Two days after the prime minister reshuffled his front bench, the Australian Republic Movement got a phone call.
It was from the man tasked after the last federal election with preparing the nation to embrace a republic.
Despite his republic ministerial role being abolished, Matt Thistlethwaite assured the movement divorcing the monarch wasn't off the agenda.
But the move signals a delay, and for some the wait will be longer than hoped.
New co-chair of the Australian Republic Movement Esther Anatolitis is unperturbed by the decision to scrap the assistant ministry.
"It doesn't signify any policy change or commitment on the part of the Australian government," she said.
"We understand the prime minister makes changes based on all sorts of circumstances."
'No appetite' for another referendum: Labor sources
It's a view shared by a number of senior Labor sources, who maintain it is "inevitable" there will be an Australian republic one day but say now is not the time to have an assistant minister carrying the project forward.
Labor backbencher Mike Freelander was disappointed by the decision, but said it was about the government's focus on the cost of living,
"I'm a committed republican so I do think it's a shame and I think Matt Thistlethwaite was doing a great job," he told the ABC.
"But I can see that the thing that has the most urgency in my electorate in Macarthur is the cost-of-living pressures that everyone's under, and I can see that the republic debate could be seen as a bit of a distraction."
He said a number of factors would need to change before a referendum was considered politically palatable.
"We'd need to have a government in power for a considerable period of time, economic stability, and we would need to have a groundswell from the electorate and at the present time that's not the case," he said.
Voice referendum defeat a factor
The other key factor, Dr Freelander said, was the defeat of the Voice referendum last October.
"I've got no doubt [the Voice referendum] has had a significant effect," he said.
"It is a shame and I wish we could have delivered the Voice to Parliament, but we didn't, and I think it's had a reverberating effect on other issues of state, like the Republic."
Other senior Labor sources, who did not want to be named, said the economy had to be the focus for the government.
One said "there's no appetite" for another referendum now.
Another said "for a lot of Labor members historically this has been important" but that "it is important the focus is on cost of living".
Monash University politics professor Zareh Ghazarian said the scars of two major referendum losses in a row could take some time to heal.
"The last referendum in Australia prior to the Voice was in 1999, it could be a very long time [before] we see a referendum on the republic," he said.
"I suspect at the moment, the government would not really want to rush to a referendum, because it's got lots of other things that it wants to get on with trying to deliver such as cost-of-living issues, such as inflation and service delivery," he said.
Dismissal showed Australia tethered to 'arcane' monarchy
Not everyone is ready to put the issue in the deep freeze though.
Professor Jenny Hocking played a pivotal role in uncovering the "palace letters" which revealed how then-governor-general Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam government in 1975 without giving advance notice to the Queen.
She said the letters "opened our eyes" to the fact that Australia is still "in some very significant ways, tethered to what is an arcane and constitutional monarchy retained by birthright".
"I'd like to see [the assistant ministry] obviously reinstated. I think it's a great pity that the difficulty of passing referenda has meant that we tend to give up on them," she said.
"Prime Minister Albanese made it clear earlier this year that the republic was not something he saw as an immediate priority for his government. I think that's totally understandable."
But Professor Hocking said the government could still have the role even if it did not see a second republic referendum happening in the near future.
"You can have a minister or minister assisting, as Matt Thistlethwaite was, to take the idea of a republic forward, because it is something that needs to be worked through, not just with the general population, but also within the parliament," she said.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will travel to Australia in October this year.
It will be the king's 16th visit to Australia.
Posted, updated
