Treasurer Joe Hockey has agreed to front a new bipartisan political push for an Australian republic as part of an ambitious ten year map for constitutional change.

The new chair of the Australian Republican Movement, author and Fairfax Media columnist Peter FitzSimons, said it had been a generation since the unsuccessful 1999 referendum but the time had come to make the case for change again.

"It's time for us to be entirely self-governing. We propose it starts with a simple question to be put before the Australian people some time in the next five years, 'do you support replacing the British monarchy with an Australian citizen as the Australian head of state'," Mr FitzSimons said in a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday.