Australia was good to Harry and Meghan. Now they want to use us as an ATM

April 13, 2026 — 5:00am

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Forget interest rate hikes, skyrocketing fuel prices and stubborn inflation. Harry and Meghan are landing in Australia, and happy to help relieve us of all that spare cash they believe we’re carrying.

And what timing! In this new era of global upheaval and household hardship, we have so much to learn from an American actor-turned-duchess-turned-entrepreneur-turned-hawker of boutique jams and honey. Really, it’s the ex-royals who are doing us a favour by visiting, not the other way around. Don’t you realise what an honour it is to be graced by their presence? Naturally, that honour comes with a hefty price tag, for Harry and Meghan are laser-focused on building a healthy bank balance.

The last time they were in Australia, no such financial strings were attached. Their 2018 visit was one of the royal family’s most successful, drawing huge crowds and enormous support after the couple announced shortly after landing at Sydney Airport they were expecting their first child.

The seven-day tour of Sydney, Melbourne, Dubbo and Fraser Island was such a hit that Harry would later claim that Australia’s affection for his new wife created deep jealousy at Buckingham Palace, much like Princess Diana in 1983. “The issue is when someone who is marrying in should be a supporting act is then stealing the limelight or doing the job better than the person who was born to do this that upsets people,” he said in the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan.

Much has changed since those heady days of 2018. For one thing, Harry and Meghan have gone from being wildly popular to, well, not. YouGov, which regularly tracks the popularity of individual members of the Windsor family, in January reported that 66 per cent of Brits have an unfavourable opinion of Meghan. Just 19 per cent had........

© The Sydney Morning Herald