King Charles III ends the first visit to Australia by a reigning British monarch in 13 years on Tuesday and anti-monarchists hope his trip will be a step towards an Australian citizen becoming head of state.
Controversy disrupted the visit on Monday when independent Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe shouted at Charles during a reception that he was not her king and that Australia was not her land.
Esther Anatolitis, co-chair of the Australian Republic Movement, which is campaigning for an Australian citizen to replace the British monarch as Australia’s head of state, said that while thousands of people turned out to see the king and Queen Camilla at their public engagements , the numbers were higher. when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, first visited Australia 70 years ago.
An estimated 75% of Australia’s population saw the Queen in person during the first visit by a reigning British monarch in 1954.
“Understandably, Australians welcome the king and queen, we welcome them too,” Anatolitis said. “But it makes no sense to continue having a head of state designated by birth and from another country.”
Anatolitis acknowledged it would be difficult to get a majority of Australians in a majority of states to vote to change the constitution. Australians have not changed their constitution since 1977.
“It’s complicated, isn’t it? Of course, we have that obstacle,” Anatolitis said.
Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said an Australian republic was not something Charles, 75, should worry about in his lifetime.
He said the failure of a referendum last year to create a “completely innocuous” Indigenous representative body to advise the government demonstrated the difficulty of changing Australia’s constitution.
“It’s just that, in general, people are not prepared to change the constitution,” Twomey said.
“So a republic, which would be a much more complex constitutional issue than last year, would be much more vulnerable to a fear campaign and opposition,” he said.
“So unless you have absolutely unanimous support across the board and a solid reason for doing it, it would fail,” he added.
Philip Benwell, national president of the Australian Monarchist League, which wants to maintain Australia’s constitutional link with Britain, said he was close to Thorpe at the Canberra reception when she began shouting at the king and demanding a treaty with indigenous Australians.
“I think she generated a lot of sympathy. If anything, it has helped strengthen our support,” Benwell said.
Thorpe has been criticized, including by some indigenous leaders, for shouting at the king and not showing respect.
Thorpe was unrepentant. He rejected criticism that his aggressive approach to the monarch was violent.
“I think what was unacceptable is the violence in that room, from the King of England praising himself, dripping with stolen wealth, that’s what was violent,” Thorpe told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “The violence comes from the colonizer who is in that room. room asserting his authority, being paid for by all the taxpayers of this country.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants Australia to become a republic but has ruled out a referendum during his first three-year term.
A vote remains a possibility if his centre-left Labor Party wins elections scheduled for May next year.
Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to keep Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. That result is widely considered to have resulted from a disagreement over how a president would be chosen, rather than majority support for a monarch.
Cindy McCreery, a royal historian at the University of Sydney, suspects Australia is not yet ready to make the switch.
“There is interest in becoming a republic, but I think what we can forget is that, logistically, we are not going to have a referendum on that issue anytime soon,” McCreery said.
“I, as a historian, think it is probably unrealistic to expect a successful referendum on a republic until we have done more work to recognize our…complicated history,” she said.
“Becoming a republic does not mean that we have somehow gotten rid of British colonialism. “Hopefully it meant that we engaged with our own history in an honest and thoughtful way,” he added.
On Tuesday Charles and Camilla began watching Indigenous dancers perform at a Sydney Indigenous community centre.
The couple used tongs to cook sausages at a community barbecue lunch in the central suburb of Parramatta and then shook hands with well-wishers at the final stop of their visit outside the Sydney Opera House.
His final engagement was an inspection of navy ships in Sydney Harbor in an event known as a fleet review.
Charles’ trip to Australia was cut short because he is receiving cancer treatment.
Arrives in Samoa on Wednesday.
‘This article may contain information published by third parties, some details of this article were extracted from the following source: celebrity.land’
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