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Ten years after the republican referendum, it is Australia's constitutional monarchists who have the most cause for celebration. And celebrating they are, with lunches in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth to mark what they call "Affirmation Day". Republicans, meanwhile, are gathering on the forecourt of Parliament House in Canberra, to remind their fellow Australians that it is time to mend the nation's heart - a reference to Malcolm Turnbull's anguished rebuke on the night of the referendum to the then Prime Minister, John Howard, whose support for the monarchy was one of the reasons why the referendum failed.

Certainly, these have been fallow years for Australian republicans, and remain so now, even though the prime minister is an avowed republican and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, used to head up the Australian Republican Movement.

I've just finished reading a book on the subject by , who, among other things, examines one of the great paradoxes of the 1999 debate: that 88% of Australians told pollsters that they supported an Australian head of state while only 45.1% voted for one at the referendum. In , Patmore points the finger at a number of suspects: a wily Prime Minister, John Howard, who knew that the constitutional convention which preceded the referendum would pit republican against republican; a referendum question framed exquisitely to exploit divisions within the republican movement between those who wanted en elected president and those who wanted an appointed president; a No campaign that gained traction by arguing the Australia would get a "Politician's Republic"; the lack of bipartisanship and the difficulty of winning a referendum without the active support of the prime minister of the day.

Add to that the "status quo" argument, voiced most forcefully by John Howard, who believed that the referendum failed "because of the inherent unwillingness on the part of Australians to change something that they haven't been persuaded was no longer working".

But perhaps the overarching argument of Choosing a Republic is that the movement has failed to produce an irresistible and animating vision of a monarch-free Australia. "It was as if the proposal for an Australian head of state was put to the people without any resonance with a philosophy of republicanism," Patmore writes of 1999.

We've spoken before in this blog about the Elizabeth factor: how the popularity of the present monarch presents problems for the republicans. When bold rhetoric is required, her continued presence is perhaps one of the reasons why politicians like Rudd and Turnbull are so timid on the question. Republicans would argue that the popularity of the Queen needs to be decoupled from the uselessness of the institution, but that is the kind of abstraction which goes against the grain. It's a tough one: to divorce the principle from the personality. So for all his talk about accelerating the republican debate when he took over as prime minister, Kevin Rudd has mothballed the issue until at least his second term.

The survival of the monarchy in Australia is endlessly intriguing. From Gallipoli to the great betrayal in World War II, the Brits have not always treated Australia with much respect or consideration. And yet that has never fuelled any significant anti-British backlash, save for the odd sledge on the cricket field or a bit of flippant Pom-bashing in the bar. Equally, you would have logically thought that the character traits which many Australians hold dear, such as their laconic informality, lack of snobbery, anti-authoritarianism (though this is surely exaggerated) and egalitarianism, would have militated against the idea of hereditary privilege.

My sense is that so much cultural space in Australia is occupied by the British made or British influenced that the idea of a British head of state is not as incongruous as it might be. And then there's the demographic factor: the huge, if declining, proportion of Australians whose roots are in Britain.

I've written a longer piece on the whole question which has sparked a debate . You can read the full piece in full .

So over to you. Why did the referendum fail in 1999, and why this week was it the constitutional monarchists rather than the republicans who seemed in much more chipper mood as they look to the future?

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