The indispensable crown.(The Constitution)(Australia)

THE QUEEN, who has reigned for more than one half of the life of the Commonwealth of Australia, seems to be respected, if not admired, even by those who would remove her. The reaction in Melbourne at the Opening Ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, when the 80,000 or so present joined with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in singing not only "Happy Birthday", but in standing to sing the few bars of the Royal Anthem the censorious organisers permitted, is testimony to that.

What is surprising is that it is only now that many in the media and in politics are beginning to understand that the Queen means what she says and clearly believes that an oath should be honoured. She has always kept to the promise to serve which she made when she came of age, and which she repeated when she was crowned and anointed. An abdication merely because of age was always out of the question and never contemplated--except in media speculation.

Unusually in this age, she is a woman of strong religious faith which she does not hide. In her Christmas broadcast in 2000, she declared: "For me the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life."

While her service as Queen has been impeccable, her place in the Australian constitutional system remains under challenge, but probably not to the degree the republican media claim and indeed crave. The Newspoll taken for the Australian in January 2006 indicated that support for some undefined republic has fallen to 46 per cent, with those strongly in favour down to 27 per cent.

It is likely that a good proportion of even the strongly-in-favour would, in a referendum, vote against any specific republican model. The reason is that in a contested referendum in Australia the people do not vote merely on a question, as in an opinion poll. The referendum is not a plebiscite, a process easily open to abuse. The decision to conduct an opinion poll on any subject is an indication of the interest of those commissioning the poll and not necessarily of those surveyed.

Indeed, it is likely that the rank-and-file Australian is probably not greatly interested in this form of constitutional change. For this we have the testimony of none other than the former leader of the republican movement, Mr Malcolm Turnbull. During the 1999 referendum campaign, he lamented that at precisely the time when interest should have been at its highest because of the approach of the centenary of Federation, the new century and the millennium, and the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, as well as the holding of the referendum itself, interest remained low. He made this telling admission in his diary, just four months out from the referendum: "We have Buckley's chance of winning. Nobody's interested."

Polling indicates that support for republicanism is strongest among the middle-aged. This contradicts a common assumption among republicans that change to a republic is only a matter of waiting until the present older generations disappear. The fact is that polling indicates that support for republicanism is lower not only among the old but also among the young. A regular youth survey for the West Australian taken in 2006 reported that support for a republic among those aged 18 to 30 has declined over the last two years from 53 per cent to 38 per cent.