy can offer can be of great benefit to our youth. Besides republics still kind of scare the crap out of me. Perhaps our monarch just needs to gracefully hand over her responsibilities to an Indigenous council and give the new heads of state her blessings. Any other ideas.