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King Charles and Queen Camilla’s arrival in Sydney today has generated surprisingly mild media interest, with less media coverage than when Taylor Swift touched down in Australia earlier in the year, Crikey can reveal.
Data provided by the real-time media monitoring provider Streem shows there were a total of 853 mentions of the royal visit across online, print, radio and TV news in the 24 hours before the king’s arrival.
By contrast, when Swift arrived on Valentine’s Day, there had been 1,045 mentions of her visit in the preceding 24 hours.
Another notable Australian visitor this year, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, got 506 media mentions the day before his arrival on June 14.
A branding expert said Charles had not had a lot of time to define himself in the Australian imagination, especially compared to his predecessor Queen Elizabeth, who was able to build up an air of “stability and continuity” over her 70-year reign.
“I think that ‘brand royal’ has been fragmented for some time — arguably, [Queen Elizabeth] ended her life and reign as perhaps the dominant strand of that, and now it’s less clear what the royals stand for in Australia,” Tim Riches, group strategy director at the brand consultancy firm Principals, told Crikey.
“People had a clear sense of what Elizabeth stood for in the wider cultural context, and the sense of affection and admiration for her grew towards the end of her reign, helped along by both a volatile cultural and political context and a sort of mythologising [by the Netflix show] ‘The Crown’.”
Former Australian Republic Movement chair Peter FitzSimons said that when Queen Elizabeth visited Australia in 1970, he had been nine years old and “crawled through a forest of 10,000 legs to get a glimpse of her”.
“And I did get a glimpse of her, and I felt like the angels had smiled upon me. I don’t think in 2024 there is anybody that is that excited [by Charles’ visit],” he told Crikey.
“With [Queen Elizabeth] you genuinely had someone who, for whatever the absurdity of the system, clearly devoted her entire life to the royal duty, never putting herself first. Nobody would look at Charles in the same way.”
Australian Monarchist League spokesperson Alexander Voltz acknowledged that the King didn’t have the same profile as his mother had, but argued it didn’t matter.
“The popularity of the monarch is wholly irrelevant as far as the constitution and our system of government is concerned,” he told Crikey. “Remember, power is vested in the crown, not the personality of the king or the late queen, or whoever happens to be the monarch. The queen reigned for 70 years, and the king likely won’t reign for that long, so the opportunity to build [the same kind of] profile may not be open to the king.
“It’s the first time that an Australian king has visited Australia, so that’s something to be excited about. There’ll be a certain historical relevance to the tour, and a sentimental aspect as well.”
Riches said that the “magnetic appeal” of Australia’s connection to the United Kingdom itself had diminished as the other country was rocked by turmoil in the last decade.
“The UK appears like a chaotic mess, where the regret over Brexit lingers and there’s a constant turnover of leadership. I suspect a lot of Australians have lost faith in the UK as a source of cultural connection, stability and reassurance,” he said.
Meanwhile, the royal family’s depiction in “The Crown”, the publicity surrounding Prince Harry and his family’s alleged treatment of his wife Meghan, and the Prince Andrew scandal had all had a chilling effect on the royal family’s image, according to Riches.
On the other hand, a sense of turmoil in the world is exactly the sort of context where the royal family’s unchanging traditions become more important to those who hold them dear. The question, according to Riches, is which royals the Commonwealth subjects will turn to.
“I think there’s an interesting question about transfer of affection — who has that affection been transferred to [after Elizabeth’s death]? Is it to Charles and Camilla, or to William and Kate? We might get a big exciting reset when William gets his coronation, or at some other time, in due course,” Riches said.
The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this week that while only a third of Australians wanted their country to become a Republic, compared with 45% who wanted to remain a monarchy, Prince William and Princess Catherine were more popular than the king and queen.
According to the outlet, a survey showed 40% would rather be visited by William and Kate than Charles and Camilla, compared with 36% who preferred the tour by the king and queen.
Esther Anatolitis, current co-chair of the Republic Movement, predicted that Australia’s increasing diversity and awareness of the sovereignty of its First Nations peoples would make it increasingly difficult for the royal family to cut through and remain appealing.
“Australia of today is not one where people might flock to see a visiting king or queen, but of course the visit is also a reminder that they’re our head of state, that our head of state isn’t someone who is democratically selected or based here,” she told Crikey.
“If there’s a smaller turnout it might be because we’re a very different nation now, with different priorities and another vision for the future.”
T-Swift for Queen? How much do you care about the King’s visit? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.