King Charles III completed the first visit of a reigning British monarch to Australia in 13 years

Rod McGuirk
| Associated Press

Melbourne, Australia — King Charles III ends his first visit to Australia by a reigning British monarch in 13 years on Tuesday, as anti-monarchists hope the debate surrounding his trip will be a step towards an Australian citizen becoming head of state.

Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, watched the dancers perform at the Sydney Indigenous Community Centre. The couple used tongs to cook sausages at a community barbecue lunch in the central suburb of Parramatta and later shook hands with well-wishers one last time during their visit outside the Sydney Opera House. Their latest activity was a review of Navy ships in Sydney Harbor in an event known as a fleet review.

Charles’ trip to Australia has been cut short as he undergoes treatment for cancer. He will arrive in Samoa on Wednesday.

Indigenous activist Wayne Wharton, 60, was arrested outside the opera house early Tuesday morning before royals greeted the crowd.

“It will be alleged that the man behaved in an abusive and threatening manner and failed to comply with two previous movement instructions,” police said in a statement. He has been charged with disobeying a police order and will appear in court on November 5.

Wharton said he intended to serve Charles with a subpoena for war crimes and genocide, but never became close to the couple.

The royal visit was “a slap in the face to every decent Aboriginal and fair man in Australia who has tried to take his own life,” Wharton told the AP after his arrest.

On Monday, independent Indigenous senator Lydia Thorpe shouted at Charles during a reception that he was not her king and Australia was not his land.

Wharton said he supported Thorpe “100%.” He protested with a small group of demonstrators outside a Sydney church service the couple attended on Sunday under the slogan “An empire built on genocide”.

Esther Anatolitis, co-chair of the Australian Republican Movement, which advocates for an Australian citizen to replace the British monarch as Australia’s head of state, said while thousands of people came to see the king and Camilla at their public events, there were more when his mother Queen Elizabeth II first visited Australia 70 years ago.

An estimated 75% of the Australian population saw the Queen in person during the first visit by a reigning British monarch in 1954.

“It’s clear that Australians will welcome the king and queen, and we welcome them as well,” Anatolitis said. “But there is no point in continuing to appoint a birthright head of state from another country.”

Anatolitis admitted 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.

Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said an Australian republic was not something 75-year-old Charles should worry about during his lifetime.

She said the failure of last year’s referendum to create a “completely innocuous” Indigenous representative body to advise the government demonstrated the difficulties.

“People in general are just not ready to change the constitution,” Toomey said.

“So a republic whose constitutional question will be much more complex than last year will be much more vulnerable to a campaign of intimidation and opposition,” she said.

“So unless you have absolutely unanimous support across the board and a compelling reason to do it, it will fail,” she added.

Philip Benwell, national chairman of the Australian Monarchy League, which wants to preserve Australia’s constitutional link with Britain, said he was standing next to Thorpe at a reception in Canberra when she began shouting at the king and demanding a treaty with Indigenous Australians.

“I think she got a lot of sympathy. If anything, she helped strengthen our support,” Benwell said.

Thorpe was criticized, including by some Indigenous leaders, for shouting at the king and not being respectful.

Thorpe showed no remorse. She rejected criticism that her aggressive approach to the monarch was cruel.

“I think the violence in this room is unacceptable, when the king of England is praising himself by dripping on stolen wealth, that’s what violence is,” Thorpe told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “The violence comes from the colonizer in this room asserting his power, which every taxpayer in this country pays for.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants Australia to become a republic but has ruled out holding a referendum during his first three-year term. A vote remains possible if his centre-left Labor Party wins elections next May.

In a 1999 referendum, Australians decided to retain Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. Many believe that this result was a consequence of disagreements over how the president would be chosen, rather than majority support for the monarch.

Royal Sydney University historian Cindy McCreary suspects Australia is not yet ready for change.

“There is interest in becoming a republic, but I think we can forget that logistically we’re not going to have a referendum on it any time soon,” McCreary said.

“I think, as a historian, it is probably unrealistic to expect a successful referendum on a republic until we do more work to acknowledge our… complex history,” she said.

“Becoming a republic does not mean that we have somehow gotten rid of British colonialism. We hope this means we engage with our own history honestly and thoughtfully,” she added.

King Charles III completed the first visit of a reigning British monarch to Australia in 13 years

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