An Australian appeals court has rejected an activist’s third bid to criminally prosecute King Charles III for alleged genocide, leaving a long-shot High Court plea and an International Criminal Court pitch as the remaining options.
Three judges on Victoria’s Court of Appeal in Melbourne turned aside the private prosecution effort on Monday, the Associated Press reported.
The applicant is Uncle Robbie Thorpe, a 68-year-old elder of the Krautatungalung people. He has tried since 2023 to haul Britain’s king, who is also Australia’s head of state, into criminal court over claims tied to the treatment of Indigenous Australians.
The ruling is Thorpe’s third legal defeat in that campaign. He still may ask the High Court of Australia for permission to appeal. That court accepts only about 10% of such applications.
Thorpe said he did not expect a fair hearing in Australia and, after domestic options run out, intends to take the allegations to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands.
Thorpe began in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in 2023, seeking a private prosecution, a path that lets a private citizen try to start a criminal case rather than waiting on public prosecutors.
Appellate judges rejected that bid. The AP account does not quote the judges’ formal reasons at length. What it does make clear is the outcome: no prosecution of the king proceeds from this round.
Legal barriers loom large. In the United Kingdom, the British monarch is immune from all criminal and civil liability. Sydney University constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey has described that protection as broader than a U.S. president’s, reaching personal acts outside official power. She has said she is unaware of the monarch’s common-law immunity ever being tested in Australia.
Australian statutes in the mix include the Foreign States Immunities Act 1985 and the Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities Act 1967, along with customary international law on sovereign immunity. British and Australian parliaments could legislate to change a monarch’s immunity. They have not done so here.
King Charles is head of state not only in Britain and Australia but also in countries including Canada and New Zealand. He did not appear in the Melbourne proceedings, and the AP report records no direct response from the palace or the Australian government to Thorpe’s filings.
Thorpe’s case does not rest on a battlefield indictment. He alleges the king, the Australian government, and its institutions are perpetuating genocide by maintaining systems that disadvantage Indigenous people across socioeconomic measures.
Indigenous Australians make up about 4% of the population. Official statistics cited in the reporting show they die younger, face worse health outcomes, and are more likely to be imprisoned or unemployed than other Australians.
Those gaps are real policy problems. Stretching them into a criminal genocide charge against a constitutional monarch is another matter, and Australian courts have now refused, three times, to let that theory drive a prosecution.
“Genocide” in this file remains an allegation and a case framing, not a finding entered by the Victoria Court of Appeal.
"The International Criminal Court will expose Australia for what it really is, a lying, racist, illegal occupation committing genocide,"
Thorpe said after the latest setback.
Australian National University international lawyer Don Rothwell sketched the limits of what comes next.
"An individual cannot commence a prosecution. If they’ve exhausted all of their options under Australian law, the best that they can do is seek to provide evidence that they believe constitutes the crime of genocide. It’s then up to the International Criminal Court to determine whether they would seek to prosecute,"
Rothwell said.
The ICC, the reporting notes, does not recognize head-of-state immunity and can take genocide charges. That still does not hand a private activist the same charging lever Thorpe sought in a magistrates’ court.
Rothwell also noted the U.N. Security Council can refer a prosecution, and that Britain would veto such a move against King Charles. Individuals have, in other controversies, tried to put evidence before the ICC prosecutor’s office regarding figures such as Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether prosecutors act is their call.
Thorpe’s lawsuits sit beside a louder politics of disruption aimed at the Crown during royal duties in Australia.
During King Charles’s visit, independent senator Lidia Thorpe interrupted proceedings at Parliament House in Canberra, Fox News reported. She yelled that he is not her king and demanded the return of what she said was stolen from Indigenous people, including remains. Security escorted her out. Fellow senator Ralph Babet called the scene disrespectful, and Ngunnawal elder Aunty Violet Sheridan also condemned the outburst.
The New York Post reported she rushed after the king’s speech with accusations of genocide and demands for land and remains, shouting that it was not his country and ending with “F**k the colony” as she was removed. Charles and Queen Camilla showed no visible reaction. The king had earlier thanked organizers for a Welcome to Country ceremony and paid respects to the Ngunnawal people and First Nations peoples. Australia remains without a treaty with its Indigenous peoples, a fact often cited in these protests.
Lidia Thorpe and Uncle Robbie Thorpe are different people. The shared thread is a politics that treats the monarch as a criminal defendant-in-waiting and uses “genocide” as everyday rhetorical ammunition against constitutional arrangements voters have not discarded.
None of that socioeconomic debate, and none of the protest theater, converts a private activist’s theory into a viable criminal case against Australia’s head of state.
Victoria’s appellate bench closed this door. The High Court leave process is narrow. The ICC route, on Rothwell’s account, is a tip line to prosecutors who decide whether a case exists, not a redo of Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.
Constitutional order depends on courts drawing that line. Immunity rules, charging standards, and proof requirements exist so serious criminal labels cannot be pinned on a sovereign by affidavit and press conference alone.
Indigenous disadvantage is a legitimate subject for parliaments, budgets, and voters. Turning it into a personal genocide prosecution of King Charles is the kind of lawfare courts are built to stop, and this week, they did.
Activist slogans do not rewrite criminal law, and a stable country should keep it that way.
