Before having a Referendum - it needs to be
established whether a majority want a Republic.
and also what method to elect the President
(by the people or the Parliament). The reason a
Referendum failed the last time was that there
was not agreement on the method proposed for
the selection of the President.

I would suggest that we first have a plebiscite,
asking these two questions -1) Do we want a Republic.
2) Method of selection of the President.
And this could be followed by a Referendum.

Until those two questions are established having a
Referendum would be a waste of time and resources.

The last time around we had a Constitutional Convention made up of people elected by the general public and others appointed by governments state and federal. They considered both methods of electing the president and agreed overwhelmingly to put the Appointed President option to the referendum.

The problem was that enough of those who wanted an elected president were prepared to vote against a republic rather than for their less-preferred option that the 'Yes' case failed, rather dramatically. I was one who voted against a republic with an appointed president but would have voted for a republic with an elected president.

Just inserting another popular vote in the middle doesn't solve the issue. In the end, but whatever means, the people have to be asked one question.

The monarchists will always vote against the republic.
If the option is for an elected president, then a large number of those who want an appointed president will vote 'no'.
If the option is for an appointed president, then a large number of those who want an elected president will vote 'no'.

End result - the 'noes' have it.

The only way this changes is if there's a compelling and urgent need to change, rather than just a whim of the elite. Until then, its all whistling in the wind.

Foxy,

There are bigger issues to resolve than whether or not Australia should become a republic.

In fact, Australia is not even a nation-state. So who cares about being a republic when we can't even establish ourselves as a nation-state.

We were on the the road to being a nation-state with a strong nation building program until - you guessed it! - Australian Multiculturalism (aka the Great Asianization Period 1980-2020) came along and hit the idea of having a nation-state for six.

I see Scotty From Marketing was the 21st speaker at Biden's climate forum yesterday. Shows you what the big players think of Australia - which by the way is not even a nation-state.

This certainly is a complex issue on many fronts.

Points being raised are valid. I am grateful this
discussion has attracted so many.

Australia is certainly a State
because it has its own government and it has
sovereignty over its territories. There is a
common Australian identity but we're also a country
with considerable immigration from distinctive cultural
backgrounds. I am unsure whether our Australian identity
is strong enough to mask all of these backgrounds.

There is an
influential collective British identity which will undoubtedly
influence people's decisions whether or not they want to become
a Republic.

Mr O,

I've just found that according to the National
Museum of Australia:

"Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901,
when the British Parliament passed legislation
enabling the six Australian colonies to collectively
govern in their own right as the 'Commonwealth of
Australia.'

We're told it was " a remarkable political
accomplishment that had taken many years and several
referenda to achieve."