Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirms King Charles to Australia

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has officially revealed when King Charles III will visit Australia.

King Charles III will visit Australia “later this year”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed.

Confirmation and timing of the visit were revealed amid continued backlash against an Albanese government role established to push for an Australian republic.

“The Prime Minister enjoys a warm relationship with the King, and looks forward to welcoming His Majesty to Australia later this year,” a government spokesperson told The Australian.

While the new monarch was tipped to visit Australia when he travels to Samoa in October, Mr Albanese’s confirmation puts the royal tour on the official calendar.

King Charles III hosts an Audience with the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Buckingham Palace. Picture: Getty Images

Buckingham Palace declined to comment when reached by the UK’s Telegraph, which reported that travel plans are at a “very early stage”.

King Charles and Queen Camilla are scheduled to be in the Pacific for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa on October 21.

Their stop in Australia will be their first since April 2018, and the first visit of King in the country’s history. Queen Elizabeth II visited several times, but her father King George VI, visited in 1926 before he ascended the throne.

Mr Albanese is a long-time supporter of the Australian Republican movement and voted in the failed 1999 referendum for an Australian head of state.

The Australian Monarchist League called on Mr Albanese to abolish the position of Assistant Minister for the Republic, currently held by NSW MP Matt Thistlethwaite, ahead of the King’s visit to the county.

“The incongruity of the Prime Minister basking in the reflected glory and publicity of welcoming King Charles to Australia while funding a minister committed to the abolition of Australia’s constitutional monarchy is obvious to all,” the league’s chairman Eric Abetz said in a statement.

Mr Albanese confirmed the King would visit Australia ‘later this year’. Picture: Getty Images

Speaking before the King’s coronation last year, Mr Albanese maintained that he wants an Australian citizen as the country’s head of state.

“That doesn’t mean that you cannot have respect for the institution, which is the system of government that we have,” he told ABC. “And I believe, as the Australian prime minister, I have a particular responsibility to represent the nation in a way that respects the constitutional arrangements which are there.”