Here are more photos from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s events today in Melbourne, Australia. I’m including photos from their visit to the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, where they spoke to kids and staffers at the Kelpie garden, and Meghan’s solo visit to McAuley Community Services for Women. That’s a women’s shelter and DV shelter. Meghan worked in the kitchen for a bit and met some of the women there. People Magazine pointed out that Harry’s mother and father visited the same hospital back in the 1980s, and QEII also visited it once. If you couldn’t tell from the weeks of British-media tantrums preceding the Sussexes’ arrival, the entire royal media apparatus wants this visit to fail, and they’re going out of their way to ruin the visit as well. The Times of London ran a hysterically unhinged story about how Harry and Meghan are “using Australians like an ATM!” You guys…
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been accused of using Australia “like an ATM” as they start a four-day visit with events where tickets to see them speak cost between £260 and £1,675. Harry and Meghan will visit Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney during their stay with a programme that a spokesman said would “focus on mental health, community resilience and support for veterans and their families, alongside private meetings and special projects”.
Harry has been lined up as a guest speaker at the InterEdge Summit in Melbourne on Thursday, which is set to explore the “vital space where individual wellbeing and organisational responsibility meet” and the “intersection of leadership, psychosocial safety and human connection in the workplace”. Delegate tickets for the two-day conference, hosted at Melbourne’s Centrepiece conference venue, are available for £525, with platinum tickets priced at £1,250 and a “virtual ticket allowing on-demand access to Harry’s speech” costing £260.
During the couple’s visit, Meghan will be interviewed on stage at a “girls’ weekend” retreat in Sydney, costing £1,400 per ticket. VIP tickets for the event at the five-star InterContinental Coogee Beach hotel cost £1,675 and include a group table photo with the duchess. So far, however, the retreat appears to be not fully booked. As of Monday night, the event’s website was continuing to market “a handful of additional rooms just released”.
It is not clear how much Harry and Meghan are being paid for their appearances on the trip. It is understood that the duke and duchess are travelling without their children, Archie, six, and Lilibet, four.
One Melbourne newspaper reported the planned visit on Monday with a headline which read: “No One Cares about Sussex’s ‘Faux’ tour.”
Monday’s Sydney Morning Herald put it even more bluntly: “Australia was good to Harry and Meghan. Now they want to use us as an ATM.”
Meghan has trademarked her brand As Ever with the Australian authorities, which would grant her the right to sell products ranging from candles to garden ornaments in the jurisdiction under the name “As Ever”. So far its products include gift boxes of jams and honey.
What part of a “mix of commercial and philanthropic events” do these people not f–king understand? And the thing about Harry and Meghan making paid appearances is that literally NO ONE IS BEING FORCED TO PAY FOR THEM. You have free will – if you do not want to buy a £1,400 ticket, you do not have to. If you don’t want to pay to hear Harry’s thoughts on mental health, no one is holding a gun to your wallet and forcing you to type in your credit card number. And IF Meghan does an As Ever pop-up – which I don’t actually think will happen – then no one will force Australians to buy her jam! What is their problem?
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.
