Lidia Thorpe has erupted in anger after the Senate censured the rogue senator over her headline-grabbing protest during King Charles‘ visit to Australia.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong moved a censure motion against Ms Thorpe in the Senate on Monday morning, claiming her outburst during the King’s visit last month sought to ‘incite outrage and grievance’.
‘This is part of a trend that we do see internationally which, quite frankly, we do not need here in Australia,’ Senator Wong told parliament on Monday.
The motion ‘censures Senator Thorpe for the disruptive and disrespectful conduct at the Parliamentary Reception, for her disrespect of democratic institutions, including our parliament of which she is a member’.
Dressed in a native fur coat, Ms Thorpe, 51, shouted that the monarch had ‘committed genocide against our people’ and added ‘f*** the colony’ during King Charles and Camilla’s visit Down Under in October.
The independent Senator was not in the chamber to hear Monday’s censure motion, which passed by 46 votes to 12, but she returned to yell ‘shame on you!’ repeatedly at her fellow parliamentarians.
‘Order! Order! Order!’, responded the speaker Sue Lines.
‘Senator Thorpe, you are out of order! Senator Thorpe, come to order!’
Lidia Thorpe (pictured) has erupted in anger after the Senate censured the rogue senator over her headline-grabbing protest during King Charles ‘ visit to Australia
The independent Senator was not in the chamber to hear the motion carried but she returned to yell ‘shame on you!’ repeatedly at her fellow parliamentarians (pictured)
But Ms Thorpe continued her tirade.
‘Shame on you all!’, she screamed.
She added: ‘I’ll do it again, and I’ll do it every time!’
A censure motion has no direct legal or constitutional consequences and is just a way of parliament expressing extreme disapproval.
Before her outburst in the chamber, Senator Thorpe wrote on X that the ‘censure motion shows where the major parties priorities lie’.
‘They don’t stand with First Peoples in this country. They stand against justice for our people, preferring instead to defend a foreign king, rather than listen to the truth,’ she wrote.
Senator Thorpe said of her protest in front of the King: ‘I’ll do it again, and I’ll do it every time!’
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi criticised the motion and called on politicians to listen to the concerns of Indigenous Australians.
‘The bubble of white privilege that encapsulates this parliament is a systemic issue,’ she said.
‘That’s why we are here today, debating a Black senator being censured for telling the truth of the British crown’s genocide on First Nations people and telling it the way she wants to.’
This is a breaking story, more to come.
