King Charles III is harassed by Lydia Thorpe, an indigenous Australian senator

Shortly after King Charles III finished making his remarks in the Australian Parliament on Monday, a voice rang out from the back of the hall. “You are not ours,” shouted Lydia Thorpe, an Indigenous senator and indigenous rights activist. “Give us back our land. Give us what you stole from us.”

As security guards escorted Ms. Thorpe from the hall, she continued to harass the king, demanding that Britain enter into a treaty with Australia’s indigenous people, and accusing the British colonists of committing genocide.

“Our bones, our skulls, our children, our people,” said Mrs. Thorpe, wearing a traditional opossum-skin cloak, shaking her fist at Charles as guards backed her toward the door. “You have destroyed our land.”

As soon as she left the room, Ms Thorpe could be heard shouting an epithet about the British “colony” in Australia. The King watched quietly from the stage, and he and his wife, Queen Camilla, left the reception a few minutes later.

It marked a stark interruption to Charles’ first visit to Australia since becoming king in 2022, and revived an enduring question about how long the British monarch will rule over Australia. When Australians were last asked this question in 1999, they voted against becoming a republic by 54.8 per cent to 45.2 per cent.

The republican movement has been largely quiet since then, although the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a widely respected figure in Australia, raised hopes among some republicans that it could resurface. Anti-monarchy activists have jokingly referred to the king’s visit as a “farewell tour.”

Charles is nothing if not a familiar figure in Australia. This is his seventeenth visit to the country, and his most memorable visit was in 1983, when he toured Australia with his first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales. She outsmarted him at every stop, something she later said caused friction between her and her new husband. Although he is not as famous as Diana or his mother, Charles has his fans in the country.

“There is no personal animosity towards Charles at all,” said Malcolm Turnbull, the former prime minister of Australia, who led the 1999 campaign for the republic. “Indeed, he has many admirers in Australia, as well as around the world, not least because of his leadership on environmental issues.”

Speaking in a telephone interview, Mr Turnbull said the transition from Elizabeth to Charles was nonetheless a good time to reconsider the question of republicanism. “It’s doable, and if that’s what people want, we should do it,” he said.

But Mr Turnbull said the republican movement had been hampered by long-standing divisions over how to elect a head of state, as well as by compulsory voting requirements that make it difficult to amend the Australian constitution.

Last year, the Labor government lost a referendum that would have created an advisory body in Parliament to give Indigenous Australians a greater voice on issues affecting them. Turnbull said the defeat left the government “deeply damaged” and reinforced its need to “choose the right timing” for another republican vote.

Among those who opposed the so-called vocal referendum – saying it did not go far enough in righting Australia’s colonial-era wrongs – was Ms Thorpe. She comes from a prominent family of Aboriginal activists and has long campaigned for Aboriginal rights and against the British monarchy.

In 2022, when Ms Thorpe was being sworn in after being re-elected to the Federal Senate, she raised her fist in a Black Power salute and referred to the then Queen as “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II the Colonial”. She was asked to repeat the oath and she did so in a tone of open mockery.

Buckingham Palace had no response to the disturbing incident that occurred on Monday. A palace official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Their Majesties are deeply grateful to the thousands who came out to support them, and are sorry that they did not have the opportunity to stop and speak to everyone.” one. The warmth and scale of the reception was truly wonderful.”

For Charles, the trip to Australia is his most ambitious overseas trip since the Palace confirmed his cancer diagnosis in February. The King’s itinerary was designed to give him plenty of time for rest and recuperation: after arriving in Sydney on Friday evening, Charles and Camilla took a day off on Saturday, before attending church services on Sunday.

The King will travel to Samoa later in the week to attend a meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government. There he may face more backlash from Britain’s colonial legacy. Caribbean leaders are expected to renew their calls for Britain to pay reparations for its role in the slave trade, as well as damage to the islands caused by climate change.