King Charles III ends the first Australian visit by a reigning British monarch in 13 years

Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – King Charles III on Tuesday ends the first visit to Australia by a reigning British monarch in 13 years, as anti-monarchists hope the debate surrounding his trip is a step towards an Australian citizen who become head of state.

Charles and his wife, Queen Camilla, watched dancers perform at an Indigenous community center in Sydney. The pair used tongs to cook sausages at a community barbecue lunch in the central suburb of Parramatta and later shook hands with well-wishers for the last time during 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 undergoing cancer treatment. Arrives in Samoa on Wednesday.

Indigenous activist Wayne Wharton, 60, was arrested outside the opera house early Tuesday afternoon before the royal family greeted the crowd.

“It will be alleged that the man was acting in an abusive and threatening manner and failed to comply with two previous instructions,” police said in a statement. He was charged with failing to comply with a police direction and will appear in court on November 5.

Wharton said she intended to serve Charles with a summons to appear before the courts for war crimes and genocide, but never approached the couple.

The royal visit was “a slap in the face to all the decent, fair Aboriginal people in Australia who have tried to get out of their lives,” Wharton told the AP after his arrest.

On Monday, independent Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe called out Charles during a reception that he was not their king and Australia was not their land.

Wharton said she supported Thorpe “absolutely 100%”. He had protested with a small group of protesters outside a Sydney church service the couple attended on Sunday under the banner “Empire built on genocide”.

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 while thousands turned out to see the King and Camilla in her public engagements, the numbers were greatest when her 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.

“It’s understandable that Australians welcome the King and Queen, we welcome them too,” Anatolitis said. “But it makes no sense to continue to have a head of state appointed by birthright from another country.”

Anatolitis acknowledged that 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 Charles, 75, would have to worry about in his lifetime.

He said the failure of a referendum last year to create a “totally innocuous” indigenous representative body to advise the government demonstrated the difficulty.

“It’s just that, in general, people are not ready to change the constitution,” Twomey said.

“Therefore, a republic, which would be a much more complex constitutional issue than last year, would be much more vulnerable to a campaign of fear and opposition,” he said.

“So unless you had absolutely unanimous support across the board and a strong reason to do 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 he began shouting at the king and demanding a treaty with the Indigenous Australians.

“I think it alienated a lot of sympathy. If anything, it’s helped strengthen our support,” Benwell said.

Thorpe has been criticized, even 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, of the King of England praising himself, dripping stolen wealth, that’s what is violent,” Thorpe told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “The violence comes from the colonizer who stands in this room and asserts his authority, 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 the election scheduled for May next year.

Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to keep Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. This result is widely considered to be the result of disagreement over how a president would be chosen rather than majority support for a monarch.

University of Sydney royal historian Cindy McCreery suspects Australia is not yet ready to make the change.

“There is interest in becoming a republic, but I think what we can forget is that logistically speaking we’re not going to have a referendum on this issue anytime soon,” McCreery said.

“I, as a historian, think it’s probably unrealistic to expect a successful referendum on a republic until we’ve done more work to acknowledge our … complicated history,” he said.

“Becoming a republic does not mean that we have somehow rejected British colonialism. We hope it has meant that we are engaging with our own history in an honest and thoughtful way,” he added.