An unfashionable monarchy?

According to Transparency International, in 2009, 64 per cent of countries that were perceived as being least corrupt were constitutional monarchies.

The Australian monarchy is cost effective. The monarch receives no remuneration from the Australian taxpayer for her services. Being domiciled in the United Kingdom means the capital and maintenance costs of the royal residences and the civil list are met by the British taxpayer.

The vice-regals, who in the monarch's absence, act as heads of state federally and in the six sovereign states and abroad from 1971, accumulate a modest bill, which amounts to much less than is accrued by their counterparts in federal republics such as the United States.

Across a range of indicators a hereditary constitutional monarchy fares better as a system of government than does electing a politician as president.

The referendum on the Republic Bill in 1999 was less about an earnest attempt to forge a more democratic and independent nation in time for the Centenary of Federation and more about increasing the power of politicians.

In reality it was a hastily cobbled together compromise, amended up until its last hours in parliament. It proposed replacing the Queen and the Governor-General - who is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the prime minister and serves at Her Majesty's pleasure, with the reserve powers of an English monarch - with a president, elected by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth parliament. The president would be instantly dismissible by the prime minister without reason, without notice and without appeal. The president would also be bound by a prescribed constitutional obligation to act on ministerial advice, which was not foreshadowed at the constitutional convention which drafted the amendment, even if the advice tendered was illegal, improper or foolish.

Labelled by its detractors as the "politicians’ republic", it would have been the only one in the world without an impeachment process for the president: it divided anti-monarchist opinion ending in defeat by 54.83 per cent in the popular vote and 6-0 in the states. Such was the enthusiasm of academics and journalists and the political elite for the change, visiting media expert Lord Deedes wrote in the London Times, November 8,1999: "I have rarely attended elections in any country, certainly not a democratic one, in which the newspapers have displayed more shameless bias. One and all, they determined that Australians should have a republic and they used every device towards that end."

The monarchy is Australia's oldest institution, planted when the Union Flag was raised on Possession Island on August 22, 1770 and the east coast declared British territory by Lt. James Cook, RN, which facilitated the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The symbolism reminds Australians that for better, worse or indifferent as a result of European civilisation arriving on these islands, in less than 200 years there was a modern, western nation established here. The monarchy is as Australian as the English language or cricket. The monarch is not a foreigner, but rather a non-resident - a professional, globe trotting sovereign - for a society which enjoys its existence in a borderless world.

Remaining a Commonwealth Realm is the best safeguard for the host culture. The price of any further votes on republicanism must be constitutional protection of the national language, holiday and flag as part of the proposed amendment, or as a simultaneous question.

As the Foundation of Australia took place without the consent of the inhabitants of the time, the view has been advanced there is the need to re-negotiate the nation as a "reconciled republic". However, it is the case that modern Aboriginal people have generally approved of the demographic changes that have occurred since British settlement by marrying the heirs and successors of the colonial population and more recent arrivals and their progeny in large numbers.

The proportion of Aboriginal adults married (de facto or de jure) to non-Aboriginal spouses was 69 per cent according to the 2001 census, up from 46 per cent in 1986. The census figures show there were more intermixed Aboriginal couples in capital cities: 87 per cent in 2001 compared to 60 per cent in rural and regional Australia.

When Captain Arthur Phillip stepped ashore at Sydney Cove, most authorities place the Aboriginal population of Australia at between 250,000 and 300,000. The last accurate census on the number of full blooded Aborigines was in 1961; today the number may be no more than 30,000 out of a total "Indigenous" population of 517,200.