From Schwartz Media on Daniel James This is seven am. King Charles's first visit to Australia as monarch laid bare a lot of unfinished business. Moments after the King sat down after finishing an address to parliamentarians and other dignitaries in the Great Hall in Parliament House, Independent Senator Lydia Thorpe was escorted out of the hall after approaching the King while shouting you are not our king and this
is not your land. It didn't just bring home the fact that, despite a failed republic referendum in nineteen ninety nine, having unelected an unaccountable head of state is still a concern for many Australians. It also highlighted that the more recent failed referendum on the Voice to Parliament has far from settled any of the issues around truth, treaty and justice.
Today Communists for the Saturday Paper Paul bon Jorno on the demands from Australia and other colonies for justice and reparations. It is Friday, October twenty five. Paul, good morning, and God save the King.
Yes, God save the King.
So Senator Laity of Thorpe's comments to King Charles during his visit here in Australia. They've made ways, but they were hardly surprising. We all know how she feels about the monarchy, don't we.
Yes, we do, and Thorpe's brazen disregard for protocol that the royal reception is well, it's hardly surprising given her often stated aim to draw attention to the injustices suffered by First Australians and by colonial dispossession and the so called frontier Wars that saw thousands of Indigenous men, women
and children killed. While she certainly got the whole world talking about these issues, even though she was condemned for her rudeness by the Prime Minister and senior politicians from both sides, Senator Thorpe did say she put in a written request for a respectful conversation with the King about
the plight of her people, which was ignored. It should be noted she didn't interrupt the King, but waited till he had spoken, waited till he had completed his address, and then she seized the moment of a lull in proceedings to stage a demonstration. And what a demonstration it was. She hit unresolved issues at the core of our national identity and democracy. Thorpe is far from alone in seeing the structure of our constitutional monarchy and aboriginal recognition as
significant unfinished business. A treaty that she demands would be an ultimate recognition of the rights and dignity of dispossessed indigenous peoples denied to them since Captain Cook claimed possession of the continent for the Crown and Daniel. It's not a surprise that the royal visit reignited these conversations. Indeed, the visit itself sparked a whole new discussion around a republic before the King even boughted his first class Singapore Airlines flight out of London.
So he'd done a great job all of describing what the deeper issues are in relation to Senator Thorpe's comments, but broadly would have been the reaction to her comments within the media and elsewhere.
Well, If the point of any protest is to draw attention to a cause and to get people talking, well Thorpe she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. She scored numerous media interviews in Australia radio and TV as well as internationally.
This Aboriginal senator calling out the King for Britain's treatment of her people.
That was the independent Senator Lydia Thorpe making her feelings very clear and Lydia Thorpe is with us now welcome to Times Radio.
She even got an interview on the esteemed BBC.
I managed to ask her what she had done and why.
I wanted to send a clear message to the King of England that he's not the king of this country. He's not my king. He is not sovereign. We are sovereign. To be sovereign, you have to be of the land.
Thorpe raised the issue of the crown being responsible for a genocide of her people, but what is incontrovertible as a number of studies have found of Aboriginal men, women and children were killed by British troops and later by government forces and the so called Frontier Wars to deliberately attempt to eradicate resistance to colonization. And her former Green's colleagues backed her. Their protest was to boycott the royal reception.
Adam Bant, the party leader, says they'll be pushing for a Truth and Justice commission to lay the foundations for a treaty. And we saw other Aboriginal leaders, for example ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner Vanessa Turnbull roberts Or. She joined the chorus for support, but Thorpe's protest also drew condemnation from some Indigenous leaders.
Marcia Langton, who played a leading role in the Ularoo Statement from the Heart, said Thorpe's outburst was quote embarrassing and shameful, and she offered an apology to the monarch on behalf of First Nations people. Nova Peris, the former Labor senator who headed the Republican movement, said Thorpe should quit parliament if she holds the institution in such contempt.
Now she has said that she hates the colony, f the colony, but she swears allegiance to the Queen, accepts her a simulation. She's gone into the Australian Parliament. But she didn't want the voice going into the Constitution because that was an act of simulation.
So which way is it?
Do you know? It's like?
And Opposition leader Peter Dunton, well, his comments were even more pointed.
I think there's a very strong argument for somebody who doesn't believe in the system, but it's willing to take quarter of a million dollars a year from the system to resign in principle.
And now mainstream Republicans except that the British monarch is the head of state, but argue strongly that he shouldn't be, especially in light of the research of historian Jenny Hocking showing our constitution gives the unelected head of state powers that exceed the conventions of a constitutional monarchy. The crown, according to these conventions, is required not to be party politically active in a way that disrupts our democratic process.
But you'd have to say, relatively recent history shows that this isn't always the case, and the dangerous undemocratic precedent has been set.
And that dangerous undemocratic precedent all was, of course, the Whitlam dismissal, which was an event that Australians will never forget. But time has a way of creating distance. Do you think those events still color how Australians view the king right now?
Well, probably not as much as they did, you know, a decade ago. But in King Charles we have a direct link to the dismissal and the palace's failure to caution Governor General Sir John Kerr against his plan to deceive his Prime Minister. Well Charles, in answered correspondence from the Australian Republic Movement, told them that it's up to the people decide. That he's a constitutional monarch and he
takes his advice from his Australian ministers. But Charles hasn't always acted in this way, as documented in historian Jenny Howkings' book She knows better than anyone just how involved Charles was in the sacking of GoF Whitlam. She was on the ABC recently discussing this.
