Having promised not to raise the republic issue (that is a politicians’ republic) in the first term, this emerged as the principal item on the agenda of the 2020 Summit held in April 2008 by the Rudd government.Attendance at the Summit was rigged as if we were living in some tinpot dictatorship, and it was then so mismanaged that a leading republican likened it to a Mad Hatters Tea Party. The governance panel of 100 produced one vote opposed to a republic and one abstention. The one person who voted for the retention of the constitutional monarchy, Senator George Brandis, was widely but wrongly  assumed to be a republican.According to republican one leading republican delegate, it was so mismanaged it became a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Then the resolutions passed by the governance panel and approved at the plenary session called for the termination of constitutional links with the UK, links which were ended in 1986.The record was subsequently changed without explanation to amend the resolutions adopted. The Summit was an expensive public embarrassment.