King Charles faced shouts of “You are not my King, this is not your land” from a lawmaker in Australia during his official visit.
Charles, 75, had just sat down after making his speech to the Australian Parliament in Canberra on Monday Oct. 21, when a senator was heard calling from the back of the chamber.
Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian politician, first made claims of “genocide.” She then said, “Give us what you stole from us: our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people,” videos from the event shared by U.K. newspaper The Telegraph showed.
“You destroyed our land, give us a treaty — we want a treaty, we want a treaty with this country.”
Then, as she was being escorted out of the Great Hall of Parliament House, she kept calling out, “This is not your land, This is not your land. You are not my King, you are not our King.”
Thorpe is a longtime campaigner for a treaty between Australia and its first inhabitants, the BBC reported.
Charles was reported to be unruffled by the protest and Buckingham Palace spokespeople had no comment on the protest.
But a palace source pointed to the crowds who greeted them, saying the couple was “deeply grateful to the very many thousands who turned out to support them, and are only sorry they didn’t have a chance to stop and talk to every single one. The warmth and scale of the reception was truly awesome.”
In his speech made minutes before the interruption, Charles had praised the First Nations people, thanked them for their welcome and paid respects to “the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet,” The Telegraph reported.
“In my many visits to Australia, I have witnessed the courage and hope that have guided the nation’s long and sometimes difficult journey towards reconciliation,” he said.
The protest came as observers have been focusing on what reaction there will be in Australia to seeing the country’s head of state — a position he inherited after the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth on Sept. 8, 2022.
A republican movement has reportedly asked to meet the King during the visit. Charles has reaffirmed the longstanding position of the monarchy, reinforcing that he is relaxed about any change in status and constitution. It is up to the people of any of the states that have him as King to make that decision, his aides have said.
The Australian Republic Movement (ARM) was told in a letter from Charles’ assistant private secretary that “whether Australia becomes a republic is … a matter for the Australian public to decide.”
In fact, a recent poll shows support for a republic has waned. A Sydney Sunday Telegraph poll, quoted in The Times on Oct. 13, found that those favoring a republic was now at 33%, down from the 39.4% figure at the last referendum on the issue in 1999.
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Ahead of the disruption in Parliament, Charles and Queen Camilla, 77, had been welcomed to the Parliament building with the sounds of a didgeridoo.
It came on the fourth day of the couple’s visit to Australia. Earlier they had paid tribute at the Australian War Memorial – and even met an alpaca which was wearing a crown that had been brought along by a member of the crowd. Charles stopped to tickle the animal’s nose as he greeted it among the waiting crowds.
The King, a longtime campaigner on climate change, also visited CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, to talk to firefighters about combating the bush fires which devastate millions of hectares of Australian land each year.