Studio 10 host Narelda Jacobs accepts King’s honour, despite her opposition to the monarchy

Narelda Jacobs has accepted an honour despite her opposition to the monarchy, taking her lead ‘from those who recognise the importance of stepping into the room in order to change it’.

Studio 10 host Narelda Jacobs has accepted a King’s Birthday honour, despite her fierce opposition to the monarchy.

Jacobs made headlines last September when, in the days following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, she called on Britain to apologise for its colonisation of First Nations people.

The news presenter said the British monarchy was a “symbol of colonisation”.

“I know the monarchy is above politics but I think we would have liked there to be just a little bit more (said) over (the Queen’s) 70-year-reign,” Jacobs said on the Studio 10 program on September 12 last year.

“While the world has united in grief over the Queen’s passing, colonised people have also united in their trauma.

“There are human remains that are sitting in British museums even now, and there has been no acknowledgment of that or apology for that.”

In a statement released by her employer Network Ten ahead of the awarding of her King’s Birthday honour on Monday, Jacobs said: “While I’d prefer to receive such an honour from a different head of state, the Commonwealth is the system within which we operate. Before choosing to be named on the King’s Birthday Honour’s list, I considered all the First Nations people who’ve courageously taken up spaces created by the colony.

“I thought about my Dad receiving his MBE from the Queen in 1981, while fighting to have his Noongar Sovereignty recognised, fully aware of the monarch’s role in dispossessing his people.

“I decided to take my lead from those who recognise the importance of stepping into the room in order to change it.”

Jacobs has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (general division) for her services to the media and to the community.