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Oh now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the twenty first of October.
I'm Sam, I'm emma.
On Friday, King Charles and Queen Camilla touchdown in Sydney for a five day visit. It's their first of visual visit to Australia since Charles became King in twenty twenty two, and his first overseas trip since being diagnosed with cancer. As they continue their formal engagements with government and community representatives over the coming days, the question of Australia's place in the monarchy has resurfaced amongst commentators and spectators.
It's a conversation really being led by the Australian republic movement to say more and more Australians believe we should leave the Commonwealth. In today's deep Dive, we're going to discuss why the King and Queen are here and where Australia is at when it comes to the monarchy verse Republican debate. But first Sam, what's making headlines?
The US presidential campaign is intensifying as it enters its final fortnight. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spent the weekend in the swing states of Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, where they're both expected to remain for the rest of the fortnite. Early voting has now commenced in twenty six of the fifty US states, with more than three hundred thousand ballots cast on the first day of early voting
in Georgia alone. Most national polls suggest Harris holds a slim lead over the former president.
A former jet style pilot has been sentenced to thirty two years in jail for murdering retiree Carol Clay at a remote campground in northeast Victoria. Greg Lynn was in Victoria's high Country when he confronted Clay and her partner and shot Clay dead in Her partner also died during the confrontation, before Lynn burned and buried their bodies. A jury in Victoria's Supreme Court found Lynn guilty of murdering Clay earlier this year, but acquitted him of killing her
male partner. During sentencing, just as Michael Croucher described Clay's death as violent, brutal, and horrific.
Large parts of Cuba and the Bahamas have been evacuated in preparation for Hurricane Oscar to make landfall, marking the fifteenth major hurricane of the season, which goes from June to November. Cubans have been without power for many days after its largest power plant failed, with power only available to those with private backup generators. Cuba's Prime Minister has suspended all non essential public services to conserve the available electricity in anticipation of the hurricane.
And in today's good news, a pilot who rescued more than one hundred and forty animals from shelters in the US before Hurricanes Helene and Milton has now adopted one of the cats he rescued. Pilot Matt Prebish volunteered to fly dozens of dogs and cats to safety from shelters in Florida and Tennessee, all of whom are now up for adoption. Pebish said one of the cats he rescued caught his attention once he safely landed, a kitten named Avery.
The pilot has now adopted Avery and taken him to his home in Texas, where the four month old will join another cat and two dogs, Okay Sam King Charles the third and his wife Queen Camilla are here in Australia. They touched down on Friday ahead of their first royal visit here since Charles became king.
Now he's no stranger to Ozzie Shaw's he visited here first.
In nineteen sixty six as a high school student, but this is a bit of a different visit for him now that he is king. What's on the agenda this time.
Around, Well, they're really going to try and do as much as possible. It's short time that they're spending across Sydney and Canberra, but they've got plenty of people who want to see them, especially in government and community circles. They were greeted by Anthony Albernizi at Sydney Airport on Friday night, and over the weekend they attended a community barbecue hosted by New South Wales Premier Chris Mins and they had the opportunity to view the Defense Forces Navy
fleets float down Sydney Harbor. Now they're going to head to Canberra and there they're going to meet with government officials, community groups and attend a couple of events. There's one at the War Memorial and one at Parliament House. Now it's not actually a parliamentary sitting week, so I'm not sure how many federal MPs and senators are going to be in town for it. Charles is also scheduled to tour the National Botanic Gardens he loves a garden and
meet with scientists at the CSIRO to discuss bushfire research. Meanwhile, Camilla is going to be meeting with domestic violence advocates and representatives from a great organization called Givett, which is charity she's a patron of that helps distribute donations to various causes.
Speaking of the camera leg of this royal visit, we did a story last week that really resonated with the TDA audience and it was about the fact that none of the state premiers had accepted an invitation to attend a welcome ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra. TDA journo Harry Sekulich actually reached out to all six state leaders and confirmed none would be in attendance.
None.
None.
This drew criticism from pro monarchist figures who said that their absence showed a huge lack of respect, but the premiers defended their reasons, which included, you know, Mostly it was about scheduling conflicts, but some had election campaign commitments, so they all sort of gave a reason and defended why they wouldn't be there.
But that was a big headline last week, and.
That's why I think it'll be equally interesting to see what federal politicians are making the journey to Canberra in a non sitting week to be there for all of the official functions. On other point worth mentioning is that this is Charles's first overseas trip since his cancer diagnosis. You might remember that Buckingham Palace announced back in February that the King had been diagnosed with cancer. They didn't specify what type, but we know that he's been undergoing treatment.
We also know that he's paused the treatment for this trip, and some reports suggest he's traveling with his own medical team and even his own blood supply.
So I guess one of the big questions then is why now, why make the trip if he is not in good health, if he's in the middle of treatment, what's the significance.
