Australian politicians are hardly global figures. So when Kevin Rudd spent five days in London in April 2008, it might have otherwise passed unnoticed by the British public. But, then, there is a rule about Australian politicians winning the attention of Britons: if all else fails, invoke the republic. Sure enough, the prime minister declared, just hours before an audience with the queen at Windsor Castle: ‘Once a republican, always a republican.’ Australia would, Rudd said, see in the coming year ‘an accelerating public debate’ about a republic. It was enough to gain Rudd some coverage in the British press, and excitable Tory monarchists took notice.

That accelerating public debate has not materialised, at least not yet. Apart from featuring in the Rudd government's 2020 Summit in 2008, where it garnered enthusiastic responses from the Summit's 1000 delegates, the republic remains off the national political agenda. For now, any questions about the republic have been deferred. There is a global recession to worry about first, and there has not yet been the requisite debate on how a second republic referendum process might proceed. But with the leaders on both sides of Australian politics avowed republicans – current opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was, as most readers would recall, the chair of the Australian Republican Movement during the failed 1999 referendum – it seems only a matter of time before the republic returns to our public debate.