Australian MPS and an Indigenous Elder have criticised Senator Lidia Thorpe for her outburst at a Parliamentary welcome ceremony for King Charles yesterday.
At the gathering, Thorpe shouted, “Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.”
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Ngunnawal Elder Aunty Violet Sheridan told The Guardian the Victorian senator doesn’t speak for her people, and that her comments were “disrespectful.”
Sheridan was sitting near the king when Thorpe marched forward and started shouting “you are not my king”, and as she was leaving, “Fuck the colony.”
Federal Labor Minister Murray Watt told the ABC not a week goes by where Lidia Thorpe and Pauline Hansome aren’t “at each other’s throats.”
“What we saw from Lidia Thorpe today is what we see pretty much every week in the Senate,” Watt said.
Ms Thorpe told Breakfast with Kay Burley she stood by her actions.
“We are the real sovereigns in this country,” Thorpe said. “The King lives in your country, he’s from your country. He can’t be our King.”
Australian Monarchist League chairman Philip Benwell said: “Senator Thorpe should step down with immediate effect.”
In 2022 Lidia Thorpe called the late Queen a coloniser while being sworn into parliament following re-election.
The Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman is the first Aboriginal senator from Victoria.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said King Charles III was doing a “fantastic job” after the monarch was heckled.
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