An editorial in The Age (still published ,mind you, under a Coat of Arms based on the Royal Arms) calling for an instant republic elicited this response from ACM:
"Sir,
In your continuing campaign to force a republic onto a totally disinterested nation your editorial , “Let’s not wait for King Charles- The republic matters now”, 19 March 2006, really takes the cake. You claim opinion polls regularly show that a majority of Australians want a republic. Surely you must have seen the latest Newspoll, which shows support has fallen to 46%.
And not content with the fact that in the 1999 referendum you ,with almost all of the media and most of the politicians, campaigned for the republic, you now choose to try to tell the monarchists how they should have conducted their campaign! We did not take your instructions then, and we have no intention of taking them the next time, if in fact there is one. The qualities of The Queen were not in issue then, so why should we have campaigned about them? As our Founders always intended, debate focused on the terms of the changes you wanted.
You repeat the tired excuse for your landslide loss on the fiction that John Howard exploited divisions among the republicans. Were you at the Convention you would have realized that the republicans were already so divided that a walkout was avoided, paradoxically, only through the mediation of Lloyd Waddy. And Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Craven predict even greater divisions if the “direct elect” model is submitted to the people
You refer to aspects of the law of succession with which you do not agree, but neither you, nor the politicians who constantly complain about this have ever done anything to change them. After all, under the Statute of Westminster , this is not just a matter for the British , it is a shared responsibility our Parliament shares
To the response to your mantra, “when do we want a republic?”, you should have an additional response :”But we haven’t the foggiest idea what sort of republic we want! "The reason for your sense of urgency is obvious. You must be aware that polling has consistently shown that support for a republic is weaker among the young than the "baby boomers". Far from being inevitable, a republic is highly unlikely now or in the future.
Yours etc"