{"id":538576,"date":"2026-04-19T00:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T00:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/538576\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T00:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T00:03:08","slug":"was-harry-and-meghans-australia-trip-a-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/538576\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Harry and Meghan’s Australia trip a success?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most notable was\u202fMeghan’s complete absence of public-facing appearances on Wednesday. That evening, it was revealed she had been filming an episode of MasterChef Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is understood she was not paid for this, although the Duchess does have a food-centric show on Netflix, and her As Ever lifestyle brand includes a food range. Last year the trademark was registered in more than a dozen product categories in Australia, including cookware and table linen.<\/p>\n

For the Sussexes, the only acknowledgement of the business side of the trip came at the bottom of a five-page pre-tour briefing. It said: “As with many visits of this nature, a small number of private engagements are included to support broader commercial, charitable, and community objectives.”<\/p>\n

Of course, as private citizens, the couple are not required to declare their earnings publicly, nor to account for their every move.<\/p>\n

But Bastin, the academic, feels some of the ventures appeared “tone deaf in a cost-of-living crisis”.<\/p>\n

And one Sydney Morning Herald columnist proclaimed: “Australia was good to Harry and Meghan. Now they want to use us as an ATM.”<\/p>\n

Such a portrayal is “in part” unfair, says Michael Hartung, chief executive of Invictus Australia, which organised the 2018 Invictus Games – the sporting competition for wounded and sick military personal and veterans, founded by Harry in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most notable was\u202fMeghan’s complete absence of public-facing appearances on Wednesday. That evening, it was revealed she had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-538576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}