I last spoke to the National Press Club in July 1982, a few days before my term as Governor-General came to an end. Soon afterwards, we - my wife and I - went off to England in the container ship Botany Bay. We were going to Oxford, where for the next eight years I was to be Provost of Oriel, the head of my old College.

Those eight years were filled with interest and activity. There were problems in the college to be faced and resolved; there were big tasks, not the least of which was the raising of 5 million pounds for College needs. For the second time in our lives, Oxford was a wonderful experience.

There were some special occasions associated with Australia during those years. One which remains vivid in memory was the invitation in 1988 to deliver the annual Churchill Lecture which was held in the historic Guildhall in London with a large invited audience. That was the year of Australia's Bicentenary, and I took the occasion to speak about our country - Australia - as I saw it at that historic point.

Not long after I arrived in England, I was invited to assume the Office of Chairman of the British Press Council. It is a comparatively long established Press Council; its previous Chairmen had been eminent lawyers, and I was much honored by the invitation and certainly surprised. I had no significant Press experience, and certainly little knowledge of or practical association with the British Press. So that when I was asked "Why you?". I could only respond "Why me indeed." It was suggested that it took and Australian to catch an Australian, but that isn't really good enough, although to be sure, that Australian proprietor provided us with a good part of our business. I served for five years; they were not easy, and we had to meet the charge of being "toothless tigers". I think that we served a useful role, and we attempted to spell out, apply and explore principles and issues relating to the freedom and responsibility of the Press in a democratic society.

This surprise appointment was matched by another when we returned to Melbourne in 1990. The problems which then beset Fairfax had a wholly unanticipated consequence for me. Bidders came in quest of the ailing giant, and I was approached by Conrad Black, the Canadian head of a bidding syndicate, who asked if I would be Chairman in the event that his bid was accepted. Once again: why me? The answer, you are not likely to guess, is that it had to do with a shared interest in the great Cardinal Newman who had a long and special connection with Oriel College. The centenary of his death was commemorated in 1990. I met Conrad Black at a London party, and we fell to talking about Newman. Conrad Black is a learned man, and well read in Newman, and I invited him to special Oxford events in the Newman celebration, and to look at out collection of 'Newmania.' So when his syndicate was successful in the bid for Fairfax, he knew on Australian and he asked me to be Chairman, and that certainly surprised me. So Fairfax followed the Press Council in my life; I was a gamekeeper turned poacher. I was Chairman for three years, and on the Board for two more. It wasn't easy, particularly in the early days, but it was a valuable experience.

I should tell you that one of my early tasks was to negotiate a Charter of Editorial Independence with the David Syme and Fairfax journalists. With the assistance of Greg Taylor, whose knowledge and experience of David Syme was vast, we negotiated carefully and achieved what I believe was a good outcome. Agreement with the Fairfax journalists followed, and I think that I can say that an issue likely to lead to recurrent industrial trouble was put to rest.

That is a long time in the past, but my life is still filled with speeches, with memberships, patronages, chairmanships, and, as I approach my eightieth birthday early in October, I report myself happily and fully employed.

Over a long period, I have been interested in exploring the role of the Governor-General, and I have written about it. It happened that I was the biographer of the first Australian-born Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs, who held the office from 1931 to 1936. His story is a great one, but I cannot take time to tell it beyond saying that there was a great deal of controversy over his appointment. The appointment was ultimately made by the reluctant King, George V, on the advice of the Australian Government. The Australian Government judged that the time had come for a change, and the Isaacs case established that the advice on appointment was that of the government of the country concerned. No one would now dream of questioning that. Yet at the time of Isaacs' appointment, the federal opposition, led by John Latham, complained that the procedure adopted was a 'profound mistake', which struck a 'heavy blow' at the very roots of the cherished imperial relationship. The deputy opposition leader went so far as to declare that Isaacs' appointment was a demonstration of sheer partisan violence.' It is a cautionary tale.

Yesterday's radical heterodoxies are today's simple orthodoxies. Today, it seems to me, we are hearing the same sort of extreme language, the use of emotive and violent words to generate a sense of fear as to the consequences of a republic. There is no more fear from the proposed republic we are to vote on than there was to fear in 1930 from the King appointing the Governor-General of Australia on the advice of the Australian Prime Minister.

