Australia 'must test desire for republic'

Sydney: The Australian government faced calls from within its own ranks on Friday to hold a national vote over whether the country should become a republic.

Mark Dreyfus, the chairman of the parliament's legal and constitutional affairs committee, called on Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, to commit to a timetable for testing public opinion for a republic before the next election.

He said that it was "possibly already too late to hold a referendum" in the first term of Rudd's centre-Left Labour government.

But he added: "It's not too late to move on to a plebiscite to get some kind of preliminary indication of the national will. Holding a plebiscite doesn't commit the government to holding a referendum at any particular time. It is an important preparatory step.

"Something we've learnt about the history of constitutional change, or the lack of change to the Australian constitution, is that these things take a very long time. That's a good reason to start now."

Rudd, a life-long republican who pledged to remove the British monarch as his country's head of state on a visit to Britain last year, has not responded.

But he said recently that calling a referendum was not a first-term priority. The next elections are due by April 16, 2011.

Unlike a referendum, a plebiscite would not change the constitution.