Will Australia ditch the King and vote to become a republic?

The Republic movement in Australia is in a buoyant mood.

Days away from the King’s historic visit to Australia, they have released new research claiming 40 per cent of Australians don’t actually know Charles is their head of state.

Calling King Charles and Queen Camilla’s trip “The Farewell Oz Tour”, the Australian Republic Movement (ARM) says its research shows that nearly two in three people would prefer Australia to sever ties with the British monarchy.

However, other polling in Australia suggests Charles' popularity has increased since he became King.

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NewsCorp’s Pulse of Australia found fewer people (33%) support becoming a republic and just under half (45%) thought Australia should remain a constitutional monarchy.

In other words, according to this survey, the republican cause has gone backwards since the change of reign, defying expectations that it would surge following the death of Queen Elizabeth.

It’s also been revealed that ARM has been sent a letter from the man they want to replace as their head of state.

In gently declining the campaigners’ offer to meet in person during his visit, the King effectively wished the group well in its bid to become a republic.

One of the King’s senior aides wrote to the Australian Republic Movement from Buckingham Palace saying the King will not stand in their way if the Australian people do wish to chart a different constitutional course.

Dr Nathan Ross, an assistant private secretary to the King, said that ARM’s views on the debate “have been noted“ and wrote: “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 people to decide.”

Buckingham Palace did not respond to the leak of the letter, first published in the Daily Mail, but senior royal sources told ITV News the King would never refuse to accept the results of a democratic mandate, should one happen in Australia.

The King of Australia, as Charles is known here, will embark on a five-day trip, full of historic comparisons and surprising medical permissions.

King Charles, who will be 76 next month and still has cancer, will travel to the other side of the world to fulfil a promise he made to visit Australia.

His cancer treatment will be paused while he is in Australia and then Samoa straight afterwards for a Commonwealth summit.

Doctors gave Charles permission to travel only if he agreed to scale back the number of engagements each day and reduce the amount of travelling.

Despite clocking up several trips abroad as King, Charles has yet to go to a Realm – one of the 14 countries outside the UK where the British Monarch remains the head of state.

So, while Germany was his first overseas trip as King, and Kenya was Charles’ first visit as King to a Commonwealth country, he hasn’t been to a Realm since his accession upon the death of his mother in September 2022.

And while we are on historical comparisons, Australia’s never had a visit from a British King – not ever.

None of Queen Elizabeth’s male predecessors made it Down Under.

But like many of the King’s 14 Realms, including New Zealand, Papa New Guinea, Belize, Antigua, and The Bahamas, Australians do live a long way away from their UK-based, British-born, head of state.

And many of the realms, like Jamaica, think it’s time to cut ties with the colonial past and elect their own heads of state.

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Barbados did exactly that in 2021 when the then-Prince Charles represented his mother at the midnight handover ceremony.

At that moment, Barbados became a republic with a president instead of a realm ruled by a monarch in London.

It meant Prince Charles landed in Barbados as the country’s future King but flew out of there, one day later, merely a VIP from a foreign country which once ruled Barbados as a colony.

So what will Australia do?

It has had a referendum on the monarchy. In 1999, Australians voted to reject the chance to become a republic and to keep the then-Queen Elizabeth as their head of state.

It was thought another referendum was coming.

Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is a life-long supporter of his country becoming a republic and he had appointed the very first minister for a republic in his early days in office.

But that post has now been scrapped and the referendum proposal has been put on ice, largely because the Albanese government lost a separate referendum last year on Aboriginal rights.

Mr Albanese doesn’t plan to hold another until after the next general election, which his Australian Labor Party may or may not win.

So, much attention is going to be paid to the reception Australians give King Charles and Queen Camilla when, on Friday night, they touch down in Sydney following their long plane journey (on a commercial jet we understand).

Of course, many Australians will have plentiful reserves of goodwill for the King as he completes this trip while having cancer.

And King Charles himself might even touch on the sensitive issue of the constitution when he addresses the national parliament in the capital, Canberra, next Monday.

In fact, the only protests being planned here are ones by the British group, Republic, whose chief executive, Graham Smith, has flown out to Australia to campaign against the visit and wave his group’s yellow ‘Not My King’ flags.

But the Australian republicans may end up being less vocal on the streets of Canberra and Sydney than their British cousins.

The cause they fight for is the same, but the British and Australian republicans have a different way of going about their campaigning.

The Australian Republic Movement is launching a new campaign this week ahead of the King and Queen’s visit and they are sure to place their recently-received letter from Buckingham Palace right at the heart of it.

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