THE Australian Republic Movement puts it thus: “With over 65 millennia of First Nations culture, over two centuries of European settlement and British institutions, and today’s richly diverse communities, Australia is the most successful multicultural nation on Earth. Some of us have ancestors who’ve been here tens of thousands of years. Some of us have ancestors who arrived on prison ships. Some of us have chosen more recently to adopt Australia as our home. And yet we are all Australian. We are all equal: we believe in fairness, integrity and democracy, and we look forward to an even brighter future. So why does Australia still have a king? It doesn’t make sense.”

Although most of the Movement’s argument is, in reality, a broader one about hereditary monarchy, it is accentuated for Australia by the distance of Clarence House from Parliament House, Canberra. The royal visit draws attention to (we cannot say “revives”) the perennial question of the meaning of the Crown to a country that currently has a pro-republican Prime Minister and an Indigenous debate that casts the issue in an existential light for at least some of the population. This was illustrated in the heckling of the King by the Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe on Monday, a reflection of the resounding rejection in the referendum a year ago, after an acrimonious campaign, of the proposal to recognise First Nations people and to create a body by means of which they could advise the government.

But this week’s visit was generally reckoned a success, partly thanks to a widespread sense of appreciation that it had happened at all, given the King’s illness. He had already made it clear that he would not be resistant to change if Australia wanted it. Some of our readers may be surprised to learn that it was only in 1981 that the Anglican Church there ceased to be “the Church of England in Australia”, and that the Church’s full autonomy goes back only as far as 1962. During that period, many Commonwealth nations have changed their relationship with the Crown; and the lowering of the flag had its ecclesiastical counterpart in capital after capital. Australia’s Anglican Church was supportive of the constitutional amendment and the “Voice” to the Commonwealth Parliament; but it was clear last year that Australia was far from having reached a majority, let alone a consensus, in favour. While Senator Thorpe yoked the monarchy and the First Nations question in her protest in the Australian Parliament, it remains to be seen where change will come first. It is clear that neither Church nor monarch would stand in the way.