The Muddle-headed Republic

This timely polemic asks some big questions about the proposed Australian republic. They are mostly questions of history. What does the republic, what does the monarchy, make of the Australian experience? In other words, how do they use - how do they fail to use - the long, collective memory of the Australian people - a memory, Atkinson argues, that is steeped in monarchy? Atkinson argues that the facts about Australia's enduring attachment to the idea of monarchy are more complicated than the New Republicans, and the Prime Minister's Republic Advisory Committee would have us believe.