The British King Charles III will not object if Australia decides to declare itself a republic and no longer considers him the head of state, reported The Daily Mail, cited by BTA, citing extracts from a letter that the private secretary of the monarch sent to members of the Australian Republican Movement on the eve of Charles III's visit to Canberra and Sydney.
„As a constitutional monarch, His Majesty acts on the advice of his ministers, so the question of whether Australia should become a republic is for the Australian public to decide,” said the document, which the movement's leadership received in response to a request to meet the king.
The Australian Republican Movement, founded in 1991, is calling for the head of state to be elected and the post of governor-general to be abolished. Australia and the UK are expected to remain “closest friends and allies”.
The referendum in Australia was held on November 6, 1999. Citizens were asked to answer the question whether they supported the idea of transforming the country into a parliamentary republic headed by a president. The republican movement in the country had to get more than 50% of the vote in at least four states, but in the end 55% of the voters (about 12 million Australians participated in the referendum) were in favor of retaining the power of the British monarch, and only 45% voted for the creation of a republic. The debate over declaring a republic in Australia has intensified since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2023.
At the beginning of February, Buckingham Palace announced that Charles III had been diagnosed with cancer, after which he temporarily withdrew from most public duties. The monarch's exact diagnosis was not announced, but it comes after the king underwent surgery on January 26 for an enlarged prostate. Despite his illness, His Majesty has been appearing more and more in public in recent months.
The visit to Australia and the Commonwealth of Nations island nation of Samoa will be the monarch's second foreign visit since he was diagnosed with the disease. The current king was last in Australia in 1994, where he was shot twice with blank cartridges by student David Kang, who explained his act as a desire to draw attention to the problems of Cambodian refugees.