Well, I think there is some significance to the fact that it is his first visit as king, and he's a new king. He's had relatively little time in the role, and touring the different countries that are part of the Commonwealth is a really important part of the role of the head.
Of the monarch.
Charles has been his sixteen times before, this is his first time as king. There's also a bigger engagement in the region though, that I think is the main reason why the trip is happening, and that is this week's Commonwealth Head of Government meeting in Samoa. Now this is the first one that Charles is going to attend as Head of the Commonwealth and that's obviously significant, and that's where he gets the opportunity to meet with leaders from other Commonwealth nations all in one spot.
So it sounds like they're trying to cover a lot of bases, a lot of motivating factors for this trip. One of them could be about the sentiment towards or a growing sentiment away from the royal family. How are Australians feeling about the visit.
It's really mixed, like there is certainly a contingent of Australians who are really excited, and I think the clearest way to try and figure out who those people are will be at the events themselves. Yeah, who's turned up to actually catch a glimpse of Charles and Camilla. But there is a growing sense of what you could call indifference or potentially skepticism about the monarchy's role in modern Australia.
I mean, reading through some of the comments from the TDA audience on that post you mentioned earlier, it definitely seems to be particularly pertinent amongst young people.
Yeah, and leading the charge in terms of the discussion about Australia leaving the monarchy is the Australian Republican movement. They've been pretty vocal in the lead up to this visit and over the last few days.
What's going on there.
Well, they've been seizing on this moment to reignite the debate about Australia becoming a republic. They've launched this cheeky campaign calling this the farewell Tour of the British Monarchy in Australia, and they've gone all the way. They've got posters and T shirts that make it look like it's the farewell tour for a rock band.
Yeah. I've seen the merch, very cheeky, very clever marketing. But behind that, behind that sort of tongue in cheek sentiment. What is the actual momentum behind the Republican movement at the moment, Is it experiencing any kind of an uptick?
Well, we have to look to some of the opinion polls out there for an answer to that. Some recent polling suggests that about sixty of Australians would prefer an Australian head of state over King Charles, and in one Guardian es Central poll from last year, fifty four percent said that they would support a republic referendum.
Those are pretty significant numbers. But you mentioned a referendum there, so what do we need.
To know about that?
Well, I think it's important when looking at that last Guardian poll to remember that the support for a referendum tends to fluctuate based on what's happening in the news. So you see kind of peaks and troughs based on controversies in the royal family, if there's a high profile death, if there's a transfer of power, or if there's indeed a visit, and that kind of leads into what you were saying earlier that a visit from the King, it would hope, from the King's perspective, firm up some of
that support for the monarchy. The challenge for those who want to push for a referendum to test whether Australia should become a republic is turning that up and down then kind of more fluctuating sense of strength in the publican movement into concrete action, no matter what time of year that question is put to the Australian people.
Yeah, and if we know those numbers are about fifty four percent or sixty ish percent come referendum day, you know that is not a confident figure for a victory.
No, And referendums tend to fail, right, I mean, we've had eight successful referendums out of forty four attempts in Australian history. The last republican referendum in nineteen ninety nine did fail. There was about forty five percent of Australians who voted in favor and fifty five percent against.
Yeah, that's really interesting to reflect on. I suppose nineteen ninety nine, you know, twenty five or not that long ago, years ago, And I think when we talk about that referendum, obviously it was unsuccessful, but we don't often zoom in on the numbers. And forty five to fifty five it's not overwhelming in any sense in the word. So what's the argument for Australia becoming a republic movement?
And then on the other side, you know there.
Is this group of loyal royalists monarchists behind the Australian Monarchists League.
They have their own arguments. What are the key points?
This kind of could make its own podcast, because there's some really interesting arguments on both sides, but in brief and so that you've got the context to understand it whilst King Charles is in town. The key argument for the republic movement is that it's time for Australia to have its own head of state. They want somebody who is Australian and who lives in Australia, who understands the
country and is directly accountable to Australians. And they say it's part of this process of asserting our national identity and independence, especially as we continue to struggle with how our history of colonization and First Nations community disadvantage fits into the broader narrative of Australia.
And the argument also is that the monarchy or the royal family's role in Australian life remains or has become fairly ornamental, that we have that relative independence in the structures of our government and everyday life here, and that you know, this is just kind of putting a full stop on that independence.
Kind of things will change symbolically, but nothing will change logistically, is the kind of sense they want to put out there now. On the other side of things, monarchists argue that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We've got a current system that is working. They say that the monarchy provides stability and continuity, and that it's an important
link to our history and traditions. There's also the argument that changing to a republic would be complicated, and it could be potentially divisive, and it could present, in some monarchists' arguments, a distraction from more pressing issues facing the country.
Well, I'm just thinking about what would change tangibly in our day to day lives if Australia became a republic, and first thing I think of is money.
