Mexico City /
A Australian senator rebuked this Monday at king Charles III about the legacy of British colonization in the country, where the monarch called for mobilization against climate change during a speech before Parliament in Canberra.
The king, who Eight months ago he announced that he had canceris on a nine-day visit to Australia, where he is head of state, and to Samoa. It is about his longest tour abroad since he was crowned, in May 2023.
At the end of a speech before the Australian Parliamentthe aboriginal senator Lydia Thorp He questioned the monarch, shouting anti-colonial slogans.
“Give us back our land! Give us what you stole from us!” the deputy launched into a diatribe that lasted almost a minute.
“This is not your land, you are not my king”, The independent legislator insisted before the 75-year-old sovereign, after citing the “genocide” of indigenous Australians at the hands of European settlers.
Australia was a British colony for more than a century, during which thousands of aborigines were killed and entire communities displaced.
The country obtained an ide facto independence in 1901but it never became a full-fledged republic. Charles III He is the head of state.
Earlier, the king had urged Australia, very dependent on the mining industryto adopt a leading position in the fight against climate change.
“Being good managers of the world is something that interests us all,” declared Charles III in his first speech before the Australian chamber as head of state.
“Leadership” against global warming
“The magnitude and ferocity” of natural disasters are accelerating in Australia, the monarch stressed, seeing in this phenomenon a “undoubted sign of climate change.”
“That’s why Australia’s international leadership in global efforts to protect our climate and biodiversity is vitally important,” he insisted.
The king has long been known for his ecological sensitivitywhich sometimes borders on eccentricity.
Thus, he transformed a Aston Martin DB6 so that it can run on ethanol made from leftover cheese and white wine, and claims that it speaks to plants so they grow better.
Before his speech in Parliament, Carlos placed a bouquet at the Memorial dedicated to the Australian victims of the two world wars and other conflicts.
I also planned visit a public scientific agency laboratory dedicated to the study of forest fires and the national botanical garden.
However, on the agenda There are not many mass events, except for a giant barbecue in Sydney, an event at the city’s opera, due to the king’s delicate state of health.
Chloe Pailthorpe and her children traveled to the capital from a nearby rural village in the hope of seeing the monarch. “I have been writing to members of the royal family since I was about ten years old”he told AFP.
“My children have written to members of the royal family. We love what they do,” he added.
However, several prime ministers of Australian states did not attend the reception organized in Parliament in honor of the king, a possible indication that the British sovereign no longer has the influence he once had.
Although they are rather favorable to the monarchy, Today’s Australians are no longer so enthusiastic about the crown as they were in 2011, when thousands of people took to the streets to greet Elizabeth IImother of Charles III.
JCM