The point at issue, in the current debate on an Australian republic, is whether the time has come for a change from a constitutional system which incorporates the monarch - who is the British monarch - to a republic with an Australian President designated or chosen in an appropriate way. With us, there has been a constitutional evolution so that the Governor-General is now invariably Australian, is appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Australian Prime Minister, and exercises the functions and powers of the office to the exclusion of the monarch herself. It is said that with this evolution in our institutions, Australia is in practise a republic. This being so, the opponents of the republic argue that we have achieved the substance of independence within the existing framework of government and that it serves no national interest to go further, risking community divisions without compensating benefit.

Now this was an argument which commended itself to me at the time at which I gave the Churchill Lecture in London's Guildhall in 1988, the year of the Australian bicentennial. In that year, a Constitutional Commission appointed by Mr Hawke as Prime Minister in 1985, made no recommendation for a constitutional change to a republican form of government for Australia, judging that there was not sufficient support within Australia for such a change.

Since then, and within a few years of that time, there has occurred what has been described as a "sea change" and Sir Ninian Stephen said in 1991 that the issue of Australia becoming a republic "was engaging the attention of the Australian people more than any time in the past". The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, was a strong advocate of an Australian republic and he stated government policy in a powerful speech mid-1995. The argument has been formulated in a recent address by the distinguished Australian conductor Simone Young. She said:

"I cannot stand by without adding my voice to the call to have trust in ourselves and finally take the step to have an Australian head of state. It may not seem terribly important to some people here, but as an Australian who spends many months in other countries, I find myself constantly defending our independence and identity from the assertion that Australia is still essentially a British outpost. Yes, our sportsmen and women are admired and envied, our artists and musicians appreciated and celebrated, our excellence in the field of scientific research applauded - but as long as the Queen of England is also the Queen of Australia we will not be considered an independent land. It is really as simple as that. It has nothing to do with our historic ties to Great Britain - they exist and cannot be erased; in fact it has nothing to do with a like or dislike for England. I am in fact an anglophile and have chosen to make my home there; it is simply a question of whether we have enough trust in ourselves to change one of the outward signs that expresses our identity to the world. I fear that this historic opportunity may be lost - an opportunity to become symbolically that which we have been in reality for many years. Some may claim that such symbols are unimportant but these are the symbols that strangers recognise us by!"

This seems to me very well stated and highly compelling. It is not only by such symbols that others know us. It is by such symbols that we know ourselves. I believe that a distinctly Australian President can more effectively represent Australia to itself and to others than is possible under our system of monarchy.

In September 1997, I gave an address at Georgetown, Washington D.C., entitled One Hundred Years a Nation: Australia looks to 200, in the course of which I said that I had come to believe that the symbolic change to a republic should be made and that it was a matter of importance for an independent Australia to state simply and unambiguously our national status in constitutional terms. We would retain our parliamentary system unimpaired. We would have a Head of State who was an Australian citizen and resident who is exclusively ours and who fully and unequivocally symbolises our nation.

I further developed my thinking in the Hawke Lecture, given in Adelaide three months ago, and I would like to draw on some of what I said there.

The arguments for direct election of the President of an Australian republic continue to be resisted. I would like to persuade supporters of direct election that they are wrong and that if they want a republic, they should support this referendum. Proponents of the direct election - whose integrity I respect - say frequently, and with emphasis, that they do not want a 'politician' as President of Australia. Yet the method of election proposed in the referendum begins with the public nomination process and ends with the requirement that the person nominated by the Prime Minister have bi-partisan support from at least two thirds of the Parliament. Further, present members of Parliament and members of political parties are specifically excluded. It is a system deliberately designed to bring forward a non-partisan President.

Contrast this with the situation under direct popular election. Nothing that I have so far heard persuades me that direct popular election would mean other than a divisive campaign, involving candidates endorsed and funded by the major political parties and appealing for support from one or another pressure group. That system would seem to guarantee the emergence of a contentious political figure, the very creature that the direct election advocates say they do not want. It would also very likely ensure that the non-partisan figures, who have recently held the office of Governor-General, would disappear from consideration. For myself, I can safely say - as I have said before - that whilst I would have been willing to allow my name to go forward with bi-partisan support to a joint sitting of Parliament, I would not have agreed to become a national political player, puffing my own merits and appealing for party support.

The misunderstandings at the heart of the argument for direct election of the President are, I think, not unconnected with widespread misconceptions concerning the role of the President. As the powers proposed for the President are to be the same as those exercised by the Governor-General; perhaps I can speak with some experience of the subject. It should be said emphatically - that the Office of Governor-General or the Office of President in an Australian republic - is neither a rubber stamp nor a mere ceremonial ornament. The occupier of the Office must work long hours, and will be required to master a very broad range of materials, reflecting the unique nature of the Office. Thus it is that the Office is the focus for constant meetings and functions, which reflect the remarkable diversity of groups and individuals in our society.

