To Malcolm Turnbull, the founder of ARM, the nation’s very ability to progress in any way whatsoever was being denied by the constitutional arrangements inherited from our less enlightened political predecessors of a century earlier.

“I believe that our development as a more patriotic, more independent nation is being retarded by the fact that we have a foreigner as our head of State,” he told the National Press Club in 1992.

QUEEN

“We may have a Queen of Australia, but we do not have an Australian Queen.”

Leaving aside the obvious joke that the thousands of Australian queens marching in the Sydney Mardi Gras every year were hardly having their independence retarded by the monarch, Turnbull was clearly deeply pessimistic.

The media agreed, and a seven-year campaign to alter our Constitution, and our direction as a nation, began.

Sport stars and entertainers, among others, were press ganged into the cause, and ordinary Australians endured a sustained and relentless onslaught about the need to finally stand up as our own sovereign nation.

The government, led by monarchist John Howard (but with many republicans in its midst) held an admirably amicable Constitutional Convention for 172 delegates in Canberra in 1998.

This convention resolved that, yes, Australia should become a republic, and the model that should be put to the people should essentially and simply swap the hereditary monarch in Britain with a local head of State appointed by two thirds of parliament.

A referendum was held the following year, costing $67m, the result of which was, much to the chagrin of the elites in the media and politics, a convincing rejection by the people, 55-45.

The only jurisdiction to vote in favour of it was ACT, at 63 per cent. This would be repeated in 2023, when the capital again bucked the national trend in the Aboriginal Voice referendum, voting 61 per cent in favour while the nation went 60-40 against.

This alone should cause enormous alarm among ordinary taxpayers.

The people who wield most of the power in the federal government – the people who control the bureaucracies regardless of the wishes of our elected representatives – routinely disagree with the citizenry over fundamental matters.

Be that as it may, it is curious that the republican movement has gone so deadly quiet.

URGENCY

Given the urgency of 30 years ago, you would think that the leading republicans of the 1990s, many of them still alive and vocal about a variety of issues, would remain alert to any opportunities to promote their cause and finally snatch those golden chalices of patriotism and freedom that were so desperately sought back in the day.

I say this because the argument in favour of a republic is better now than at any time in Australia’s entire history.

Without so much as an explanation to his loyal subjects, King Charles last week changed his role from “Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith” to “Supreme Governor of the Church of England [who] protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation”.

To put it more harshly and accurately, Charles is no longer the head of the long established and stable church but the cuck encouraging immigrants not to assimilate religiously, let alone culturally, into his realm.

As if the evidence that this multicultural fantasy is a dystopian nightmare wasn’t strong enough.

And, if you thought that this betrayal of the monarchy was just an aberration that will end when Charles, 77, soon vacates both the throne and this mortal coil, think again. William is just as bad.

This follows revelations that the royal family routinely covers up the most diabolical behaviour in order to ruthlessly protect its own interests.

IMPLICATED

In 2019, American journalist Amy Robach said her exposè of pedophile ring-leader Jeffrey Epstein had been kyboshed by the royal family because the exposè also heavily implicated Prince Andrew.

“The Palace found out that we had [Virginia Roberts’] allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways,” she said.

“We were so afraid that we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will. That also quashed the story.”

Andrew was subsequently stripped of his titles. Prince Harry, who has his own issues with a narcissistic wife, has also stepped away from royal duties.

These and other shenanigans should have been the final nails in the coffin for the monarchy in Australia, the moment when the republicans finally swooped in and claimed what they were denied in 1999.

But – crickets.

The reasons for this reticence are simple.

Firstly, the republican movement was never the unifying force they wanted us to think it was. Rather, it was more akin to the Irish equivalent, an opportunity for uppity iconoclasts to stick one up the establishment.