According to opinion polls, more Australians want to ditch the country’s ties with the British monarchy than retain it.
The Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese includes an assistant minister for the republic. King Charles is being dropped from Australian banknotes. Most major Australian media outlets, including News Corp’s flagship newspaper the Australian, and especially the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, are no supporters of the King. The ABC last year notoriously used its coronation coverage to debate the future of the monarchy and to assert its direct responsibility for the greatest stain on Australia’s history: the suffering and maltreatment of Aborigines in the colonial period.
For Australian republicans, it seems that a monarchy suddenly is quite all right when one of our own can become a crowned head of Europe
This New Year’s Day, however, even the ABC are royalists. Why? Because the surprise announcement by Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II that she will abdicate in a fortnight’s time means there will be a new queen in Copenhagen.
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