A senior politician has had a major royal blunder which he made in state parliament scrubbed from official records.
Victoria’s Opposition Leader has had a major royal blunder scrubbed from the records after making the slip up in state parliament.
Matthew Guy made the gaffe on Tuesday after MPs had to swear allegiance to King Charles III after he was officially declared the state’s new monarch.
While offering condolences to the King, Mr Guy attempted to reference past monarchs’ efforts to make the royal family “one of history’s most enduring institutions”.
However, when recalling King Alfred, the best known Anglo-Saxon ruler, Mr Guy instead credited King Arthur, who appears in British 6th century folklore.
“Tracing its history back as far as the petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Scotland, it is an institution that can draw on centuries of history – in fact, over 1000 years, back to the house of Wessex,” Mr Guy began.
Victorian leader of the Opposition Matthew Guy referenced mythical King Arthur in parliament.
“In all those times, among all those monarchs, from figures well known – King Arthur, Henry VIII and so on – the longest reigning of them all was Queen Elizabeth II.”
Most historians of the period do not think King Arthur was a real historical figure.
However, in Hansard, the report of the proceedings of the Australian parliaments, the error does not appear and King Alfred is instead recorded.
Online, people were quick to poke fun at the gaffe.
“So is @matthewguymp going to rename Cabinet to the ‘Knights of the roundtable’?” one user wrote.
“Which poor staffer had to break the news to Matthew Guy that King Arthur isn’t real?” another added.
Tuesday saw MPs in Victoria’s Upper and Lower Houses declaring their oath, a requirement under the Victorian Constitution when a new monarch comes to power.
The condolence motion to express sorrow at the Queen’s death followed and parliament will be adjourned for a week, returning on Tuesday, September 20.
