This is a book which deals with the current movement towards a Republic in Australia. Apart from sketching the contemporary political background in Australia it presents comparative material on Republics and their Presidents as well as about political systems which differ from the Westminster tradition.

Australia has been a federation for more than a hundred years, and an independent country for more than seventy. But its system of government is still based on political compromises thrashed out in the late nineteenth century. In particular, the division of power between national and state governments is dysfunctional, irrelevant to the twenty-first century, and it costs us many billions of dollars every year.