Prince William's second ever visit to Australia, a 3-day/2-night mini-tour to Australia in January, saw small Australian crowds and widespread public ambivalence. The largest crowd he received was about 2,000, or in other words, around the size of Justin's Beiber's support crew.
Prince William is not interested in Australia
HE WAS, however, accompanied by hordes of English reporters eager to provide free PR for the Windsor family. Sadly, the local media, keen for an easy and cheap story were eager to fawn over the prince and wildly exaggerated his importance and popularity.
In the lead up to this tour, IA editor David Donovan, as media director for the Australian Republican Movement, was inundanted with calls from foreign journalists eager to arrange for him to join the royal entourage while William was in Australia. Naturally, he declined.
He did, however, write two articles on this tour, one before and one after, and also appeared on ABC's 7.30 Report to discuss the event.
As he said, there are many issues here, not least of which is the unwanted exertion of British soft-power through it's foreign media corps. Also disturbing is the way Australians become second-class citizens in our own land when a Royal condescends to visit our shores.
Read the story published in the Punch before the tour
Read the Crikey article after the tour
