King Charles’ six-day, $600,000 Australian tour during cost-of-living crisis
December 29, 2024
The Age
King Charles’ first visit to Australia as monarch cost taxpayers more than $600,000, despite the head of state being on the ground fewer than six days.
The much-anticipated trip to Australia, which was Charles’ 16th visit to this country and his first since 2018, was significantly scaled back because of the King’s ongoing health problems, which have included cancer.
The total cost of the royal visit was $640,060.47, excluding GST.
The 76-year-old Charles’ planned visit to New Zealand was axed from the program while his activities in Australia were curtailed.
While in Australia, Charles and Queen Camilla visited only Sydney and Canberra, and the visit did not include any state dinners or evening events, while one of the four whole days he was in the country was set aside as a rest day to help “preserve the King’s energies”, according to the BBC.
Charles was just the second reigning monarch of Australia to visit, the other having been his mother, Queen Elizabeth. The tour included a short visit to NSW parliament for a lunch in his honour, a trip to Parliament House in Canberra that was famously disrupted by Senator Lidia Thorpe’s protest, a Parramatta Park community barbecue and an event at the Sydney Opera House.
A spokesperson for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet said that as of November 30, 2024, the total cost of the royal visit was $640,060.47, excluding GST.
That means Australians spent more than $100,000 a day to host Charles and Camilla.
The cost breakdown includes $437,468.82 on travel, accommodation and meals, $119,263.33 on event management and hospitality, $35,694.76 for ground transport, and $47,633.56 on other expenses, including the national contribution to Greening Australia and manufacturing the King’s flag for Australia.
Although the total cost of the six-day visit might seem high when Australians are grappling with a cost-of-living crisis, Charles’ trip was significantly cheaper – he even took a commercial flight to Singapore on his way to Australia – than the last two trips to Australia made by Queen Elizabeth.
In 2011, Elizabeth’s 11-day trip to Australia – which took her to Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth – cost taxpayers $2,687,854. A five-day trip to Australia in 2006, which took Elizabeth to Canberra, Sydney and then Melbourne to open the Commonwealth Games, cost taxpayers $1,450,239.
The monarchy’s popularity with Australians has slipped since the death of Queen Elizabeth.
In September 2024, the Resolve Political Monitor found support for a republic had risen 5 percentage points from 36 to 41 per cent, the number of people opposed to a republic had fallen by 9 percentage points from 37 per cent to 28 per cent, and the number of people who did not know or were unsure had risen 4 percentage points to 31 per cent.
Australians’ view of King Charles’ performance as head of state also dimmed, from 45 per cent of people in September 2022 saying he was doing the job well, to 31 per cent in June 2024. The percentage of people who said the King had performed badly rose by 4 percentage points to 18 per cent in the same time period, while the percentage of people who said they were unsure rose from 41 per cent to 50 per cent.
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