Anthony Albanese confirms King Charles visit later this year

Anthony Albanese has confirmed King Charles will visit Australia later this year as the Prime Minister faces pressure to dump an outer ministry role for an Australian republic.

Anthony Albanese and the King ahead of his coronation in May 2023. Picture: AFP

Anthony Albanese has confirmed King Charles will visit Australia later this year as the Prime Minister faces pressure to dump an outer ministry role for an Australian republic.

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

The royal visit would be the first since King Charles’s accession to the throne and the first visit to Australia by the sitting monarch since Queen Elizabeth II in October 2011.

The King’s visit is tipped to be in the second half of the year when he is scheduled to be in the Pacific to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa in October.

Ahead of the scheduled visit, the Australian Monarchist League has called on the Albanese government to abolish the position of Assistant Minister for the Republic, held by NSW MP Matt Thistlethwaite.

“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,” Australian Monarchist League chairman Eric Abetz said.

“The assistant minister, who personally gets over $260,000 per annum plus travel, plus staff, plus accommodation, is an abuse of taxpayers’ money.

“There is no doubt the propaganda machine for the republicans is fed well over half a million dollars each and every year by the taxpayer at a time when cost-of-living pressures are substantial.”

Mr Thistlethwaite is also Assistant Minister for Defence and Veterans’ Affairs.

The debate for and against a republic has been bubbling along despite 55 per cent of voters rejecting a republic in the 1999 referendum. The debate flared up again after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mr Abetz, a former long-serving Liberal senator for Tasmania, said Australian voters in the 1999 referendum “rightly and overwhelmingly repudiated an attempt to change their Constitution by those seeking to abolish not only our heritage but our stable democracy, which is envied around the world”.

“While Australians harbour doubts about their elected representatives from time to time, they are resolute in their support of their Constitution, which has served them so well,” Mr Abetz said.

“Australians are rightly suspicious about politicians who want to change their Constitution because it is always about giving politicians greater power.”

Before the unsuccessful voice to parliament referendum, Mr Thistlethwaite set out a possible pathway for a second-term Labor government to hold a referendum on a republic.

The assistant minister told The Australian at the time that he saw the voice as “an important stepping stone for the success of a republic referendum”.