Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the reactions to Harry and Meghan's Australia visit

Harry and Meghan have taken a four-day tour to Australia, where they've been combining visits to charitable causes alongside money-making events.

This is the pair's first time in Australia since 2018, where they visited as part of an 'intense' royal tour.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey unpacked the reactions further. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Devin Gray UK correspondence with US Ellogevin hither have that.
So why is an eighty six year old French woman
being detained in the US, Well, because they claim the
authorities that she is an illegal migrant there and she's
been effectively detained by the US Department of Homeland Security,
which oversees immigration and Customs enforcement, or the ICE Department,

(00:23):
and they are saying they detained an illegal alien from
France and that she had entered the country in June
last year and overstayed her ninety day visa. This is
an extraordinary story. It would make a Hollywood film actually.
So she moved to the US after marrying her long
lost love, an American man named Billy, whom she met

(00:43):
back in the nineteen sixties when he was a soldier
stationed in the NATO base and she was a secretary.
Now he returned to the US and they lost touch.
They got married separately, each in their own country. They
each had children, and then they reconnected and visited one
another with their spouses, and then shortly afterwards both their

(01:04):
spouses died and they were widowed. So they then decided
to start a relationship and they married last year and
she moved to Alabama. Now, the problem is that she
had this visa, and even though they were married, she
was after a green card, a long term visa that
didn't derive when all of a sudden her husband died.
So she's now in America without a green card. And

(01:27):
her son said that she apparently has been handcuffed by
her hands and feet like a dangerous criminal, and he
is outraged. Oh my goodness. Now the Royals are they
trying to ignore what's happening in Australia. Yeah, very much so.
The roles here in the UK are really saying or
doing nothing, not even acknowledging Harry and Megan's unofficial trip

(01:48):
to the Australian three cities of Camber, Melbourne and Sydney. Now,
the reason that we're getting this is, of course they
are going in a private capacity. But I think my
sources are saying roles here are really really unhappy about
this idea of mixing their you know, their their do
good charity work with a commercial aspect of the trip,

(02:11):
with Megan organizing a women's only girls weekend in Sydney
for which the tickets are paying well some six and
a half, sorry four and a half thousand New Zealand
dollars to attend this weekend and others are going to
hear Harry speak and again paying quite a lot of
money for that. Interestingly, just in the news in the

(02:32):
last few hours, Harry has said that he wants his children,
all children should be an upgrade of their parents, and
in one talk said I had to cleanse myself of
my past before having children, saying he felt disconnection to
his son. So some interesting stuff coming out of that.
But as I said, people are from the royal family

(02:54):
here having nothing to do with this visit. Now, what
happened with this chap that the landlord who's just trying
to be patriotic, Yes, it's an unusual one here. So
the Saint George's flag is a white flag with a
large red cross right through the middle, and of course
Saint George is the pension Saint of England. It is
the English flag. Now when a landlord back in twenty

(03:16):
sixteen for the European Football Championships, Wau wanted to show
support for England. He painted his pub entirely white with
the red cross right through the middle of it. Now
it's remained there without really any issues until about a
year ago when a visitor from London staying at an
Airbnb in the area is said to have reported it

(03:37):
to the council. The complaint is that he made the
seventeenth century pub look like quote the headquarters of the
National Front, which is the far right organization over here,
and he complained and on that matter the council took
it up and said, actually, no, this should be removed. Now.
Part of this is to do with actually the pub

(03:58):
is of historic interest and that is not its natural
color white, and neither should it have the red cross
painted through to preserve its heritage. But this is being
painted as one man's battle to be patriotic and fly
in the flag and not being allowed to. And incidentally, Heather,
if you think well he could have just put up
a flag post, he'd have needed planning permission for that too,

(04:19):
of course you would have given. Of course, Thank you
very much, as always, Gavin Gray, UK correspondent. For more
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