The current promoter won't give us a rematch, claiming that there is no public demand for a second fight. We are in full training, having learnt from our mistakes in 1999, and we will be a tougher proposition next time around.

The Australian Republican Movement is a grass-roots organisation totally committed to advancing the wish of the majority of Australians for their country to become a republic.

ARM believes in a bottom-up rather than a top-down process. We are committed to achieving plebiscites on the republic question.

In December 2001 a People's Conference was held in Corowa. Organised by the late Richard McGarvie, the conference culminated in the "Royal Hotel" resolution that spelled out a pathway towards a second referendum based on plebiscites.

For the 2001 election, Labor had proposed that a second referendum would be preceded by two plebiscites held at the same time as the next two federal elections. In 2004 Labor accelerated that proposal by promising that a Labor government would hold an indicative plebiscite and then a models plebiscite before a second referendum at the same time as the 2007 election.

What Labor has yet to do is to campaign hard and imaginatively on the republic during an election campaign. There would be electoral advantage for Labor, as former minister Bob McMullan has recently suggested, if it did this.

In 2004 the position adopted by the Coalition was that the 1999 referendum had determined the issue, and the Government had no plans to revisit it. But the resolve of leading republicans, such as the Treasurer Peter Costello, has not weakened. And in the new parliament he is joined by two members of the official Yes committee in 1999: Malcolm Turnbull (chair) and Andrew Robb, chairman of Conservatives for an Australian Head of State.

Last August the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee issued its Report, "The Road to a Republic". It addresses both the most appropriate forward steps (supporting plebiscites) and alternative models for an Australian republic. Notably the Report recognises the vacuum within the community about constitutional questions.

To achieve informed participation there must be much more "education, engagement and inclusion". Such discussions must be in plain language with plenty of humour.

That was the style that Senator Amanda Vanstone brought to her republican advocacy before an audience at Burgmann College at the ANU last week. She is a minimalist who would even be quite happy to retain the present method of prime ministerial appointment. Her slogan would be "If you love this woman [the Queen], set her free".

Former Labor Minister Neal Blewett took a different approach at the National Library. Delivering the Henry Parkes Oration on the topic of "A Republican President or a Presidential Republic?" Blewett assumed that a consequence of the 1999 defeat was that only a republic with a popularly elected president could win a second referendum. He urged republicans to think big and not to prematurely discard the virtues of the American system.

The second National Republican Lecture will be given in Canberra next Tuesday night by Huy Truong, a Melbourne business executive, entrepreneur and former refugee on the topic "How an Australian Republic can engage the migrant community: a personal perspective".

Such engagement is critical because the Senate Report recommended that all constitutional education should "recognise the ethnic, gender and age diversity of the Australian population, and be inclusive of all Australians".

Republicans must assist the broader impetus for constitutional reform. There is a danger that 27 years after the last successful referendum in 1977 all constitutional reform is dormant. That is one consequence of the loss in 1999.

The real enthusiasm generated in the 1990s by the government-funded Constitutional Centenary Foundation has dissipated.

That enthusiasm helped invigorate the 1998 Constitutional Convention in Canberra.

The Senate report reveals a consensus that public education about the constitution must come first.

Educators need innovative tools. Such creative approaches are demonstrated in new books about the constitution by two academics active in 1999.

Greg Craven has written Conversations with the Republic to prove that the Constitution "is not deadly, flat, pompous and dull, but interesting, alive and quirky-the sort of Constitution you could imagine having a beer with."

Helen Irving has written Five Things to Know about the Australian Constitution, a book that is different and engaging in its own way too.

The Government should take the lead. ARM calls on it to support the establishment of a Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Constitutional Education and Awareness.

This is the Senate Report's recommended way of addressing improvement in awareness and understanding of our constitutional system.

The new committee would oversee and facilitate the necessary education and awareness programs that will engage the Australian people with their own Constitution.