The ambassadors for the new republic were all there. The new Aboriginal senator, the megarich showbiz funny man, the trendy vicar and the leading fashion designer who was running late. It was a warm fragrant spring Thursday morning in Sydney's First Fleet Park smack by the harbour this week and the "Yes ambassadors for an Australian republic" were gathered for a press launch.

Their pitch echoed much of the republican rhetoric to date: that Australia needs to stand on its own two feet; deserves a "resident as president"; and should be proudly egalitarian in all ways.

"If you vote no you'll get a head of state (Queen Elizabeth) who has used this country like a family business that's passed down, and that's not what's on offer," said onetime comedian and key member of the Yes referendum committee, Mr Steve Vizard. "What's on offer is for us to have an Australian head of state."

It all sounds so simple but the public has either smelled a rat, or been persuaded by the monarchists into thinking they have, and 150 years of republican tradition are threatened with humiliation at the ballot box. It is debatable whether all the 300 hand-picked ambassadors trying to bail out of their sinking ideal are either quite as well known or well loved as their press release claims. But given the opinion polls it's naive for the document to suggest "they have joined the people's movement for a Yes Vote on Nov 6".

For the "people" are the very element which is so absent from the republicans' increasingly floundering campaign to persuade a majority of the 12 million voters, in a majority of the six states, to vote yes and replace the queen with a president.

It's ironic because at least 65 per cent of Australians, almost as many as claim to have Irish ancestry, identify themselves as republicans.

Only 5 per cent of the electorate could be described as hardline monarchists.

The problem is that disunity is death to any movement and the republican campaign is dangerously spilt, while the electorate is confused. "The problem in politics today is the seven-second grab," said Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley. "You can't argue constitutional change in seven-second grabs." Australia's projected republican model, whereby the federal parliament and not the people appoint the president, was a compromise offering cobbled together at the end of last year's Constitutional Convention and passed by only a handful of delegates. And it appears to be a non-starter in the all-important image stakes.

"One of the dangers is it's somehow a republic for famous people, multi-millionaires and sports captains and pop stars," said Toby Ralph, an advertising man for the ruling Liberal Party. "It's not the republic you'll see down at Kmart (a discount chain) and I think that might bite them in the bum."

The accusation that the republicans are an elite just because some of their leading lights have done very well for themselves and are seriously rich might sound particularly unfair and spiteful.

But the no case, which like the yes is equally funded by the public purse, has played the class war card and made the most of accusing republicans of being "Char donnay-swilling silvertails". The most recent Australian Labor Party polling suggests 57 per cent of the working class intend to vote no and just 29 per cent yes.

And in the words of a national commentator, the propensity to vote republican is a direct function of greater education and income. Nicholas Rothwell, a journalist who has spent the past month exploring every corner of Australia and the national mood, says after hundreds of interviews that it's clear divisions in the republican side will benefit the no case.

"A large majority of the Australians encountered backed the idea of a republic with direct election of the Australian president," he said. "But many of these voters will vote against the republican model on offer, because it reeks to them of control by the political elites. Unpalatable as it may be to the mainstream republicans who cluster in the professional middle classes, these voters are determined in their stand."

The key battleground of the campaign, now in its final week, is to win the votes of those who want a directly-elected president. The monarchists have avoided all mention of the queen and stuck to a simple message: "If you want to elect a president Vote No to the Politicians' Republic." Their unlikely coalition, ranging from royalists to the so-called Real Republicans who want direct election, has achieved its hefty improvements in the polls by suggesting that in defeating this limited referendum now there will be more radical reform later.

"The referendum puts Australia at a democratic crossroad," said the chairman of the Real Republic, Ted Mack. "If the sovereignty of royalty is transferred to the political parties, rather than to the people, it will be a significant democratic regression." But leading republican and former New South Wales Labor Premier Neville Wran said Mr Mack's no vote would set back the quest for a republic for many years and probably generations.

"A majority no vote, far from delivering to electors the right to vote for the president, makes certain that they will not have such a right to vote - there will be no republic and consequently no president," he said. Mr Wran's old electorate takes in some of Sydney sprawling industrial suburbs, which are far from the glamour of the harbour.

The city of Bankstown typifies what used to be Labor heartland with traditional voting patterns. But local councillor Clive Taylor said the people had many more important priorities, such as health, housing and education, to get too excited about the cost and division caused by trying to change to a republican system.

"I think if you're going to have a major change to the constitution of your government then there should be a level of interest from the public," he said. "There should be a groundswell of opinion in that regard and it's just not evident. As they say, if it's not broke why fix it?"