Australian delegation to take South Pacific leader to royal funeral

The Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tuvalu have accepted Australia’s offer to send their representatives to the Queen’s funeral.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said other Commonwealth island leaders could accept Canberra’s proposal.

All 10 former British colonies in the Pacific have received travel aid, he said.

One of them is New Zealand, which sent a delegation to London on Wednesday led by Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern and including Maori King Kiingi Tuheitia.

Mr Albanese said he did not want leaders of regional Australia’s remote island nations to miss next Monday’s state funeral in London because of logistical problems.

“We provided access to high-level representatives from all 10 Pacific nations that are members of the Commonwealth,” Mr Albanese told reporters.

“The final list is being finalized. So far, four countries have accepted.”

Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Vanuatu can still accept Australia’s offer.

Mr Albanese plans to leave Australia on Thursday with an eclectic delegation that includes horse racing coach Chris Waller and wheelchair tennis star Dylan Alcott.

They are one of 10 “ordinary citizens” invited by Buckingham Palace to contribute to the local community.

A controversial member of the delegation was Australia’s most honored living veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith.

The former Special Air Service Corps corporal is suing three newspapers in the Federal Court of Australia for defaming articles he claims portray him as a criminal who violated the moral and legal rules of military operations in Afghanistan.

Asked if it would be appropriate for Roberts-Smith to attend the funeral with the court’s verdict still months away, Mr Albanese replied that the palace had invited all recipients of the Victoria Cross, the highest military service in the Commonwealth. honor.

“These are decisions made objectively. The Palace has invited all Victoria Cross recipients and that is the basis of the invitation,” Mr Albanese said.

Solomon Islands has accepted an Australian flight to London after months of strained bilateral relations.

But Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare will not be at the funeral. His government will be represented by the monarch’s representative in the country, Governor-General David Vunagi, The Australian Financial Review reported.

In May, Sogavare accused the former Australian government of threatening an invasion after he signed a security deal with China that raised concerns about a Chinese naval base in the South Pacific.

Last week, Mr Sogavare accused Mr Albanese’s government of meddling in Solomons’ politics by offering to pay for elections due next year.

He has argued that his government cannot afford to hold elections next year and persuaded parliament to amend the constitution to delay voting until 2024, a move that opponents denounced as a power grab.

The Albanese centre-left Labour government wants the Australian president to replace the British monarch as head of state.

But most proponents of and against the republic avoided saying anything that might be seen as profiting from the death of a widely respected monarch.

A survey by Melbourne market researcher Roy Morgan on Monday found that 60 per cent of respondents said Australia should remain a monarchy rather than become a republic with an elected president.

The Australia-wide SMS survey surveyed 1,012 people with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Roy Morgan manager Julian McCrann said political turmoil in the US was influencing poll respondents to think about the Australian president.

“They don’t want to go to the republic because they don’t want to end up like America,” Mr McClain said. “They don’t trust politicians, ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ – that attitude is very strong.”

The Australian Republican Movement, a movement for a republic and not affiliated with any political party, attributed the findings to a wave of public grief and the current media attention on the royal family.
Tributes to the late Queen include announcing that a public space under development in central Sydney will be named Queen Elizabeth II Square.

Queensland’s main opposition party, named after Queen Victoria who died in 1901, has started a petition for a multi-billion-dollar rail bridge project in the capital Brisbane to be renamed the Elizabeth Line after the late monarch.