Copenhagen: Mary Donaldson won over Denmark. Now, in her first visit to Australia since becoming queen, she is on a mission to win big business for both countries.
King Frederik and Queen Mary will be joined by dozens of Danish leaders on a state visit to Australia that aims to boost $2 billion in annual business.
The visit is likely to begin at Uluru to show respect for Indigenous Australians, and it will include a strong focus on the environment during visits to Melbourne and Canberra.
It will also take Queen Mary back to Tasmania. While officials will not confirm the details, the agenda is expected to leave time for her to catch up with family and friends in her home state during the visit from March 14 to 19.
There will be a state banquet in Canberra, hosted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and a reception in Melbourne, so the visitors can host a social event in reply.
Behind it all will be the strategic goal of bringing Australia and Denmark closer together on defence and expanding two-way trade worth about $2 billion a year in goods and services.
Denmark is also an important supporter of the free trade deal between Australia and the European Union, at a time when objections from farmers in France and Ireland can jeopardise the outcome.
In a show of strength from Danish industry, more than 55 business chiefs have signed up to a delegation that will run alongside the formal state visit, with a large number from clean energy companies.
There will be talk about exporting more Danish wind turbines – a key alternative to China – and investing more Danish money in renewable energy projects such as offshore wind.
There will also be attention on Australian exports. The newest will be three electric ferries from Tasmanian shipbuilder Incat to take passengers across Denmark’s internal waterways.
The ferries are now being built at the company’s Hobart shipyard and will be 100 per cent battery electric, and capable of carrying up to 1483 passengers and 500 cars
Although the ferries will not be finished and supplied until 2027 and 2028, it seems obvious who should launch the first vessel.
Queen Mary is unlikely to be at corporate events, but the state visit and the business delegation will connect at key functions, including the state dinner. It is not foreign territory for the queen, given she has a business background from the years before she met Frederik at the Slip Inn near Darling Harbour during the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
She has degrees in commerce and law, further qualifications in marketing and was an account director at an advertising firm before they met.
The visit is seen as so important in Denmark that it will go ahead despite the overlap with the election campaign for the national parliament, which will be held on March 24. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the early election in a statement to parliament on Thursday, local time.
There is likely to be an impact from the campaign, however, because the Danish government initially planned to send two of its most senior ministers: Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Foreign Affairs Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen. This will be challenging when both will be campaigning.
Convention suggests that a minister from the government will accompany the state visit, but the full membership of the delegation has not been finalised or announced. The Australian ambassador to Denmark, Dave Vosen, is working behind the scenes to add more business chiefs to the list.
Danish Industry senior vice president Troels Ranis, who will be part of the delegation, says both countries have a common interest in clean energy.
“We’re both changing our energy systems,” he told this masthead in Copenhagen.
“It’s a really big, transformative task, both in Denmark as well as it will be in Australia. You are a much larger country than Denmark, and the task is also much larger than it is in Denmark.”
Frederik and Mary have made three visits to Australia since they were married in 2004. They have taken their four children to Bondi Beach, jogged in Sydney, visited Tasmania for Christmas, demonstrated Danish cooking in Melbourne and flown to Broken Hill to see the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
This is their first visit, however, since they became king and queen in January 2024 when Frederik’s mother, Queen Margrethe II, chose to abdicate after 52 years on the throne.
Margrethe, now 85, lives outside Copenhagen and continues doing set and costume design for Danish theatre, the work she has done for much of her adult life.
Frederik and Mary have made state visits to Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia since the inauguration two years ago.
The journey to Australia is a much bigger undertaking because of the distance and the business delegation, which is one of the largest of its kind. The children are not expected to join them on this trip.
The family’s connection to Australia was a key reason for the timing of the visit relatively early in the king’s reign, according to an official in Copenhagen involved in the preparations.
And it will be their first and last state visit to Australia. By convention, heads of state make one state visit to a country. The last Danish state visit to Australia was in 1987 by Queen Margrethe.
So, this is a rare event. Frederik and Mary have put a priority on Australia. Their supporters will count that as a win.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
