The referendum aftermath:

World leaders sing our praises.....

As the humiliated members of Real Republicans for a Constitutional Monarchy slink off into the darkness to lick their wounds, the triumphant Monarchists for a Directly Elected President continue to celebrate a magnificent win.
While even they are still stunned by the enormity of their victory, world leaders have begun to pay tribute to the clear-cut, courageous stand taken by average Australians.
One of the first to offer his congratulations was the world’s most powerful man, United States President Bill Clinton.
“I’ve been around long enough to know you’ve got to be very, very careful whom you give the head job to,” President Clinton told a hastily convened White House press conference.
“You Ossies have made a very, very wise decision not to abandon a tried and tested system for the unknown.
"Besides, having a President is no big deal, you know. To me it’s always just been another moniker.”
In London, our future king of Australia, Charles the Third, was said to be speechless.
“Lady Camilla has just run out of tampons so Prince Charles is in over his head trying to deal with the dilemma,” confided one of the more senior aides to our head of state-in-waiting.
“Obviously he can’t speak just now, but he wanted me to pass on just how delighted he is with the result on the whole. He thinks things are going swimmingly.”
Other members of the Royal Family passed on their congratulations to their subjects in Australia.
His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, said that he always had faith in the good sense of the Australian people.
“They’re a lot more level-headed than those darkies in some of the smellier countries in those dreadfully backward and dirty places like Africa and Brixton,” he said.
When contacted by phone, Princess Margaret said: “Jesus Christ, get these spiders off me. There’s dozens of them and they’re bloody huge. Christ, they’re eating my nose….”
The Duchess of York said she was glad the referendum and the debate over the role of the Monarch was over.
“It’s certainly a weight off my mind, just like the weight that’s off my mind only three months after joining the Weight Watchers International Easy Five-Step Program,” she said.
“I thought the decision Australians had to make was a simple one, almost as simple as my Genius Kitchen Whiz – available in five colours and with recipe book included.
"Those republican poseurs have emphatically been brought to book, much like my own series of books about Bertie the Helicopter."
From his dachshund just outside Moscow, Boris Yeltsin expressed surprise at the referendum result and doubted the sincerity of Australian republicans.
Speaking through a breathalyzer, the Russian President said: “You are not serious about this thing. If you were, you would have done what we did and shoot your royal family – bang, bang – and throw their bones down a well.
“I can help you. I can shoot them – bang, bang. But not the pretty one, Princess Margaret.
“She is my type of woman – big, big, bang, bang.”
Meanwhile in Canberra, the Prime Minister said that although the No vote he had steadfastly championed had won a magnificent and expected victory, he was not in the business of gloating about the win, nor would he try to score political points out of it.
“And I steadfastly refute any suggestions that I in some way manipulated this referendum to get the result I wanted,” Sir John said.
As for the main protagonists in the republican debate, Aliens for a Constitutional Monarchy spokeswoman Kerry Jones said she was simply delighted that after many, many hard months of campaigning, she could at last mention her beloved Queen Elizabeth.
And the Australian Republican Movement leader, lawyer Malcolm Turnbull, said the fight for a republic was far from over, although he was likely to take a back seat in future.
"It is now abundantly clear from the result that Australia is very much a Republic in Progress," he said.
He did not expect to play a hands-on role in RIP.