UK campaigner urges Australians: ‘Get on with a republic’

British republic campaigner Graham Smith calls for Australia to move away from the ‘taxpayer funded Kardashians’ now that the Queen has died.

Queen Elizabeth II with then Prince Charles in 2022. Picture: AFP.

British republic campaigner Graham Smith has urged the Australian Republic Movement to “get on with it”, saying “there is no time like the present” for Australia to get its own head of state and move away from the royals which he claimed was a “family on the make” and “tax payer-funded Kardashians”.

Mr Smith, chief executive of the republic.org.uk group in Britain, which has around 100,000 supporters, said his members would be protesting, vocally, during the King’s procession and then the return Coronation procession on Coronation day with groups of activists, dressed in bright yellow “Not My King” shirts along the route and around Trafalgar Square.

He said British republicans were being supported by the Alliance of European Republican movements with protesters from Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands and insisted that with “the main act”, Queen Elizabeth II having died in September, support for a republic support was growing.

Then Prince Charles after reading the Queen's Speech during the State Opening of parliament in 2022. Picture: AFP.

He claimed a recent poll showed just nine per cent of Britons were enthusiastic about the coronation of King Charles (24 percent were fairly interested, 35 percent not very much interested while 29 percent were not at all interested,) and that republican sentiment had grown to 30 percent, indicating that the trend showed “the monarchy is in trouble”.

Mr Smith batted away a lack of Australian and New Zealander republican support in London as part of an apathy about the republican issue: “Because most people (in those countries) don’t care anyway, and they don’t want to raise awareness of the coronation by default’’.

Mr Smith was galvanised to push for a republic after spending some time in Australia in the 1990s and then viewing British deference to the monarchy upon returning to his country of birth “with fresh eyes”.

He said: My message to Australia specifically is get on with it. You know, there’s no time like the present and there’s no reason why you would hold onto it (the monarchy).

“There is the same argument wherever you are, the monarchy is wrong.’’

Mr Smith said that monarchists in Australia and New Zealand talk about Charles being the King of Australia, but the reality was very different.

“He’s not the king of Australia, he’s the king of this country (the United Kingdom). And Charles sees himself as the king of this country. And everybody in this country sees him as the king of this country and the the idea that he’s the king of Australia, or New Zealand or Canada or wherever, it’s very much an afterthought.”

Mr Smith added: “Many, many days go by without him giving a second thought to these other countries. So, you know, get your own head of state. And also if you don’t get your own head of state pay for ours, because at the moment, we’re paying for the whole lot.”

Mr Smith was aggrieved that the UK was spending an “inordinate” £100m for the coronation, describing it as “a parade for one man”, who is “just a bloke in a suit chancing his arm”.

Mr Smith told a Foreign Press Association briefing on Monday – with arguments that would have seen him hauled off to the Tower of London under some other monarchs: “I think the problem is we’re constantly painted this picture of this sort of noble family and this wonderful heritage, but when you take all the trappings away it is just a family on the make.

“Accountability, and transparency, selflessness and leadership: on all of these measures the monarchy falls well short on every single one.”

Mr Smith claimed the royals and the palace demanded exemptions from paying various taxes, including inheritance tax, and that the monarchy was exempt from various rules such as workplace discrimination laws, environmental protection laws, and were outside of the freedom of information act. He alluded secrecy levels around the monarchy were tighter than MI5 in the 1980s or the CIA.

He said: “We are told it’s a dignified institution but I would say it is the grubby underbelly of our constitution.’’

Mr Smith knows there will be a huge spectator numbers descend on central London for coronation day, but he said the size of the crowd will not disprove anything.

“It will just be another big event and a lot of people will go because they want to see something historic and which is not gong to happen again in a long time… it doesn’t necessarily translate into royalists,’’ he said.