Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said the television interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bolstered his argument for Australia severing its constitutional ties to the British monarchy.
Mr Turnbull met Meghan and Harry in April 2018 four months before he was replaced by the current prime minister Scott Morrison in an internal power struggle.
"It's clearly an unhappy family or at least Meghan and Harry are unhappy. It seems very sad," Mr Turnbull told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"After the end of the Queen's reign, that is the time for us to say: OK, we've passed that watershed.
"Do we really want to have whoever happens to be the head of state of, the king or queen of the UK, automatically our head of state?," Mr Turnbull added.
The Queen is Australia's head of state.
Mr Turnbull was a leading advocate for Australia selecting an Australian citizen as its head of state when he was chairman of the Australian Republican Movement from 1993 to 2000.
A referendum on Australia becoming a republic was defeated in 1999, despite opinion polls showing that most Australians believed that their country should have an Australian head of state.
Many advocates of an Australian republic want a US system where the president is popularly elected rather than serving in a figurehead role as proposed in 1999.
Mr Morrison was not questioned about the royal interview during a press conference on Tuesday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here