By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Britain’s King Charles travels on Tuesday to Redfern, birthplace of Australia’s urban Aboriginal civil rights movement in inner Sydney, a day after being heckled by an Indigenous senator at Parliament House.
Charles, on his first major foreign trip since being diagnosed with cancer, had finished speaking when the independent senator and activist Lidia Thorpe shouted that she did not accept his sovereignty over Australia, and demanded a treaty for Indigenous people.
A national referendum on whether to alter Australia’s constitution to recognise Aboriginal people was rejected last year, a sore point for many Indigenous Australians. Charles referred to Australia’s “long and sometimes difficult journey towards reconciliation” in his speech.
Former Olympic athlete Nova Peris, who was the first Indigenous woman elected to the federal parliament, wrote in a social media post she was “deeply disappointed” by Thorpe’s actions, which “do not reflect the manners, or approach to reconciliation, of Aboriginal Australians at large”.
In a radio interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday, Thorpe said she “wanted the world to know the plight of our people”.
Thorpe was criticised by Peris for protesting despite swearing allegiance to the Crown when she was sworn in as a senator.
Thorpe said she had taken the oath “under duress”. “I sought permission from my family. It was a very very difficult thing to do as a black sovereign woman,” she said.
Charles will meet with Indigenous Elders in the inner city suburb of Redfern, where the Aboriginal civil rights movement was founded in the 1970s, on Tuesday.
At the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence, Charles will speak with Indigenous organisations and Redfern Elders including “bush tucker” – or native food – chef Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo.
He will also visit an inner city social housing project with sustainable features, designed with the support of his King’s Trust Australia charity. Charles will tour the Glebe construction site with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who grew up on a public housing estate.
Julie Bishop, chair of the King’s Trust Australia, said the charity “closely follows His Majesty’s passions – helping young people into work, coaching veterans and defence families in entrepreneurship, and working on sustainable community projects”.
Charles and Queen Camilla are visiting Sydney and Canberra over six days before travelling to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa.
The public will have an opportunity to meet the royal couple at the Opera House later on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Shri Navaratnam)
