Former Brisbane lord mayor Clem Jones left a million-dollar bequest when he died in 2007 to push for an Australian republic. In his speech to the debate on Thursday, Mr Muir will argue Australians need to move beyond thinking the republic debate was about the British royal family. “Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull continues to insist we wait until the Queen’s reign ends,” Mr Muir said. “That doesn’t need to happen.

“The Queen and other members of the British royal family know it is not about them. It’s about us and our nation’s future.” Mr Muir will argue a “poor republican model” was the reason an Australian republic failed to win support at the 1999 referendum. “Australians do not want a ‘politicians' republic’, one where their head of state is chosen for them by politicians,” Mr Muir said. “Now, as in 1999, they want a say in who is their head of state,” he said. “I believe a directly elected head of state remains the only model acceptable to the Australian people.”

Fairfax columnist Peter FitzSimons will also be part of the panel. Credit:Ryan Osland The separate Australian Republic Movement proposes a referendum be held in 2020 so Australians can say whether they would like to move to become a republic with an Australian head of state. The movement also proposes a second referendum is held in 2022, when Australians would choose how to elect their head of state. That was the position favoured by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who would allow Australians to have their say on a republic in his first term if he won the next federal election. Mr Turnbull, who was once an active member of the Australian Republican Movement, now preferred the debate was delayed until the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr Muir believed a directly elected Australian head of state would oversee the fight against corruption and have the power to appoint senior officers to national corruption-fighting organisations, and an Ombudsman. “We should avoid the current ‘Caesar judging Caesar’ scenario, where executive government appoints and effectively controls anti-corruption bodies that are examining the conduct of the government that appoints them,” Mr Muir said. “Or, as the former Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, said, ‘Such a system is like having a cricket match where the captain of the batting side is also the umpire’.” He would argue that the republican debate also gave Australians the choice to make serious changes to the Constitution and allow Indigenous Australians and local governments to be formally recognised. Mr Muir believed it gave Australians the chance to reduce the number of Australian senators.