Banjo Paterson,

You have successfully cracked the egg open on this matter and have written a magnificent piece, that is very well put together in terms of your last post.

I think what you have said explains this issue so well and your calm collective response, I would easily describe as the best response on this topic so far, as per this discussion.

You deserve an award of some type for that.

Well done.

The influence of royalty goes beyond the federal sphere with the necessity to maintain the office of Governor General, it also runs to the state level where state governors and their office have to be maintain at substantial public expense. In NSW alone it has been revealed that the cost of maintaining the former NSW governor, Marie Bashir, came in at a hefty $400,004 last financial year. Bashir's expenses easily outstripped the costs of maintaining former premiers Greiner and Carr at around $190,000 each.
The pro royalists point to the cost of change, I point to the cost of maintenance.

//The environment is right for us to finally emerge from the apron strings of our mother country.//

Why do we need a republic to do that? Couldn't it be achieved my establishing an Australian constitutional monarchy under the glorious leadership of King Leonard of Hutt (or whoever. It doesn't really matter as long as they're Australian and of good character.)? It's just when you look at democratic Western constitutional monarchies you see us and Canada and Norway and Scotland and lots of really awesome countries. And then when you look at democratic Western republics you see the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys and the hamburger-eating-invasion-monkeys and other rubbish countries and you are forced to ask yourself: is it really worth it? What if, god forbid, becoming a republic takes one step closer to emulating the septics? No thanks.

I'm not sure why it is the case, but you can't argue with the evidence: democratic constitutional monarchy seems to be a better system of Government than democratic republicanism. I believe the Scots were planning to install their own royals if enough people had voted yes for independence, which is just more evidence that they are the most brilliant people on Earth. We should try and emulate them and not the septics. I might also add that countries who call themselves democratic constitutional monarchies typically are, whereas when you have a country calling itself The Democratic Republic of Wherever they are always brutal dictatorships.

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Dear Nathan J,

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Thank you for your kind words. OLO is an interesting melting pot. It is quite unique and I sincerely hope Graham Young will be around for many years to come and in excellent health. He really does a great job.

I get so much out of our exchanges on the forum and it’s normal that I do my best to offer the best I can in return.

Btw, I just noticed that 2010 “Drum” article you posted on the republic as “a worthwhile investment” and shall read it with interest.

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Dear onthebeach,

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Thank you for that video of Peter FitzSimons and his wife in the garden of their beautiful home. I vaguely remember seeing an article about his book “Eureka” a few months back but did not realise who he was.

I just looked him up on Wikipedia and was surprised to learn that he is an ex-rugby union international, played with Brive in the south of France for 4 years and is now the chairman of ARM.

Certainly seems an interesting guy.

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Hi Banjo - nice to catch up with you...as usual you're posting such reasonable measured discourse. Hope life in France is still fabulous.

Peter Fitzsimons has reinvigorated the republic movement. He's quite an affable chap and that is helping the cause. As you would have recently discovered, he's the author of many books pertaining to Australian history - so he's not dissing our heritage at all...he's helped to collate it and turn the stories (about 27 book in all) into entertaining narratives enabling a whole generation to learn a lot that was previously only available in musty old books.

In fact he's got a new book out on Fromelles and Pozières...more history for us to jump into.

You might like this recent article he wrote - set in France and quite poignant:

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/a-tale-of-wallaby-legend-nick-farrjones-and-a-frenchwoman-20151014-gk9h4y.html

I wonder what would happen if Australia decided to become a republic but one or more of the Sovereign States that form the Commonwealth decided to remain monarchies?