The suspension of Parliament, the public holiday, and the mass media coverage were all part of our huge response to the death of our head of state.

The question must be asked because it has been open for debate until recently; the position the Queen occupied in our constitutional system was not a settled question during the 1999 republic referendum. Before another republic referendum it should be resolved.

There were many reasons for the failure of the Yes case in that referendum: including the model, division among republicans and lack of bipartisanship. One of them, however, was that the advocates of the No case deliberately sowed confusion in the minds of Australians about the role played by the monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. They downplayed it.

The Yes advocates made the case for an Australian head of state in place of the British monarch as our head of state central to their campaign. They recognised the significance of the role for our national identity and independence. The Yes case argued to replace the monarch and the monarch's representative in Australia, the governor-general, with an Australian president, one of our own.

Monarchist advocates had an intriguing response to this proposition. They needed to defuse the otherwise indisputable argument that a foreign monarch was not acceptable as head of state of a modern Australia. They found one.

Their case was based on the idea of a leading monarchist, Sir David Smith, the now recently deceased Private Secretary to several governors-general, including Sir John Kerr. Smith read the proclamation dismissing the Whitlam government from the steps of the then Parliament House. His argument can be found in his discussion of the governor-general in his book, Head of State. He became a fierce anti-republican campaigner.

The No case responded that it was the governor-general, not the Queen, who was the Australian head of state. Sometimes this was qualified by saying that the governor-general was the de facto head of state, and the Queen was merely the de iure head of state. In other cases that qualification was brushed aside on the campaign hustings, even by those senior politicians who should have known better, in favour of a blanket assertion that Australia already had its own Australian head of state.

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What then, if that was the case, was the Queen? The No case asserted that the Queen was our sovereign, which was something quite different, much vaguer and by implication less important to our national identity. The Queen was reduced to a cipher who did nothing but accept the recommendation of the prime minister as to who should be the Australian prime minister. The No case attacked the idea of a republic, but rarely defended the Queen directly.

Nevertheless, this No argument served its purpose. Too much time during the campaign was wasted on supposedly erudite discussions by lawyers about the role of the Queen versus the role of the governor-general. These distractions made for a dry legal argument and undoubtedly hurt the Yes case. Dry legal arguments don't win referendums. Popular sentiment and emotion are much more important.

The scale of the official Australian response to the Queen's death is one part of the recognition of her role as Australia's Head of State. Our coinage will change soon, and Queen's Counsels will become King's Counsels. At least we now won't have to change our national anthem to God Save the King.

Another aspect is the language about the Queen's role used by officials and by the media. This is a complicated matter as head of state is diplomatic not constitutional language. Officials are always very careful about the language they use, in part because it became a controversial issue in Australia in the 1990s when even official websites were mysteriously altered because nomenclature had become contentious.

Much of the coverage in Australian media was of British origin anyway, mixed indiscriminately with local Australian coverage. The British are in no doubt about the appellation 'Head of State' in relation to their Queen and now King. They don't have a governor-general, which would be a contradiction in terms.

The possible alternatives to the term head of state are monarch and sovereign; or perhaps just queen. These terms are sometimes used indiscriminately in commentary. But Queen Elizabeth was also frequently referred to as Head of State in relation to Australia and to those other Commonwealth countries which remain constitutional monarchies.

Notably the front page of The Canberra Times earlier this week announced that King Charles III will hold a meeting at Buckingham Palace with the high commissioners of the 14 Commonwealth realms, including Australia, "where he has become head of state".

The same issue of The Canberra Times reported that the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda will hold a republic referendum in the next three years which could lead to King Charles III "being removed as its head of state".

Judged by its actions over the past week Australia recognises that the British monarch is also our head of state. Anthony Albanese has announced a standing invitation for King Charles III to come to Australia "as our head of state". That is the basis on which the next referendum should be fought.

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