Australian leaders unite for split with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth

Most of Australia’s state leaders have signed a declaration calling for the country to become a republic.

“I believe Australians deserve to have a head of state who is Australian – someone who lives in our country and represents our values and belief”, Andrew Barr, chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, said, in a statement.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is a known supporter of the republic, pushing the cause in a failed 1999 referendum.

All but one of Australia’s premiers and chief ministers signed the document, in a move the Australian Republican Movement said points to “the dawn of a new republican age”.

This Australia Day, the Australian Republican Movement has quadruple the number of members as past year. “I thought it would be the ultimate act of respect to Queen Elizabeth if she presided over the transfer of Australia from a monarchy to a republic”.

Republican Movement Chairman Peter FitzSimons said that “all of Australia’s political leaders now support an Australian head of state”.

The fact that Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister shortly afterwards only lined those stars up even better, and that alignment has continued at astonishing pace since.

Though Australia was granted autonomy in 1901 and is free to self-govern, it is not a republic and remains a Commonwealth state under a quasi-rule by the British Monarchy. “Any self respecting independent country would aspire to select one of its own citizens as its head of state”, he said.

Mr Weatherill, however, said there had always been “an underlying sense of support for a republic” despite the 1999 referendum failing by 45 per cent to 55 per cent.

“‘…Or, really, we wait until the Queen dies, we slip out the back of Westminster Abbey here is the new King Charles coming up the steps, we publically humiliate him by saying, ‘we’ve had your mum for seventy years we’re not going to stay around for you for five minutes?”

Both are opposed by Liberal Party conservatives and Mr Turnbull would be inviting further internal trouble should he also rekindle the republic, moreover given Mr Abbott has just announced he will be staying in Parliament beyond the election.

Support for a republic has ebbed, with a Fairfax-Nielsen poll in 2014 finding that 51 percent of the 1,400 people surveyed favoured the status quo compared to 42 percent supporting a republic.

Monarchists, however, have rejected the declaration, arguing that it reflects the views of politicians rather than the majority of the population. “The choice of when we become a Republic, should be our choice”, he said.

Australia’s shift to a republic would also have a positive shift in the mindset of the people.

Mr Turnbull is a former head of the Australian Republican Movement.