As well as providing opportunities for recognition and dialogue, the President can act as a non-partisan focus of unity, especially at times when society is driven by political discord. That was certainly my experience of the Office of the Governor-General.

There are also the essential constitutional roles of the Governor-General or President. I do not wish to speak at length now about these duties and powers, subject as they are to the conventions of our Constitution, and exercised nearly always on ministerial advice. Suffice to say that these roles are crucial to the workings of our system of government, may involve such matters as the dissolution of Parliament and the appointment of ministries, and include the discretionary reserve' powers.

But in my experience the most important - and the most moving - aspect of the Office was the opportunity for daily communication with so many different Australians.

I think that I have said enough to make it clear that the holder of the Office of President will face a formidable range of duties, requiring the fullest exercise of intellectual capacities, fact and judgement, and a quite exceptional ability to relate to people at many different levels of society. I have every confidence that the processed mode of election of a President by at least two-thirds of the Parliament will encourage the emergence of someone with those essential qualities. However, I am much less certain that such a person will be found by direct popular election. An individual elected to the office of President with a turbulent political campaign may well not be conspicuous for qualities of reflection, empathy and restraint.

The very means of gaining office may in fact, encourage the President - who will then be the only public office holder with direct democratic legitimacy - to expand the powers of the Office in such a way as to rival the Prime Minister and the Parliament. We do not know what the end result might be of such a change in our constitutional balance, but there is no doubt that it could create, at the least, a most undesirable element of instability in what has hitherto been a remarkably stable system. Those who presently support the direct election model on the ground that will not produce 'just another politician' might consider the likely consequences, which may be rather different from what they imagine.

Those who wish to see an Australian republic have the opportunity to endorse a system that should ensure the election of a non-partisan figure. A process which requires that the Presidential nomination be moved by the Prime Minister, seconded by the Leader of the Opposition, and approved by at least two-thirds of the Parliament is surely much better than the existing system, where there is a constraint on the Prime Minister choosing the Governor-General, and then advising the Queen of that choice. I therefore support the Constitutional Convention's proposal that the President be elected by two-thirds of a joint sitting of the two Houses of federal Parliament. This is the proposal which will be put to the people in November this year, and I believe, as I have said before - that it can be safely recommended to our fellow citizens as giving us an Australian head of state without radical change to our parliamentary system. I agree with the Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, who says that this is "a safe, workable proposal for a republic and continues our tradition of stable parliamentary democracy."

There is also a formulation proposal for dismissing a President. In my Washington lecture, I argued that issues of procedure for appointment and removal are not necessarily identical in my view, the President should have a fixed term, which may very reasonably and properly be brought to an earlier end by showing of physical and mental incapacity to perform, or by proof of serious misconduct or misbehaviour. It would be necessary to establish an appropriate body to determine such questions. Although I favour developing such a procedure, I would not regard the proposed mode of removal of a President as so objectionable as to lead me to vote down the whole proposal for a republic.

Indeed, I believe the proposed procedure is no worse than, and probably better than, the current system in which the Queen may remove the Governor-General on the advice of the Prime Minister. As things stand, the Prime Minister is under no obligation to explain such an act to Parliament, or to ascertain that he or she, retains Parliamentary support.

Likewise, I would respectfully ask of those who say that they will vote against the whole proposal, unless there is a direct election for the President, to reconsider. They are people who support a republic; to bring it down and maintain the status quo seems to me to be the wrong course, and I would ask them to think again.

Then there is an area of possible confusion. I have great difficulty in understanding the point of the Parliament put by monarchists that the Governor-General is, under the existing constitutional arrangements, our 'real' Head of State, saving that the Queen has become the 'symbolic' Head of State. I find it very difficult to say what that argument is designed to achieve. I t appears to assign to a monarch a very subordinate position which fits strangely with opposition in the establishment of a republican structure. If the monarchists then are unwilling or unable to address the central question of the monarchists continuation as our Head of State, then there cause must be seen to be gone by default. What is the case for a constitutional monarchy if you are reluctant to mention the Queen?

I have come to the conclusion that a republic is appropriate for Australia, and I therefore have given my support to it. It is an argument on the appropriate status for contemporary Australia, a judgement which acknowledges that the monarchy has served us well. I now believe that the time has come, in the evolution of Australia's independent national identity, for us to have a truly Australian constitutional Head of State.