Currency.
Right, surely we would have to implement some kind of either not necessary new currency, but we'd need to The mint would need to produce new physical currency. Be a different face on face that seems like an expensive and timely exercise.
Well, the actual running of a referendum is expensive and timely, so there's that argument as well.
So where does the current government stand on all this?
So Anthony Aberesi's Labor government came into office with a promise to hold a referendum on becoming a republic in their second term if they were to be reelected.
Is this something I completely forgot about?
Yeah, it was a big call.
Yeah, I remember there being discussion in the lead up to the Queen's death about when would be the right time and this promise, but it's kind of gone away a little bit.
Well, I think they've backed away from that timeline after the failure of the Voice referendum last year because there seems to be a sense that the appetite for really changing the constitution is not quite there at the moment for Australians, and two failed referendums in two consecutive terms is not something any government would want on their record.
Yeah, got a way up the political gains or potential losses of yeh, a second referendum. I do think it's also important to discuss here what's been happening around the world in other Commonwealth countries. So Jamaica has said its planning on removing Charles as its head of state by twenty twenty five. There's been a lot of momentum there towards becoming a republic after more than three hundred and
fifty years of colonial rule. You might remember there was quite an ill fated royal tour in twenty twenty two in Jamaica and around the Caribbean by Prince William and Princess Kate. There were some viral images from that time of the Prince and Princess on one side of a wire fence and the hands of children kind of reaching out to them. It really evoked imagery of former British colonial rule and was bad pr really bad pr for
the royal family at that time. Now, of the fifty six member states of the Commonwealth, more than twenty are in Africa, and that reignites that conversation about what does colonial history represent. And back to the Caribbean, we've got government officials in Belize, the Bahamas, Grenada, Antigua, a few other regions that have signaled they do want to become republics in the near future.
Other parts of.
That region that have done it Guyana, Trinidad, and Tobago Dominica all removed the then monarch, Queen Elizabeth as their head of state in the seventies, and Barbados followed suit in November twenty twenty one, so it became the newest sort of republic in the world, the most recent Commonwealth country to leave the monarchy behind. But obviously there are dozens of countries where that conversation is ongoing. So it marks a very interesting context for this visit from Charles
and Camilla. Not only this visit, but you know their place and their relevance in the world.
Well, I think that what the King and Queen are trying to do is trying to modernize the image of the monarch, and part of this is the fact that they're trying to do things that seem more relevant to contemporary Australian society. There's more of a focus on climate change, there's more of a focus on First Nations rights in their schedule for the next couple of days, and there's
a lot of good wills still to them. Personally amongst Australians, there was a recent survey that found half of Australians have a positive view of the King and royal family as people, so you know they're trying to, I guess, bring that out of the woodwork and get those people to line up on the sides of a function to give some of those helpful visuals, not like the ones that you spoke about on past trips. But on the other hand, this visit has brought this debate back into
the news cycle. I mean, we wouldn't be having this conversation today on the podcast if not for the fact that the King and Queen are here. And some of the key questions I think people are asking is does it still make sense for us to be in the monarchy and are we ready to take that next step as a nation.
We've sort of mentioned that the death of Queen Elizabeth shifted gears a little bit. Leaders had suggested that it wasn't appropriate to discuss leaving the monarchy while Queen Elizabeth was still its head, while she was still alive, So the Republican movement it sort of felt like it was on hold. And then when the Queen did die, there were hopes from some camps that it would be the right time. Did anything change.
There was a bit of polling that compared the sentiment of Australians before and after the Queen's death. There was a twelve percent increase, so twenty percent up to thirty two percent of those who felt Australia should become a republic as soon as possible. So there was a bit of a tick.
After a significant jump.
Yeah, there was, but it wasn't seismic. It wasn't this massive ground swell. It didn't feel like, at least in the polls, like it was the overwhelmingly logical move in the minds of most Australians. The same percentage this is really interesting, the same percentage of Australians think that Charles will be the final monarch to rule, So in other words, we're going to leave soon as those who think that that's not going to happen. So it's quite a divided country.
In that way.
So I mean that division kind of tells us that there's probably not going to be any major movement on this within the next few years. It's unlikely we're going to see a referendum in.
The short term.
But in terms of the next few days, Charles and Camilla, the remaining days of their visit, I think what everyone will be watching closely for is that public reaction. Is there going to be that groundswell of enthusiasm or is the sense of apathy going to kind of take over and give us some more clues about where public opinion is heading.
It's going to be a really visual examination of how people feel about the monarchy on the streets of Sydney and Canberra.
Absolutely well, we'll certainly be keeping a close eye on it all.
Thank you so much for breaking it down for us, Sam.
Thanks em.
We'll be back tomorrow with more of the news you need to know. In the meantime, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcadion woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.