Australia's political leaders have said Britain's Prince William is unsuitable to be their country's governor-general because he lacks the right pedigree.
Tina Brown, author of a new book about William's late mother Diana, has said that the young prince would like to be Australia's next governor-general - a position his father Prince Charles coveted but was denied in the 1980s.
But Prime Minister John Howard, an avowed monarchist who successfully faced down a 1999 referendum vote for Australia to become a republic, moved quickly to rule out the prince as a future governor-general.
"We have for a long time embraced the idea that the person who occupies that post should be in every way an Australian citizen," Mr Howard told Australian radio.
Pro-republic Labour party leader Kevin Rudd agreed, saying there were many Australians who had contributed to the life of the nation and who would be more suitable for the role.
Earlier, Mr Rudd had said: "There is a great place for the British royals and it's in Britain".
Australia's governor-general acts as head of state and commander-in-chief of the nation's defence forces, representing the British monarch in the constitution.
In 1947, when Britain's Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Ulster and Baron Culloden, left the job, the-then
Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who used to drive trains for a living, declared he wanted a governor-general "without pomp and plumes and social glitter".
Mr Chifley appointed an ex-boilermaker and left-wing Labour politician, William McKell, to replace the duke.