Albanese meets King, tells Piers Morgan he will pledge allegiance

London: Anthony Albanese has said he has no issues swearing allegiance to King Charles III during a public oath at this weekend’s historic coronation service and warned republicans that staging a vote on Australia’s future head of state was not imminent.

The Australian prime minister met the King during a private audience at Buckingham Palace in London on Tuesday, in what was described as an “insightful and rewarding” meeting, where he reiterated there was an invitation for the royals to visit Australia next year.

The King greets Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Buckingham Palace.Credit: PA

In an interview with controversial broadcaster Piers Morgan on Britain’s TalkTV, Albanese said he was certain that Australia would become a republic “at some stage in the future” but he preferred not to be a prime minister who “presides over just constitutional debates”.

He said his priority remained achieving constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and it was also possible to be a lifelong republican and still respect institutions.

It is the first time Australians and citizens of other Commonwealth nations will be invited to actively take part during a coronation ceremony and raise “a chorus of millions of voices” supporting “their undoubted King, defender of all”.

Asked if he would accept the invitation from the Archbishop of Westminister, Reverend Justin Welby, during next Saturday’s service, Albanese said he would do what was “entirely appropriate as the representative of Australia”.

“Australians made a choice in 1999,” he said, referring to the referendum result which supported the status quo with 54.87 per cent of the vote. “One of the things that you’ve got to do is to accept a democratic outcome. So, we made that choice. And I will certainly engage in that spirit as I have, as I have done 10 times as an MP.”

Leaders of the Australian push to ditch the monarchy said on Tuesday they wanted the prime minister to remain silent when guests at the coronation are invited to pledge allegiance to the new monarch.

Albanese said he believed Australia should have an Australian as its own head of state but also believed there was not yet a groundswell of grassroots support for the change and addressing climate change, improving Australia’s economy and further engaging in the Indo-Pacific was more important.

Anthony Albanese in his wide ranging interview with Piers Morgan.

“A demand for another vote isn’t something that can be imposed from the top because it won’t be successful,” he said. “When that demand is there. I’m sure a vote will be held... I don’t see it as being imminent.”

In an expansive interview that lasted almost 50 minutes, Albanese said he was concerned about creeping “cancel culture”, referring to the treatment of the late Australian actor and performer Barry Humphries by the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

He confirmed there would be a state funeral, co-hosted by the NSW, Victorian and federal governments because he was someone who had given “an enormous amount of pleasure to generations of Australians”.

“ I think that we’ve got to be able to laugh at ourselves,” Albanese said. “But a bit like rewriting some books. It is what it is at the time.

“That’s the context and I think that the idea of cancel culture is, in my view, a sad development because you often can get, as well, the pile on of social media. And you see happen so often and things quite often too are taken out of context.”

Albanese said he believed Joe Biden’s age should not stop him from seeking a second term as United States President, saying he was doing a “fantastic job”, and declined to answer whether he would be able to deal with Donald Trump should he return to the White House after the next election.

“The United States is a relationship between countries and between peoples, based upon our common democratic values,” he said.

Albanese will visit the BAE Systems shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness in north-west England on Wednesday, where the first AUKUS program submarine is due to be built.

He said had a “busy agenda” during his five-day visit to Britain, which includes a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, discussions on the Australia-UK free trade agreement and meetings with “other world leaders to strengthen Australia’s relationships around the world”.

Albanese also announced the Australian government would make a national contribution of $10,000 to Western Australian charity Friends of the Western Ground Parrot in honour of The King’s Coronation.

The funds will go towards the conservation of the Western Ground Parrot, a rare and critically endangered bird that is shy and rarely seen, in the remote Cape Arid National Park and Nuytsland Nature Reserve, to the east of Esperance.

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