CANBERRA, Australia — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated Friday he would declare his allegiance to King Charles III on the monarch’s coronation regardless of believing that Australia ought to have its personal head of state.
Albanese voted in a failed referendum in 1999 for an Australian citizen to switch the British monarch because the nation’s head of state. He stated he accepted {that a} majority of Australians selected for the nation to stay a constitutional monarchy as a substitute of changing into a republic and would replicate that sentiment when he attended the king’s coronation Saturday in London.
“I haven’t changed my position on that and I’ve made that very clear. I want to see an Australian as Australia’s head of state,” Albanese advised Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“That doesn’t mean that you cannot have respect for the institution, which is the system of government that we have,” he stated. “And I believe, as the Australian prime minister, I have a particular responsibility to represent the nation in a way that respects the constitutional arrangements, which are there.”
The Australian Republic Movement, which campaigns for Australia to change into a republic, has urged Albanese to stay silent when the Archbishop of Canterbury invitations “all who desire” among the many congregation at Westminster Abbey to take the oath of allegiance to the king.
But Albanese stated he would observe protocol by taking the oath, although his workplace didn’t reply when requested if Albanese meant to affirm or swear his allegiance to the king.
“I think as the Australian prime minister, people expect me to not come to the king’s coronation in order to create a controversy,” Albanese stated.
Brought up as a Roman Catholic, Albanese opted towards swearing an oath on a Bible a yr in the past when he was appointed prime minister by Governor-General David Hurley, who was then Australia’s consultant of Queen Elizabeth II.
He took an affirmation of workplace, a secular various to the oath that doesn’t point out God or the monarch.
Albanese’s eclectic Australian delegation to the coronation consists of Hurley and all six state governors. The delegation shall be led by Australian girls’s soccer star Sam Kerr, who presently performs for the London-based membership Chelsea; post-punk pioneer musician Nick Cave; and comic Adam Hills.
As a coronation reward, the Australian authorities will donate 10,000 Australian {dollars} ($6,700) to a charity that conserves the Western floor parrot, an endangered Australian chicken.
Albanese has dominated out holding a referendum to switch the British monarch with an Australian president throughout his first three-year time period in workplace. This yr, he’s prioritizing a referendum that may acknowledge Indigenous Australians within the structure and create a consultant physique to advise the Parliament on Indigenous points.
While Albanese has appointed a minister chargeable for the republic, he has not offered a timeframe for when Australians will get to vote on such a constitutional change.
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