Current Turnbull answer to media questioning raised in response to Paul Keating comments.
.........no point “pretending that there is an appetite for change when there isn’t one” and noted that Australians had a conservative voting record when it came to constitutional reform.
“We all say long live the Queen and we say that with great sincerity and love,” Mr Turnbull said.
“If you are asking me how you would go about it in the event of the issue becoming live again......
Keating commenting due to public release of cabinet papers from 20 odd years ago.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian to mark the public release of the 1994-95 cabinet papers by the National Archives of Australia today, Mr Keating recalled appointing Mr Turnbull to head the Republic Advisory Committee but questioned his republican commitment given he has done nothing to further it as Prime Minister.
“He has little or no policy ambition and commensurably little imagination, no system of prevailing beliefs,” Mr Keating said. “Was (his republicanism) just Malcolm being another chameleon doing another chameleon act as he has on so many other things? You know, I was real but is Malcolm real?”
Mr Keating said a republic would be achieved only with “the leadership of the prime minister and the party in government”.
He rejected Mr Turnbull’s suggestion last year that the impetus for a republic must come from Australians campaigning “street-by-street” and only after the reign of Queen. Mr Keating said this was “a denial of responsibility
