a president appointed by parliament wont be popular. given how america's panned out, do we run the risk of someone even worse, just rich and popular getting the job? so much about that role is down to convention. direct election is probably in a dead heat with letting the monarchy keep the job for being best of a bad lot of options
Well yeah it wasn't popular, that's why it failed. I remember my old man being pissed off because even though he was a fan of QEII he thought we should be a republic, but there was no way he was voting for it as worded.
I don't trust the Australian voting public one iota (well, I trust them to do what they usually do, it just doesn't align to what I want them to do!) but my take has always been that you take the good with the bad and not being beholden to a foreign country should always be the preferred option.
As it is, we'get no say in the GG now, the current one was endorsed/approved by the Queen and he's just been slapped down for trying to rort $18m plus $4m in perpetuity from the country but no-one really gives a shit; so how much worse can any other selection be?