The Monocle Minute

A couple of years back, while moderating a debate for Monocle, I asked Peter FitzSimons, then-chair of the Australian Republic Movement, what the numbers were on Australia’s connection to the British Crown. He reckoned that 50 per cent favoured a republic, 25 per cent favoured retaining the monarchy and 25 per cent didn’t care. King Charles III’s current visit to Australia – his first as monarch – might shift those proportions, though not in the direction he nor Australian monarchists might prefer. His arrival reminds us how weird it is that we Australians leave it to an accident of birth in a foreign palace to choose our head of state.

There was a time when this was barely questioned. When Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, made her first visit to Australia more than 70 years ago, about three quarters of the population turned out to see her in person at some point of the tour. Australia’s then-prime minister, Robert Menzies, declared himself “British to the bootstraps”. A similar declaration by the same office-holder now would prompt widespread speculation about their sanity and sobriety; the contemporary Australian footpaths have not thronged 10-deep to glimpse the royal motorcade. Not one state premier showed up at the official welcome in Canberra.

Even if Charles might now be republicans’ greatest asset, the reality is that change is unlikely. A previous referendum on a republic was lost in 1999 and Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese – badly scorched by the defeat of a proposal for an Indigenous Voice to parliament – is unlikely to be enthused by the prospect of a rerun. In any event, there is an argument that the status quo works pretty well for Australia. We have a head of state who generally leaves us alone and the Poms have to pick up his bill.

Andrew Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle and presenter of ‘The Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Hoshino Resorts will open its first hotel in the continental US in 2028. The location in the small town of Sharon Springs in New York state follows the group’s outposts in Guam and Hawaii. The 110-year-old company is renowned for its onsen ryokans in Japan and is making a bet that the ongoing tourist boom in its native country (which is partly due to the weakness of the yen) will spark a demand from tourists for traditional Japanese experiences closer to home.

The 40-key resort will be about a three-hour drive from New York, offering city slickers an easily accessible countryside retreat for a long weekend. Sharon Springs has a long history of wellness tourism thanks to its mineral springs. But the prospect of combining a hot soak with excellent Japanese cuisine, minimalist architecture and tatami flooring should bring in a new wave of tourists.

Utopian Hours, an urbanism festival concentrating on the future of our cities, brought a smart, young crowd to Turin over the weekend. The three-day jamboree is the brainchild of Giacomo Biraghi and Luca Ballarini, the founders of self-styled “urban knowledge agency” Stratosferica. Its eighth edition, which wrapped yesterday, offered roundtables, aperitivi and plenty of informative talks.

Highlights included a keynote address from Ya-Ting Liu, New York’s first chief public realm officer (a speaker at last year’s edition of The Monocle Quality of Life Conference in Munich), and Thailand’s Kotchakorn Voraakhom, founder of Landprocess, a practice putting environmentalism and water management at the centre of urban design. Liu and Voraakhom were just two of the 38 international speakers at Utopian Hours. To hear more from the event, keep an eye out for our special report – recorded at the event – on Monocle Radio’s city-focused programme ‘The Urbanist’.

Like many old mining and logging towns in northern Sweden, Skellefteå has long grappled with the consequences of brain drain. But now it is the country’s fastest-growing city, with a population that is expected to surpass 100,000 by 2040. Monocle travels to this booming area, which is just 200km south of the Arctic Circle, to find out what is driving the relocation of thousands of people in search of work and a better life.

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This week on ‘The Stack’ we feature two new magazines. The first is ‘AFM’, a new title on sex and relationships published by dating app Feeld. Plus: ‘Open Tennis’, a new publication by David Shaftel.