Key Points
- The Senate has censured Lidia Thorpe over her protest during King Charles’ Australia visit last month.
- Censures are an expression of the Senate’s disapproval of an individual’s actions.
- Senator Penny Wong condemned Thorpe’s actions as an attempt to boost her own profile.
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has responded after the Senate voted to censure her over a protest she staged during King Charles’ Australian visit.
She said Monday’s censure motion was “a clear articulation of the racism that I continually have to deal with in my workplace.”
Thorpe said the vote was: “A time where you see Labor and the Liberal party come together to shut down a Blak voice — that’s been happening in this country for over 200 years.”
, declaring Charles was not her king, before being escorted out.
“You committed genocide against our people; give us our land back; give us back what you stole from us … we want a treaty in this country,” she shouted.
On Monday, the Senate passed a motion 46 votes to 12 to censure her over her actions.
Thorpe entered the Senate chamber after the vote and yelled: “Shame on you all”.
“If (the king) comes back in, I’ll do it again.”
Thorpe was not present for the vote due to a flight delay. She said she had contacted Labor minister Don Farrell to ask him to delay the vote but claimed she was “denied my right to be in that chamber whilst everybody else voted to shut me down”.
Thorpe later told reporters she “did not give a damn” about being censured and tore up a piece of paper with the motion on it.
She referenced “our brothers and sisters in New Zealand last week” who and ripped up a contentious bill that would reinterpret the Treaty of Waitangi.
A censure motion has no specified consequences but serves as an expression of the Senate’s disapproval of an individual’s actions.
Whilst moving the motion, Labor senator and foreign minister Penny Wong condemned Thorpe’s actions as an attempt to boost her own profile.
“We should also signal the upholding of standards, standards of respect when we have dignitaries visit our parliament, in senators, Senator Thorpe’s case, no less than the head of state, and standards of respect when it comes to talking about our fellow Australians,” Wong said.
Wong said the parliament would make time for Thorpe to speak.
Liberal senator Simon Birmingham said the motion was not about what Thorpe had to say.
“It is about the conduct that was undertaken, the disruptive, disorderly and disrespectful approach that reflected so poorly upon all senators and this chamber and brought us into disrepute,” he said.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi labelled the motion a “disgrace”.
“I hope you hang your heads in shame,” she said to those who supported Thorpe’s censure.
“I thought we still lived in a democracy. We have a right to protest. We have a right to dissent. We have a right to disrupt, and that’s what Senator Thorpe did.”
Thorpe said in a statement before the vote took place that that motion showed “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 said.
“In no way do I regret protesting the King … it is time this country reckons with its history, and puts a stop to the continuing genocide on First Peoples.”
Senator censures Ralph Babet over controversial tweet
United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet was also censured by the Senate over a controversial tweet he made after Donald Trump’s US election win, which included a number of slurs.
He was not present for the motion.
In a post on X he said: “Australians will soon be put in prison for words that the authoritarian left deem to be offensive.”
Birmingham said the words Babet had placed on the public record were: “abhorrent, and have no place in proper, orderly civil conduct and debate in 2024”.
