Britain’s Prince Charles launches a potentially awkward tour, where New Zealand’s premier is pushing to drop the Union Jack from the flag.

Britain’s Prince Charles Wednesday launches a potentially awkward tour Down Under, where New Zealand’s premier is pushing to drop the Union Jack from the flag and Australia’s new leader is a staunch republican.

Charles and wife Camilla arrive in Wellington to start the 12-day trip in which the heir to the throne will visit a dozen different cities and towns across the two countries including New Plymouth, Dunedin, Auckland, Sydney, Perth and Albany.

The prince’s office said the tour had a strong emphasis on honoring the military, with this year marking the centenary of the Anzac landings in Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War I that helped forge the identities of both Australia and New Zealand.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has also sparked a debate on national symbols by calling a referendum on changing the flag, which features a Union Jack in the corner.

Key argues it is time to ditch the symbol of New Zealand’s colonial past and later this month Kiwis will begin voting in a postal ballot to pick a potential alternative.

While Charles will likely avoid any controversy on the subject, he may take comfort from the fact that opinion polls predict the existing flag will be retained when the issue is put to a final vote in March.

If Charles becomes king in the future, as expected, he will become monarch of both Australia and New Zealand, which were once part of the British Empire but are now independent.

The British crown’s power in Australia and New Zealand is seen as largely symbolic, but while Queen Elizabeth II is hugely popular in both countries the monarchy is still viewed by some as a colonial relic.

While Key may support changing the flag, he remains an ardent monarchist, unlike Charles’ host on the second leg of his tour, Australia’s new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

Turnbull, who recently ousted royal supporter Tony Abbott in a party coup, is a former head of the Australian Republican Movement and campaigned passionately, but unsuccessfully, to ditch the monarchy in a 1999 referendum on the issue.

“The republic will come back,” Turnbull vowed at the time.

Since becoming prime minister, he has said that another republican referendum in Australia is unlikely while the Queen is still on the throne — meaning the next one would likely be after Charles has assumed the crown.

Turnbull showed his republican fires still burn on Monday when he removed knights and dames from the national honors system, saying such titles were “not appropriate” in modern times.

Other republic-supporting Australian prime ministers have courted controversy by bending protocol in meetings with the British monarchy, with Julia Gillard criticized for failing to curtsy to the Queen in Canberra in 2011.

Former leader Paul Keating was dubbed the “Lizard of Oz” by the British press when he touched the Queen’s back while guiding her through a crowd in the nation’s capital in 1992.

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