Summary
Australian senators censured Senator Lidia Thorpe for her outburst against King Charles III during his visit, calling him a colonizer and demanding land and reparations. Thorpe defended her actions, stating she would repeat them if Charles returned.
He could simply not go play king in Australia. If you don’t want to be king of a country your ancestors forcibly colonized, you can just not. None of this is an obligation.
No blame on Westminster, at all? Like, we’re ignoring that the UK was a (flawed, but still) democracy for most of Australia’s colonial period?
And how would him abdicating help the situation in Australia?
He’s taken up a duty, and he’s fulfilling it. That includes being a symbol, and as such getting attacked for the past and present wrongs of Britain, Australia, etc. Still doesn’t make him responsible, though, in precisely the same way that Bugs Bunny is not responsible for the acts of the board of Warner Brothers.
That other villains exist in the story of the British empire doesn’t matter to whether he has to play king in Australia. It’s not a duty and he’s not a put upon civil servant. If he actually agreed that his position was illegitimate he could simply say so and stop performing it, with no meaningful loss to the world. But he’s a rich douche who’s happy to ride on his inherited privilege and claim to bestow his special personage to people across the world. People calling him illegitimate is the right and proper response to him pretending he has some special place in Australian society.
If Aussies want to get rid of the monarchy then they can. Noone but themselves is stopping them. Until they do, you can’t blame the monarchy for not telling its subjects what they’re supposed to do with the monarchy. For one simple reason: If the monarchy were to abolish itself it would be committing an undemocratic act.
Best I know according to their legal tradition the monarchy cannot possibly do that, only Parliament can, because only it has the power. Charles himself could abdicate but that would not abolish the monarchy, the title would instead move to the next one in line.
Quiz question: are indigenous people the majority in Australia?
No. There’s still a majority for it, though. Why isn’t she shouting at the prime minister “you’re not my government” is what I’m saying.
You know she can’t vote for a king, right?
And the king has no political influence. The gripe of the Aborigines is with the people actually running the country, with (portions of) the prevailing sentiment in the rest of the population, not the king. The king is just a symbol, a mascot, a piece of ceremony, this is like blaming Bugs Bunny that your movie script got refused.
The king didn’t make the Voice referendum fail. That was, best I can tell, a mixture of Chinese bot farms and “yep we should do something but this is not it”. There’s of course also racists around but they would’ve been drowned out by the rest of the electorate where it not for those factors.
I don’t think reconciliation failed, I don’t think even the Voice idea failed, but it needs more workshopping, say, having a wider set of established advisory bodies (just spitballing). Over here there’s a minority party which is exempt from the electoral threshold, that’s another idea. Whether Australia is a monarchy or republic has quite literally nothing to do with that, it’s an orthogonal issue.
…and how come I’m the fucking only one in this thread actually talking about aboriginal rights? Why’s everyone so fucking focussed on the monarchy thing, at the expense of those issues?
I don’t know. How come you’re one of the fucking only ones who doesn’t understand colonial symbolism?
You can always blame the monarchy for perpetuating the monarchy. “They didn’t, as a whole, proactively reject our bullshit” doesn’t mean they have to keep doing the bullshit. Everyone has agency, stop pretending one of the richest and most privileged people in the world just doesn’t have any other choice.
He doesn’t have to abdicate, he can just stop pretending he’s special. Tell them “no thank you, I don’t think my role as king of a colony is appropriate”. Let’s see that democracy you think loves monarchy pass a measure to depose an absent king and choose a successor. The monarchy exists because people are lazy and just let it keep existing, not because they’re deeply devoted to maintaining this dumb farce. But he’s not going to do that, not because he cares about democracy, but because he believes he’s special and is happy to tour “his” colonies.
The crown is not a person, it cannot choose anything. As said: If Charles abdicates, Parliament will just recognise the next in line (William) as King. And push come to shove there’s no end to that line.
First off, Australia is not a colony, it is an independent Kingdom. Secondly, it’d still be up to Australia to then abolish the monarchy, or force-retire him for behaviour unbefitting for a king and go with William, or whatever.
Then blame the people. Blame them for being lazy. Blame them for not agreeing. But why blame a monarch for not needlessly causing a constitutional crisis? He’s a mascot, he’s doing his job just as in other countries a President is doing their job, and when you compare what he says and does before and after coronation it also becomes obvious that he’s playing a role. He literally shut up about absolutely everything ever since he got that crown.