On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 20:33:51 +1100, Skyring <skyring(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The two terms are not exclusive. Australia has a
republican form of
government where sovereignty resides in the people and executive power
is given to and exercised by elected and appointed officers, Howver,
the Queen has a highly visible symbolic role and has some remnant
functions, chief of which is the formal appointment of the
Governor-General.
I think that describing Australia in its present state as a 'republic'
would be highly confusing.
Australia and Canada (with which I'm more familiar) are constitutional
monarchies. They are not republics, at least not under any definition
of the term which would be commonly accepted here in Canada. The
movement in Canada to remove the queen and install a citizen as head
of state is called 'republicanism' (see e.g. [[Canadian
republicanism]]). I don't imagine things are too much different in
Australia.
All that said, I think this sort of technical discussion should
probably not be happening on the list. Leave such arguments over
semantics for talk pages.
Steve