THE Australian Labor party leader, Kevin Rudd, intends to hold a plebiscite asking Australians to choose between the Queen or a republic if he is elected prime minister next month, his party has confirmed.

“We will hold a plebiscite on the question of Australia becoming a republic – probably in our first term,” said a Labor spokesman. It would pose a simple question but it would not be legally binding.

If a majority agreed to ditch the Queen and replace her with an Australian head of state, then a national referendum would be held to amend the constitution. But such a referendum would almost certainly not be held until 2011 at the earliest.

The question of the monarchy has been barely mentioned in the current election campaign, even though Rudd, a staunch republican, is personally committed to replacing the Queen with an Australian figurehead.

The polls show Rudd is favourite to emerge from parliamentary elections on November 24 as the country’s new prime minister.

“We’re going to consult the people again,” the Labor leader said. “We haven’t fixed a time frame for doing that but I think the time will come before too much longer when we do have an Australian as our head of state.”

While Rudd, 50, has acknowledged that becoming a republic was not a “first order concern” for working families, he said the tide was turning against the monarchy. “It will just take a little while,” he said. “We’ve asked the people once, they said no. You’ve got to respect that. But we’ll work out when we’ll ask them again.”

Australians were last offered the chance to cut all constitutional ties with Britain in 1999, which failed to deliver a yes vote. Only 45% of Australians voted yes and none of the six states returned a majority (to succeed, a referendum has to gain 50% of votes nationally, and more than 50% in at least four of Australia’s six states).

Malcolm Turnbull, who led the republican campaign in the 1999 referendum and is now environment minister, believes that Australians should not be asked again until the end of the Queen’s reign. “This is an issue that needs to have an enormous amount of momentum behind it to be successful,” he said recently.

“And my view in ’99, and it remains my view, is that the next time when you could win a referendum on the republic would be at the end of the Queen’s reign.”

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