The Australian senator who disrupted King Charles’s speech at Australia’s Parliament House during his royal tour last month was given a censure motion by her colleagues on Monday following severe criticism for her outburst.
But she has ripped up the motion and promised “I’ll do it again” as she’s completely unphased by the parliamentary rebuke.
Lidia Thorpe, the first Aboriginal senator for the state of Victoria yelled at the King and accused him of committing “genocide” against the country’s indigenous people after he gave a landmark speech in what was the first visit to Australia by a British monarch in 13 years.
Ms Thorpe, who sits as an independent in the upper house of the Australian parliament, said: “You are not our King, you are not sovereign… Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us… Our babies, our people. You destroyed our land.”
She was swiftly escorted out of the chamber but sparked outrage when shortly after she reposted a grim cartoon online showing the King beheaded.
But on Monday Australian senators voted to censure her with the motion being carried 46 votes to 12. The vote took place before Ms Thorpe arrived on a flight from Melbourne. The politician said she had wanted to be in Parliament for the vote but government senators refused to wait.
Government leader in the Senate Penny Wong said Thorpe’s outburst sought to “incite outrage and grievance.”
He said: “This is part of a trend that we do see internationally which, quite frankly, we do not need here in Australia.
Meanwhile, following her censure, Ms Thorpe ripped up a copy of it and said she would repeat her rant if the King returned.
“If the colonising King were to come to my country again, our country, then I’ll do it again.
“And I will keep doing it. I will resist colonisation in this country. I swear my allegiance to the real sovereigns of these lands; First Peoples are the real sovereigns. You don’t have some random king rock up and say he’s sovereign.”
Senator Mehreen Faruqi, a member of the minor Greens party, opposed the censure motion.
He said: “The bubble of white privilege that encapsulates this parliament is a systemic issue.
“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.”