Kerr describes this in several documents. It's not just the letters. He kept a journal in the nineteen eighties where he reflected back on key conversations that he'd had both with Charles and with the Queen.
And she spent more than four years fighting the National Archives to release the correspondence between the Queen, Charles's mother, the Queen's private secretary and the Governor General, Sir John Kerr.
The great upset is that there are hundreds more, and I have been trying for the last three or four years to get access to them. And even though they are governed by our conditions which say they should be open after thirty years. That is nearly two decades ago. They are still closed.
Hackins, says Charles in an extraordinarily improper letter, later told Kerb it was just months after the dismissal not to lose heart quote. What you did was the right and courageous thing to do.
So.
While all royal visits throw some light on the issue of a republic in Australia and the role of the monarchy, really now that we have Charles as King, there's even more edge to it. The royal couple celebrities as they are, even though they're old, and I've got nothing against old people,
we tell you. But they received warm welcomes from respectable, cheering crowds, but nowhere near the size of enthusiasm myself and other school children showed when his mother first visited a as a monarch back in nineteen fifty four, but this time with the first visit of a new monarch, when Charles and Camilla were greeted by the Prime Minister and Opposition leader in Canberra, all the state premiers. While they declined their.
Invitations, Victoria's just seem to Allen absent. South Australia's Peter malinowskis absent, saying it's with no disrespect to his majesty. Queensland Stephen Miles absent. He's got a bit on. New South Wales's Chris Mins absent.
Western Australia's Premier Roger Cook just vaguely cited that he had of the commitments. You'd have to say there's more indifference around the crown than ever before. But going back to Lydia Thorpe's comments, it's a reminder that the British monarch is a world figure at the epicenter of postcolonial demands for an apology and reparations in many of the fifteen constitutional monarchies still owing allegiance and other former colonies
in Africa and the Caribbean. Issues that are sure to come up in the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa.
After the break we're to now for the Republican movement. Paul Anthony Albanesi is spending even more time with King Charles and Queen Camilla as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting or Chogham kicks off in Samoa. Can you tell me about that meeting?
Yes, well, the Commonwealth heads of Government is an institution at the British Monarq you see as vital to keeping them and Britain still relevant in the contemporary world. So what we've got in Samoa where the current Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is some key issues are not only reparations over issues like slavery, but also our discussions on climate change are topping the agenda. Pacific nations are looking to use the meeting to draw attention yet again to
the existential threat of rising sea levels. Interestingly, the Pacific island nations particularly have got a very strong ally in King Charles on the need for real action on climate change. Charles actually went to this in his formal address in the Great Hall in Canberra, so nobody can doubt that he takes climate change seriously and is urging Commonwealth leaders and indeed world leaders are to take it more seriously than they have been to date.
Labor and peas, at least some of them, are putting pressure on the Prime Minister to open talks about reparations to the Caribbean countries when he visits the Commonwealth Summit which has just begun on Samoa.
On the issue of reparations over slavery. The British Prime Minister Kis Starmer has ruled out any formal apology or reparations. Apparently Starmer, who is a constitutional lawyer himself, sees a formal apology opening up Britain the two claims for billions of pounds worth of referations. But still it's clear that neither the King nor the British Prime Minister will be able to avoid this conversation at the meeting.
And returning to Australia, Paul, the visit has obviously ignited a lot of discussion about the monarchy. So where is the republican movement at the moment. It feels like we're actually moving further away from a republic strangely.
Yes, well, there was a bit of excitement amongst Australian Republicans when a new Prime Minister, Anthony Alberanizi, had a ministry for the Republic. But when the Voice referendum went down, he disbandoned that ministry and he put the Republic as it were, on the long finger. His people tell me that it hasn't been ditched, it's just been parked for
a while. Albanizi feels that he suffered politically for the failure of the referendum, when many people saw that he was distracted from their more pressing issues like cost of living. When he was asked why it had dropped the portfolio, he said he made it clear that there was only going to be one referendum this term and he hadn't
made a commitment to another one. The historian Jenny Hocking hopes that should Labor win the upcoming election, ALBANIZI will restore the Assistant Ministry for a republic, but I suppose in Albanze's favor in terms of keeping faith. In twenty twenty two, Assistant Minister Matt Thistlethwaite made it clear that the success of the Voice referendum would be the trigger for moving onto the Republic in a second term. Publicans
fear it could be another generation before the issue is revisited. Well, let's hope it won't be another generation before the issue of Aboriginal recognition and reconciliation is revisited and hopefully resolved.
Well, at this rate, Paul, I think we can get out our little flags and welcome King William at some point. Thanks so much for your time.
Thank you Bye.
Also in the news today, supermarket giants Coles and Wilworth so they will fight allegations they trick customers with fake discounts. Lawyers from both supermarkets have appeared in the Federal Court after the A Triple C launched legal proceedings in September claiming the company's misled shoppers by raising prices before later
discounting them. The supermarkets claim the cases against them are misconceived, and according to the ATO, more than one point five million Australians who would usually submit their tax returns with the help of an accountant have yet to do so. The ATO is urging taxpayers to submit their income tax returns before October thirty first, after which time they may face financial penalties. Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's produced by Shane
Anderson and Zolten Fetcho. Our technical producer is Atticus Basto. We are edited by Chris Dangate and Sarah mcvee. Eric Jensen is our editor in chief. Our mixer is Travis Evans. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio. Seven Am is hosted by Ruby Jones and myself Daniel James. We'll be back on Monday. Wow.
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