MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrived in Melbourne on Tuesday for their first Australian visit since their official royal tour in 2018.
The lower-key four-day Australian visit comes after the couple announced in 2020 they planned to “step back” as senior royals and to become financially independent in their Californian base.
The Sussexes describe their visit as privately funded, and they flew to Melbourne business class from Los Angeles on a commercial Qantas Airways flight. But there have been public complaints about the added security costs for police agencies as the couple visits Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.
The cost of security explains why the couple won’t be greeted by thousands of people at public events as they were during their 16-day tour as newlyweds in 2018 to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga.
The couple’s children Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4, are not traveling with them. Meghan announced she was pregnant with their first child while she was in Sydney in 2018.
Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper descried the latest visit as a ”faux royal tour to shore up Brand Sussex.”
There have been criticisms of the couple attending paid ticketed events while in Australia.
The Sussexes reject criticisms that the visit is a publicity tour.
“The program is rooted in long-standing areas of work for the Duke and the Duchess, with a clear focus on amplifying organizations delivering measurable impact. The visit prioritises listening, learning and supporting communities rather than promotion,” the Sussexes’ office said in a statement.
There were also “a small number of private engagements” to “support broader commercial, charitable and commercial objectives,” the statement said.
Afua Hagan, a media commentator on the British royal family, said the news media typically portrayed the Sussexes as “villains.”
“This is a privately funded trip. To pay for that, they’re going to have to have some commercial interest,” Hagan told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“If they didn’t have commercial interest, the problem would be: ‘Oh my goodness, these people are leeching off the Royal Family and the taxpayers whether or not they’re making their own money. How dare they make their own money.’ They can’t do right for doing wrong,” Hagan added.
In Melbourne, one or both of the Sussexes are scheduled to visit a children’s hospital, a women’s shelter and a veterans’ art museum.
Harry will visit the Australian War Memorial in the national capital, Canberra. The couple will join an Invictus Australia sailing event on Sydney Harbor.
The 2018, the couple hosted the opening of the Invictus Games in Sydney. Harry founded the sporting event in 2014 where sick and injured military personnel and veterans compete.
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