I am sure everyone enjoyed Federation Day. The parade went well, the show at Centennial Park was slick and well produced. The politicians were eloquent and not at all longwinded. But something was missing. Or, rather, someone. The Queen.

Yes, Her Majesty had vanished. Throughout the whole affair I heard no mention of the Queen. Nor was much said of Britain. The representatives of the ethnic diversity of Australia included people descended from the first, indigenous Australians, Irish Catholics, Jews, Chinese, Sri Lankans and Greeks. That's great. But no English or Scots or Welsh. Perhaps it was a square-up. The Anglos had the lion's share of the limelight in 1901. Or were we trying to play down the British connection?

No-one was more disappointed than I was in the defeat of the republic referendum. No-one is more committed to having an Australian head of state in place of the Queen. But let's not try to pretend she isn't our head of state. Let's not try to pretend that Federation was our declaration of independence. It was not.

The truth is that Federation of the Australian colonies had been urged by the British Government since 1847. In 1849, the British Government proposed the establishment of a general assembly of the Australian colonies (a precursor to a Federal parliament). It was vehemently opposed by the Australian colonies, and the proposal was dropped.

The great triumph of the founders of Federation was not to overcome British opposition, but rather to overcome the petty and parochial interests of the separate colonies which, until then, had been so obsessed with being different one from the other that they could not even manage to agree on a standard railway gauge. Federation was a triumph of vision over pettiness, of national consensus over local self-interest.

The Commonwealth, when it came, was avowedly under the British crown. The preamble to the Constitution Act says just that. Sir Henry Parkes, at the first Federation conference in 1890, said: "The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all. Even the native-born Australians are Britons, as much as the men born within the cities of London and Glasgow."

The Constitution, therefore, was not designed to create an independent nation. That is why there is no explicitly stated power to make treaties (as there is in the United States Constitution.) As George Reid observed, there was no need to provide for a power to make treaties "in the Constitution of a colony within the Empire". That is why the Constitution still allows the Queen to annul Australian laws within 12 months of their enactment. That power of disallowance was a standard feature in colonial constitutions and was designed to enable the British Government to overrule local legislation that offended imperial interests.

It was never used and today is a dead letter. But it would not have been there if we were independent in 1901.

The founders of our Commonwealth were British to the boot heels. They did not seek independence. But they were not cowed into submission by the British Government. The Union Flag was their flag. There was no more contradiction in being Australian and British than there was in being Scottish and British.

Over time all of that has changed. Australia has evolved into a thoroughly independent nation. The objective of the republican movement and of the referendum was to complete the process of national development begun at Federation and continuing right up to today. An Australian head of state would confirm and symbolise forever the independence we have already achieved.

We should not allow our disappointment in not being a republic today to cause us to ignore the fundamental facts of our history. If you don't like a British head of state, the answer is to change the Constitution, not to pretend the Queen does not exist. Nor is it to deny our British heritage.

We were six British colonies, founded by men and women who, for the most part, were and remained solidly British in every respect. The development of democracy in those colonies was encouraged, not hindered, by Britain. The British legal system and democracy was not "given" to us by Britain. It was brought here in the very sinews of the British people who settled what they believed they had made into a British country. Our Commonwealth was founded under the British crown. The Queen is our Queen for one reason only: she is Queen of the United Kingdom.

Britain did not stand in the way of greater Australian autonomy. More often than not, it forced the pace of change. In 1931, the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, which ceded independence or at least autonomy to the "white" dominions of Canada, Newfoundland, South Africa, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Far from embracing this, the Australian Government of the day required that the statute provide that it did not become effective in any dominion until it was adopted by the Parliament of that dominion. Australia did not do that for another 11 years.

If we were a republic today I believe we would give greater and fairer emphasis to the British origins of our Constitution and our Commonwealth. We have no reason to be ashamed of them. The most fundamental political principle the British settlers of this country brought with them was the right to choose their leaders. When we do choose our own head of state we will have honoured that British heritage. In the meantime, we must not forget it.

Neither should we forget the greatest practical lesson Federation has for modern republicans. The Commonwealth Constitution was a much more complex document than a simple amendment to establish an Australian head of state. The range of possible alternatives was literally infinite. Yet the Federation founders were committed to a Federation. They met and they met and they finally agreed on a Constitution. And then, whatever their reservations about this clause or that clause, they got out on the hustings and campaigned for a "yes" vote.

For us to be a republic we need first to agree we want an Australian head of state. Then we need to agree on one republican model. If republicans keep on allowing their own conceptions of the perfect to be the enemy of the good, then there will be no republic and we will have learnt nothing from our history.

Malcolm Turnbull was chairman of the Australian Republican Movement from 1993 to 2000 and remains a member of its national committee.