King Charles III and Queen Camilla are visiting Australia at a time of global uncertainty, from to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Charles and Camilla will also meet a “more diverse” and “perhaps a more distracted” nation, one academic says.
The King and Queen are expected to arrive on Friday, visiting Sydney and Canberra before attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa.
The backdrop of the five-day royal visit — on Wednesday — is different to previous ones, says Cindy McCreery, an associate professor of history at the University of Sydney.
King Charles has been receiving treatment for cancer this year. Source: Getty / Sebastian Reuter
“I think we’ve become a more diverse nation — perhaps a more distracted one — and the royal visit has to feed into that much more complex landscape,” she told SBS News.
It’s Charles’ first visit as king to a nation in which the British monarch remains the official head of state and has stirred debate about Australia’s future and the prospect of becoming a republic
It follows a controversial 2022 royal tour of other such countries, from which “lessons have been learned”, McCreery said.
A ‘different Australia’
Charles’ most recent trip to Australia was in 2018, when he opened the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games on behalf of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
It will be his first visit since becoming King in 2022 and the first by a reigning British monarch since 2011, when Queen Elizabeth visited.
Australia’s relationship with the monarchy has since shifted, partly due to its changing demography and political orientation, McCreery said.
The latest Census results in 2021 showed Australia is becoming even more multicultural. About 28 per cent of the country’s population was born overseas, and almost half have a parent who was born overseas.
“Demographically … that’s something that’s very different from previous royal visits,” McCreery said.
“I think the Australia that Charles and Camilla are visiting is itself very different.”
Speaking to SBS News this week, , saying the King is: “coming to see the very best of modern Australia”.
“He cares very deeply about the country, but he cares about the way Australians want this country to proceed,” she said.
McCreery said the broader context of the visit has also changed, with many Australians being “distracted, enraged and concerned” by what’s happening in places such as the Middle East and Ukraine.
“I think Australians are more outward-looking now than they used to be.
“While the relationship with Britain is still an important one — and there are still Australians who treasure that historical relationship — I don’t think it’s the only, or necessarily the major, channel of concern for people in Australia.”
William and Kate’s controversial 2022 tour
Of the Commonwealth’s 56 member nations, 36 are now republics and 15 remain ‘realms’ — in which the British monarch is the official head of state, even if the position is largely symbolic.
Commonwealth realms include Australia, Canada, New Zealand and several smaller nations in the Pacific and Caribbean.
In recent years, some of these nations have considered cutting ties with the British monarchy.
In March 2022, William and Kate — now prince and princess of Wales — toured the Caribbean countries of Jamaica, Belize and the Bahamas.
William and Kate on day five of the royal tour of the Caribbean in 2022 on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II, marking her Platinum Jubilee. Source: AAP / PA/Alamy
The trip marked 70 years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, before she died in September of that year.
The tour was marked by protests over the British Empire, calls for reparation payments and an apology for slavery.
In Jamaica, a British colony for more than 300 years, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said , as Barbados had done in 2021.
McCreery said that the tour was widely described as an “absolute disaster” for the royal family.
“I think a lot of lessons have been learned, not least that it was, in retrospect, an unwise idea to send young, junior royals who had very little preparation or briefing for the protests and disquiet that they found in the Caribbean nations.”
Where do Australians stand on becoming a republic?
The visit has prompted some discussion about Australia’s future, with the republican movement looking to reignite conversations here.
“We think the first royal tour to Australia of a sitting monarch in over a decade will be a great chance for Australians to revisit what it really means to be Australian in 2024,” Australian Republican Movement (ARM) co-chair Nathan Hansford told SBS News.
“Australia is such a wonderfully diverse place with tens of thousands of years of Indigenous culture that most people feel is not represented by a monarch.”
The ARM launched a campaign this week to “wave goodbye to royal reign”, which also featured merchandise including T-shirts.
It said the campaign was “playful in nature” but designed to “inspire Australia to seriously consider the role of a ruling British monarch in modern Australia”.
According to Hansford, its latest research showed only 8 per cent of respondents in Australia were “rusted-on monarchists” — meaning 92 per cent of Australians are “open to positively considering an Australian head of state”.
However, the Australian Monarchist League (AML) has called the figure “misleading” and “inflated”.
It cited a survey conducted by Pulse Australia and reported by the Daily Telegraph that indicated only 33 per cent of Australians were in favour of the country becoming a republic, while 45 per cent opposed it.
“The overwhelming sentiment reflected in this poll challenges the ARM’s narrative,” said AML national chairperson Philip Benwell.
Benwell also criticised the ARM campaign, saying: “Using words like ‘the last tour of a king and queen of Australia’ is not only wrong, it is terribly disrespectful to Charles, particularly given
A YouGov poll conducted last September found 32 per cent of Australians were in favour of becoming a republic as soon as possible, and 35 per cent wanted to remain a monarchy for the long term.
McCreery said any polling needs to be considered against the backdrop of what Australians currently care about.
“Whether it’s the cost of living, war overseas, the climate catastrophe … I’m not sure Australia’s constitutional position is right now an issue that is absolutely urgent to most Australians.”
‘A matter for Australians’
In a letter to the ARM in March, which was publicly reported this week, King Charles said becoming a republic is “a matter for the Australian public to decide”.
The letter from the King’s assistant private secretary was written in response to one from the ARM last December requesting a meeting with the King during his upcoming visit and imploring that he publicly support the movement’s objectives.
“His Majesty, as a constitutional monarch, acts on the advice of his ministers, and whether Australia becomes a republic is, therefore, a matter for the Australian public to decide,” the secretary wrote in the letter, which has been seen by SBS News.
The letter said their Majesties have a “deep love and affection for Australia and Australians”.
Benwell said the letter was a “very polite response” to a “rather tongue-in-cheek letter from the ARM” that set out the facts of the King’s position.
McCreery said the royal tour is significant for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who appointed an assistant minister for the republic after his government was elected in 2022.
“We know that the Albanese government had said when it was elected that once the Voice issue was settled, if it had gone the government’s way, then the next major referendum issue for the government was about Australia becoming a republic,” she said.
However, — and ahead of a federal election — she said now would not be the right time.
In January, then assistant minister for the republic Matt Thistlethwaite confirmed .
However, he insisted the government was not walking away from a republic completely.
Thistlewaite’s appointment ended in July and, when asked about the axed portfolio at that time, Albanese said it was inherited from the previous Labor leader.
“I said before I was elected prime minister, I intended to have one referendum, it’s the only thing I committed to. Previously, the Labor Party went to elections committing to multiple referendums.”
The governor-general said she did not think there would be “much conversation” on the issue of Australia becoming a republic.
“Should there ever be a moment where the public seeks to have that question asked again, that is a matter for all Australians, and I think he respects that,” she said.
Australians voted down a referendum to become a republic in 1999.
“I think the republicans, and indeed the prime minister, are playing the long game,” McCreery said. “But I don’t think it’s an issue that is going to be resolved in the short-term.”
What should we expect from the royal visit?
Mostyn said the short visit will see their Majesties spending time in the community, “seeing the very best of our scientists, our creatives”.
McCreery said to expect a well-organised tour.
She said the list of engagements — from attending a barbecue in western Sydney with diverse cultural groups to meeting Indigenous Australians and survivors of domestic abuse — deliberately offers chances for the royals to be seen as “listeners rather than talkers”.
Benwell said to expect “large enthusiastic crowds” coming out to see the King and Queen while the ARM has organised “farewell events” across the country.
