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Just as surely as it takes a pea to distinguish a real princess, so there is also a test of the true republican. Arise, (and overthrow the old order) all those who noticed the absence of monarchy at the Sydney Olympics.
Still sitting? Well, just seconds into my conversation with Thomas Keneally, that finder of lost stories and real republican launches into this: "I felt that since the [republican] model hadn't been accepted by the country, then the Queen should have in fact opened the Games. Either the Queen is our head of state, or she's not. If she's our head of state, she should have opened the Games.
"But our monarchist prime minister would not invite his own head of state to open the Olympics; he used the governor-general instead. Because it would have focused attention on the anachronistic nature of the relationship."
Committed republicans aren't just acutely aware of monarchy's whereabouts; they are also - like princesses - sensitive to their surroundings. This interview takes place in a London hotel bar, designed to look like a gentleman's club crossed with the trappings of polo.
Keneally is shifting about in his seat, unable to rest easy. It's the decor, of course, the fake polo pageantry. Only three weeks previously, I interviewed a Great American Novelist in exactly the same spot, without the Great One giving the surroundings a second glance. Imperial trappings don't register with those who take as God- given the right to choose president over crown.
For Keneally, a novelist who tackles the big moral issues as readily as other writers self-obsess, the question is a live one. "It makes sense for Australia to become a republic," he says. "To show that we're fully committed to our own history, we're not living in some mythic past represented by this particular bar, if you look round at the polo...". He grimaces.
"When we become a republic," he continues, "we can then come to a genuine acknowledgement of the aboriginal occupation of Australia. Once that has properly entered our imaginations, then it would be possible - when we try to be heavy with Indonesia about their human rights record, not least in East Timor - to speak with more authority. So not only...