On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 20:33:51 +1100, Skyring skyring@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