The British prime minister has praised the King’s “fantastic” work during his Australia tour despite facing cancer.

Sir Keir Starmer made the comments after Charles was berated by Australian senator Lidia Thorpe, who accused the King of “genocide” against her nation’s indigenous people.

“I think the King is doing a fantastic job, an incredible ambassador, not just for our country, but across the Commonwealth,” Sir Keir said on Monday.

“We should remember in the context of health, that he is out there doing his public service notwithstanding, you know, the health challenges he himself has had - so I think he’s doing a great job,” he added.

An Australian senator who confronted King Charles in parliament has shared a cartoon showing the monarch beheaded on social media.

Lidia Thorpe, 51, an outspoken advocate for Indigenous rights, shouted at the King in a fiery address during his royal reception in Great Hall of Parliament House on Monday.

She approached the stage shouting “you are not my king” and accusing the King of “committing genocide against our people”, as she urged him to negotiate treaty between Australia‘s First Nations and its government.

After her protest, the independent politician took to social media to further reiterate her position, sharing a cartoon showing a beheaded King Charles to her Instagram story.

The original post, shared by artist Matt Chun, was captioned with Thorpe’s words she directed at the King earlier on Monday: “You are not our king. You are not sovereign.”

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Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe, who campaigns on First Nations issues, disrupted Charles’s welcome to the capital Canberra with her protest on Monday.

Her comments were criticised by Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese, who attend the event and later told The Australian newspaper: “The actions of the independent senator in the Great Hall were disrespectful. This is not the standard of behaviour Australians rightly expect of parliamentarians.”

In his speech to the Australian parliament on Monday, Charles spoke affectionately about his relationship with Australia, a country he first visited as a teenager, saying he arrived as an “adolescent” and left more “chiselled” after his experience studying in the Outback.

He also highlighted the debt he owed to Australia’s Indigenous people.

Charles said: “In my many visits to Australia, I have witnessed the courage and hope that have guided the nation’s long and sometimes difficult journey towards reconciliation.

“Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have done me the great honour of sharing, so generously, their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom.”

The Royal Family has posted footage of King Charles visiting Australia as a young man.

In a post on X, they said: “In 1966, when he was seventeen, The King spent two terms at Timbertop in the mountains of south-eastern Australia.

“The co-educational campus of Geelong Grammar School is located near Mansfield in Victoria, and combines normal schooling with outdoor activities, such as hiking, trail running, cross-country skiing and camping, to foster independence and initiative.”

King Charles and Queen Camilla have now returned to Sydney to continue their royal tour of Australia, following an intense day in Canberra.

The couple will spend their final day of their visit touring the Sydney Opera House and partaking in a review of the Royal Australian Navy fleet before heading off to Samoa.

Aunty Violet Sheridan, a senior Ngunnawal Elder who formally welcomed Charles and Camilla to her ancestral lands when they entered Parliament House, said the senator did not speak for her.

She said: “We are all so disappointed by it. To have that in the Great Hall – disgusting. I am so upset about her. He has waited so long to be king, he has rehearsed for it all his life.

“He is our king, our sovereign and he has got cancer.”