Jenna Price | Why are Anthony Albanese, Nick Cave, Sam Kerr all willing to be King Charles III's subjects?

I feel very Olympic during the Olympics.

I love Christmas even though I wasn't brought up with it.

I've wandered around dark parks trying to get the actual moment of eclipses.

None of my best friends is gay but I was out there cheerfully campaigning for equal marriage in the only way I knew how, providing helpful videos teaching young people how to post letters.

We are definitely affected by the vibe of the times.

So how anyone could possibly think the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would choose the moment of the coronation of Charles as King to announce Australia would become a republic has lost their tiny minds. Yes, you. I know you are all worked up.

But look at the bloke. He's not a boat rocker. He's taking it slowly, slowly. He wants at least as much time at the helm as the Coalition but without its merry-go-round of disposable PMs. At least Albanese admits he is a republican and has even appointed an assistant minister for the republic, Matt Thistlethwaite. That position was established five hot minutes after the election last year so you can tell where Albanese's preferences lie. I don't see an assistant minister for the monarchy anywhere on the list.

When narrowcaster Piers Morgan interviewed our PM and asked if he would swear allegiance to the King, Albanese said he would do "what is entirely appropriate as the representative of Australia". Even an indirect yes means yes, in this case. Of course he is going to swear allegiance because he is the Prime Minister of a country which has the King as its monarch. You might not like that but that's the way it is. We voted on a republic and we said "no".

So how is it we get the two main organisations representing each side of the debate behaving like whack jobs? The Australian Republican Movement suggesting Albanese stay silent during the swearing of allegiance and the monarchists claiming the PM is blocking Australians from going fully royal.

"This is the first coronation most Australians would be able to participate in ... he's blocked it because he is a republican, introducing a republic by stealth," said Australian Monarchist League national chair Philip Benwell. That is quite the most ridiculous claim I've ever seen made in public - on par with former PM Scott Morrison claiming that the vaccine rollout was not a race.

How do I feel about a republic? Very, very good. While I love pomp and ceremony, I could probably make do with the annual Mardi Gras parade or wait every four years for the Olympics. And the royals haven't moved me since 1997, when my nine-year-old daughter ran out of orchestra practice to tell me Diana had died. I regret to say I did not believe her instantly.

I watched it all. I recorded it on the ancient technologies we had back then, the video cassette recorder. I watched the little boys, princes William and Harry, walk behind the coffin of their mother and bawled my eyes out.

They were just slightly older than my own children and God knows what nutty feelings I was having, obsessing about the funeral procession. And the behaviour of the man who is now King made me feel even ickier about the monarchy. Sure, be a philanderer but maybe do it on your own dime.

So I kind of - very kind of - get the mixed feelings of Nick Cave who is apparently part of the Australian contingent at the coronation. He's not a republican nor is he a monarchist but is going anyway.

Now how Cave gets to be in the Australian contingent when he ditched us 40 years ago, I'm not sure but he is taking his place next to a real queen of the pitch Sam Kerr and activist advocates Yasmin Poole and Adam Hills (yeah, he's funny, but he's much more than that). Maybe Albanese wants a selfie.

Cave responded to fans who wrote to him after discovering he planned to attend the coronation with a Jon from Brisbane asking, bluntly, "Why the f--- are you going to the King's coronation?"

Boils down to, I love a party, I want to witness history and I love to dress up. Must be why I got up in the middle of the night all those years ago to see if Sydney won the Olympics and promptly went out and bought green and yellow socks for my children.

Thing is, it's much more than fancy dress and good times. While I've made gentle fun of the Australian Republican Movement's forlorn hope that Albanese would say nothing during the coronation, it's done one truly brilliant thing this week. It has signed up with representatives of 11 other countries to demand from the King a formal apology, reparation, and repatriation of artefacts and remains.

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I don't much care about the apology - just words - but returning artefacts and remains to the countries from which they were stolen seems like decent human behaviour. It seems like a small thing to acknowledge the horrific impacts of colonisation on Indigenous and enslaved people.

The monarchy barely impacts me (although I would be sad to lose my public holidays) but it feels so wrong to be swearing allegiance to a bloke who has no idea what it's like to be Australian or to understand our daily lives. Now is not the time to abandon the monarchy (yep, too soon) because we have other pressing things to press on with.

Vote "yes" to the Voice then let's get to the next big referendum. I'll be very happy to watch snippets of the coronation from the cheap seats.