King Charles planning New Zealand and Australia visit
King Charles is planning his first trip to Australia and New Zealand as monarch late next year.
Queen Camilla is expected to accompany him for what would be the royal couple’s first visit since 2018.
“King Charles is planning to visit Australia and New Zealand in October,” said a former diplomat, who has had contact with the monarch and was speaking on condition of anonymity.
Charles’ visit would be the first test of his popularity as king among ordinary Australians.
Australia’s most recent Resolve Political Monitor survey of support for becoming a republic, conducted in the weeks after Queen Elizabeth’s death, found 54% of Australians said “no” and 46% said “yes” to Australia becoming a republic.
Any royal visit would coincide with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa, the source said.
CHOGM 2024 is due to start on October 21 and the meeting of 56 developed and developing nations held every two years includes Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and Malaysia. It usually lasts one week.
It was unclear if the royal visit would occur before or after the week-long event, the diplomatic source said.
A well-placed source in the Albanese Government, who asked not to be named, said the trip by the King and the Queen to Australian shores had not yet been formally confirmed by Buckingham Palace.
“It would be next October, it’s very possible it will happen. It would be around the time of CHOGM that he would come,” that source said.
Australia’s parliamentary sitting schedule for 2024 has a week-long break either side of the CHOGM meeting to allow time for King Charles and Queen Camilla to travel down under.
Last week during a visit to Australia, Tom Parker Bowles, the son of Queen Camilla, told The Age and Sydney Morning Herald that the King was due to visit Australia. “He’s coming next year, I think.”
When questioned, he confirmed he “really didn’t know” any details.
“There’s always a royal tour somewhere. I always assumed that Australia was a very important place to visit.”
A spokesperson for Australian GovernorGeneral David Hurley referred questions about the royal visit to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The department declined to comment.
It would be Charles’ first visit to Australia since 2018, when, accompanied by Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall, he opened the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.
The royal couple last toured New Zealand in November 2019 – their third joint visit here – when they frequented Auckland, Waitangi, Christchurch and Kaikōura,