Australian senators and MPs paid tribute to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II on Friday as she returned from parliament, with some calling for a debate over Australia’s possible transition to a republic.
Environmental party leader Adam Bandt expressed his condolences on the monarch’s death, but reiterated his support for a Republican regime.
Australia has “a new head of state who has nothing to say on the matter. It is the right time to speak respectfully about whether this is appropriate”said.
The firstborn of Elizabeth II, now King Charles III of England, was proclaimed the head of state of Australia on September 11 at a ceremony held in Parliament in Canberra.
“We can offer our condolences to those who mourn her personally, while also speaking respectfully about what this means to us as a people.”underlined Bandt.
Another ecologist-senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, spoke about the need for reconciliation with Australia’s indigenous peoples.
Elizabeth the Second “has not taken children from their parents, nor has he personally attempted to remove and decimate one of the oldest cultures in the world”said Hanson-Young, in the Australian Senate.
Formally, however, the British monarch was the head of state, the senator emphasized.
“Generations of oppression, trauma and suffering due to colonization must be acknowledged”he added.
Last week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the country’s priority is to hold a referendum on the political rights of indigenous peoples, not to replace the monarchy with a republic.
Although the leader of the center-left Labor party is a staunch Republican, Albanian refused to participate in the debate on a possible regime change on Friday.
In 1999, Australians rejected the move to a republic in a referendum. At the time, polls conducted before Elizabeth II’s death showed that most Australians were in favor of ending the monarchy.
The republican issue has been revived since the Albanian came to power in May and promptly appointed the country’s first “deputy minister of the republic”, suggesting another referendum could be held in the future.
After Elizabeth II’s death, 73-year-old Charles III was officially proclaimed the new King of the United Kingdom and 14 Commonwealth countries.
Of these countries, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, has already promised to hold a referendum on the transition to a republic within three years.
Belize and Jamaica had also shown willingness this year to start the transition to the republican regime.
In November, another Caribbean archipelago, Barbados, became a republic.
Source: DN
