Indigenous senator who heckled King Charles during Australia visit censured

Australian senator Lidia Thorpe tore up a copy of a motion censuring her for protesting against King Charles during his October visit when she accused him of genocide against Indigenous people.

Ms Thorpe, an Independent senator and Indigenous activist, said “I’ll do it again” and “I’ll do it every time” after she was handed down the parliamentary rebuke.

“They want me to kneel, to be silent, to disappear, but let me be clear,” she said after the Australian Senate passed the motion which was supported by both the ruling Labor party and the opposition coalition, “my loyalty lies with my people, with justice, not with a government or a crown that has systematically worked to erase us”.

The Senate passed the motion against Mr Thorpe with 46 votes in favour and 12 against for heckling King Charles and Queen Camilla during their address in the Great Hall of Parliament House.

“This is not your country,” she said, approaching the stage and shouting at the King. “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You are not our king, you’re not sovereign ... You destroyed our land.”

Ms Thorpe, a DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara member, called the lawmakers who supported the motion “hypocrites” and said the censure process was a ploy to divert attention from the real issues affecting Australia.

She accused the government and opposition of denying her the right to vote.

“I was denied my right to be in that chamber whilst everybody else voted to shut me down,” she said.

Ms Thorpe, who had disrupted previous events in protest against Britain’s colonisation of Australia, had to retake her oath of office in 2022 after she tweaked it to label Queen Elizabeth a coloniser.

She was directed to recite the affirmation, a form of parliamentary oath that omits a reference to God, as written.

Australia has struggled for decades to reconcile with its Indigenous citizens, who make up 3.8 per cent of the 27 million population, and are, by most socioeconomic measures, the most disadvantaged people in the country.

Their ancestors arrived on the continent some 50,000 years before the British colonists, yet were marginalised during colonial rule and are not mentioned in Australia’s 123-year-old constitution.

A censure motion was also passed against United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet for offensive comments made on X (Twitter) after the election of Donald Trump as US president.

He is said to have used a racist and offensive term but deleted the post later.

He said his tweet “may have been taken out of context”.

Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong said the government “reluctantly” moved the motions against Ms Thorpe and Mr Babet for “actions and stunts designed to create storms on social media”.

“These are actions which seek to incite outrage and grievance, actually to boost their own profiles, and this is part of a trend that we do see internationally, but quite frankly we don’t need here in Australia,” Ms Wong said.