Five years ago today, 55 per cent of Australians rejected the opportunity to rid this country of the British monarchy and allow our national Parliament to select an Australian head of state.

While Australians have been republican in sentiment for more than a decade now, they have made it clear they want to have a direct say in who their president will be. That strong yearning helped sink the republic referendum of November 6, 1999 - and that yearning remains as strong today.

The republicans in the Howard Government, such as Peter Costello, Malcolm Turnbull and Andrew Robb, need to come to grips with that popular desire for the direct election of a president, otherwise the push for reform of our system will be doomed to many more years of failure.

I speak as someone who strongly opposed direct election during the 1999 referendum, when I was national campaign director for the yes case. As national chairman of the Australian Republican Movement from 2000 to 2002 I was less hostile, but still unconvinced of the merits of direct election.

But one cannot ignore the consistent message from the people, and all republicans must respond to this reality by crafting a direct-election model that is safe and works.

Some anti-direct-election republicans believe that if Peter Costello becomes prime minister and puts another variation of the 1999 model (whereby the president is chosen by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Parliament) to the electorate in a referendum, it will succeed because the ALP will support such a proposal.

This is naive. As the 1999 vote showed, Australia's becoming a republic is anathema to a noisy but highly effective minority of people, and their capacity to run a potent scare campaign against the move remains undiminished.

Costello and other republican Liberals must listen to the unambiguous message of the Australian people.

The monarchist cause, aided and abetted by direct electionists, would once again feed off the visceral community distrust of politicians, just as it did in 1999, by claiming that the only republic worth voting for is a "people's republic".

Conservative republicans, in particular, must confront the flaws they see in a direct-election alternative to ensure they can support it.

The major pitfall as Costello sees it is that a directly elected president may argue he or she has a rival mandate to a prime minister. But as the Irish system of direct election demonstrates, this is not necessarily the case. Ireland has produced some fine presidents, in particular the past two, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, who impressed with their capacity to stand above politics to articulate the values of their nation.

Much of the opposition to direct election seems to stem from a misinterpretation of Australia's political culture. The fact is that it is highly unlikely Australians would vote for candidates who want to establish themselves as rivals to an elected government. Australians show no inclination to change the Westminster system, and they understand that a directly elected president would simply be fulfilling the largely ceremonial role now performed by the governor-general.

In any event, the powers of a directly elected president can be closely defined so as to act as a disincentive to any self-made millionaire with delusions of power who thinks it would be fun to be president of Australia.

If Peter Costello does assume the prime ministership before the next election, he will need a symbolic issue that demonstrates that he is not simply carrying on John Howard's conservative cultural legacy. Costello would need to refresh the Liberal Party's mandate. The republic provides him with such an opportunity - on an issue that the Australian people have long supported.

Just before the recent federal election, Costello used his strongest language in five years to argue the case for a republic. He told ABC radio on August 23: "I think that we will become a republic, and I think that the symbols of Australia at the moment are fraying."

Costello and other republican Liberals must listen to the unambiguous message of the Australian people and work to devise a safe model for a directly elected president. If they do so, then the ALP would surely support them. The monarchists and their allies - in this case it would be embittered conservatives who believe that direct election will destroy Australia's democracy - would be fatally weakened.

Many Australians today believe the prospects for a republic are bleak, given John Howard's implacable opposition to the idea. But if Peter Costello has the wherewithal and desire to do it, a proposition for a directly elected president could be put to the Australian people at the next federal election.

An Australian republic in 2007 is far from being a fairytale.