King Charles not visiting Australia until 2024 is a big misstep
It has been confirmed that the new King and Queen consort are heading to Australia but there’s a glaring error in their decision.
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Hold onto your commemorative tea towels; someone give the Taronga Zoo koalas a blow-dry: The royal family is coming!
It has been four long years since any of the House of Windsor’s star players deigned to grace Australian shores with their presence. (Yes, Princess Anne was here in April and she’s a redoubtable trooper but … did anyone really care that much?) But, on Tuesday the royal souvenir collectors finally got some good news when it was confirmed that King Charles and Queen Camilla are heading Down Under.
Except, before anyone starts worrying if we have large enough national stores of top-shelf English breakfast tea and Shiraz for our new head-of-state and his vino-loving wife, hold your horses because the King and Queen are not coming until … 2024. (At least that will give Buckingham Palace time to start stocking up on enough SPF 50+.)
Oh Charles … You’ve only been in the top job for 41 days and already you are cocking things up with this particular corner of the Commonwealth.
The thing that I can’t quite wrap my head around here is, why wait?
Now sure, the reason that Their Majesties will be jetting in is to celebrate, cough, the 200th anniversary of the NSW Legislative Council, an event that sounds about as exciting to attend as Fergie’s next book launch which is probably BYO bubbles.
But the truly head scratching, befuddling ‘huh?’-inducing part of this Charles and Camilla news is why the hell they are going to wait so long to pop in and visit us; one of the monarchy’s last tent pole Commonwealth realms.
So far this year, things haven’t exactly been going swimmingly for the Commonwealth.
In March, William and Kate, now the Prince and Princess of Wales travelled to the Caribbean for what was meant to be a clutch of photo opportunities involving the couple awkwardly posing in sunglasses and attempting to dance to the steel drums; Instead the couple collided with the reality of a post-Black Lives Matter world.
Why it had not occurred to anyone inside Kensington Palace that eight days of a white couple who represent an institution that once played a key role in the slave trade might not be welcomed with wide arms is beyond me.
(In 1660 the Duke of York, later James II, helped establish the Royal African Company, the largest single slave trader in British history. Under the company’s royal charter, 100,000 enslaved African men and women were forcibly transported to the Americas with many of them branded with ‘DY’ for the Duke of York. There is, according to The Guardian, still a silver dinner service in the royal collection that was given to the Duke of Clarence, later William IV, for his efforts to counter slavery abolitionists in the 19th century.)
When, during that tour, the Waleses took part in an official engagement in Jamaica where they were driven past saluting men of colour while they were dressed in crisp white on the back of a Land Rover, the whole tableau looked more like Nigel Farage’s vision board or something out of a horribly outdated 1950s textbook than the image of a contemporary institution in tune with the Zeitgeist.
By the time that William and Kate were on their way back to grey skies and the comforting embrace of warm beer and Daily Mail readers, the Prince put out a pretty extraordinary statement acknowledging just badly they had misread things saying, “This tour has brought into even sharper focus questions about the past and the future.”
In 2022, Barbados officially became a republic, with Antigua and Barbuda announcing they would follow. During that ill-fated Wales tour, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the royal couple the country was “moving on” from British rule.
So given the shaky ground of the Commonwealth, why isn’t Charles trying to do more?
The obviously prudent move on the part of Buckingham Palace would be that come early 2023, we would see the few remaining working members of the royal family spun out to the larger countries in the Commonwealth including Australia for an energetic charm offensive.
And yet now we learn that, as things currently stand, we Australians won’t get a look in from our new King for roughly 18-months from the time he acceded the throne.
Does this mean Australia is not a priority? Or that the Palace took one look at recent polling showing that 60 per cent of us support remaining a constitutional monarchy, breathed a sigh of relief and promptly put us on the tour backburner?
That is, however, unlike Canada who will possibly be getting a visit from the Prince and Princess of Wales in November or December. (Jealous? Moi?)
Earlier this year it was announced that William’s signature climate crisis initiative the Earthshot Prize will be held in early December in Boston, representing both a very interesting Stateside brand push for the Prince and raising the likelihood that the couple will tack on a trip north of the border for a spot of hand-shaking and maple syrup-tasting.
While not confirmed, it makes sense that if the Waleses are going to be in the neighbourhood and have already locked in Fergie to dogsit, they would pop in and see Justin Trudeau et al.
And yet we Australians will have to wait more than a year to get our chance to touch the regal hem.
Look, on some level, I get it. Charles had not had the greatest of times while on our shores. In 1979, he was accosted by model Jane Priest while swimming in Cottesloe Beach in a tabloid set up; in 1983 while on tour with his new dazzling new wife, poor Charlie suddenly found himself downgraded to supporting star, bruised ego and all; and then in 1994, there was quite the drama when protester David Kang fired two shot from a starting pistol at the royal in protest over the treatment of Cambodian asylum seekers.
Camilla, meanwhile, is well known to hate flying so 24-hours in the air is hardly likely to be something she will be anticipating with much enthusiasm, even if it would mean that she could use the time to catch up on the entire Marvel multiverse and whatever Sandra Bullock has been up to.
But, at the end of the day and personal feelings aside, the royal couple have jobs to do and we as a nation deserve for our head of state to pay us a spot more attention.
If the King does not want his reign to go down in the history books as the period in time in which the largest Commonwealth realms such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Jamaica consciously uncoupled themselves from the monarchy then he is going to have to do better.
Much better.
That the majority of Australians have no interest in becoming a republic does not mean that Charles can be a negligent sovereign, only looking in on us occasionally or that he can take our continued support for granted.
A caveat here: There is a chance we have another royal visit between now and 2024 to look forward to given that in September Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed, “There have been some preliminary discussions about the now Prince and Princess of Wales visiting Australia.” So sure, maybe we will yet see the Waleses and their best collection of lightweight linen casuals.
But as of now, Tuesday’s news leaves something of a sour taste in my mouth. Where is the effort? As a nation we are particularly sensitive to slights, perceived or otherwise.
In 1997, when Diana, Princess of Wales died, one of the most famous newspaper front covers begged the Queen, “Show us you care.” Now, 25 years on, the same now holds true for her son. Get that SPF out Charles (or William or Kate). That or start worrying we might learn to spell r-e-p-u-b-l-i-C.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as King Charles not visiting Australia until 2024 is a big misstep
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