Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is right that Australia should expedite its inevitable transition to a republic. The change has long been favoured by most of our citizens and is supported by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and all nine leaders of the states and territories.

Make no mistake, our enduring head of state, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, merits profound respect, a point Mr Shorten will stress in his speech on Saturday night to the Australian Republican Movement, established 26 years ago by a group of eminent Australians that included Mr Turnbull.

Queen Elizabeth II is a towering figure who merits profound respect.

Her majesty has been a towering figure of stability and civic duty, of humanity and community. But she should no longer be our titular leader. It is absurd that an independent, entrenched and robust democracy has a foreign national as its head of state. It is also ironic, given the constitutional crisis that has blindsided the nation, because anyone with a formal foreign allegiance is ineligible to seek or hold elected office.

Mr Shorten's proposal – which replaces his previous position of holding a vote by 2025 – to put a single, fundamental question to the people at the end of his first term, should he win office at the next election, and then collectively consider the appropriate mechanism, is simple and sensible. It would avoid the confusion that caused the Australian Republican Movement, led at the time by Mr Turnbull, to botch the 1999 republic referendum by failing to unite on operational details.