Australia could drop Queen as head of state, says opposition leader

London, Sept.22 : The Queen could be dropped as Australia’s head of state within three years under plans drawn up by the man tipped to be the country’s next prime minister.

Labour Party leader Kevin Rudd is surging ahead in the polls and is expected to deliver a humiliating defeat to the government of Prime Minister John Howard at an election due within weeks.

A staunch republican, Rudd wants Australia to cut its constitutional ties with Britain, replacing the Queen with an elected president, reports The Telegraph.

The Queen could be replaced with an elected president

The last time a referendum was held on the republic question was in 1999, when Howard, an ardent monarchist, successfully campaigned to preserve the status quo.

If Labour wins the next election it will throw the full weight of government behind the issue and is likely to spend millions of pounds in political advertising to persuade Australians of the merits of becoming a republic.

A spokesman for Rudd told The Daily Telegraph that a referendum would probably be held in 2010.

The latest opinion poll gives Labour a 55 per cent to 45 per cent lead over the government, suggesting a humiliating defeat for Howard.

Howard has delivered Australia more than a decade of economic prosperity, but voters are turning against him. There is disenchantment over his unwavering support for the war in Iraq, his reluctance to recognise the threat posed by climate change and the tough new industrial relations reforms he has introduced.

Howard is 68 and recently became a grandfather. To some commentators, he has the air of yesterday’s man.

Born in the lush hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Rudd was 11 when his dairy farmer father died in a horrific car crash. He and his three siblings were shocked to find that their father had never owned the farm on which they lived - he was a tenant.

Within months the family was turfed off the land and went on to endure years of financial uncertainty.

Convinced that China was the power of the future, he enrolled in a degree in Chinese language and history at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1976.

Graduating with first class honours, Rudd joined the Australian diplomatic service and was sent to Beijing, a posting he relished. He has maintained his fluent Mandarin and upstaged Howard at the recent APEC Summit in Sydney by chatting comfortably in Chinese with President Hu Jintao.

After seven years as a diplomat he resigned from the foreign service and took a job as chief of staff to the state Labour Party in Queensland. In 1998 he contested and won the federal seat of Griffith and has held it ever since.

He is likely to strengthen the already close economic and diplomatic ties between Australia and China, while maintaining the crucial Anzus alliance with the United States.

Relations with the Bush presidency are likely to be strained, however, by his pledge to withdraw Australia’s 550 combat troops from Iraq. (With inputs from ANI)

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