Australia ditching the British monarchy is "more important than ever" and voters would likely back a head of state elected by its parliament, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told AFP on Feb. 26.
Turnbull, who served as prime minister from 2015 to 2018, led the country's Republic Movement's unsuccessful 1999 referendum bid to replace the British monarchy with an Australian head of state.
Almost three decades on from that poll and as the British monarchy reels from the arrest of ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the first of a royal in the modern era, Turnbull told AFP an elected head of state could heal Australia's "tribal" politics.
"I think a republic is more important than ever," he said.
"The monarchy remains this anachronism."
Australia was a British colony for more than 100 years and gained de facto independence in 1901, but has never become a fully fledged republic.
Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has issued a full-throated call for Andrew to be removed from the royal line of succession.
Albanese is an avowed republican but has ruled out another referendum on the issue during his tenure.
But Turnbull told AFP he believed Australians would "absolutely" back a system in which the head of state was instead elected by the parliament in Canberra.
"The virtue of having a republic in Australia is that it emphasizes the thing we have in common as Australians."
