‘I’ll do it again’ vows Australian politician who heckled the King

Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe, censured by parliament over her protest, says she will keep resisting ‘colonisation in this country’

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An Aboriginal Australian politician who harangued King Charles has been censured by parliament but said she did not “give a damn” and would “do it again” if he ever returned.
Lidia Thorpe made headlines around the world last month when she interrupted a reception for King Charles and Queen Camilla during their official visit to Australia, yelling “f— the colony”, “this is not your land” and “you are not our King”.
On Monday, she was censured by the Australian parliament, with the Senate passing the motion with 46 votes in favour and 12 against.
The motion, a symbolic political move with no legal or constitutional consequences, condemned her actions as “disruptive and disrespectful”.
The Senate said it no longer regarded it “appropriate” for Ms Thorpe to be a member of any delegation “during the life of this parliament”.
During her protest in October, she yelled: “You are not our King, you are not sovereign” at King Charles during his visit to Parliament House in Canberra. “You committed genocide against our people,” she said.
Moments before, he had delivered a speech in which he paid his “respects to the traditional owners” of Australia.
After the censure motion was passed, the senator told national television that she did not “give a damn” about it. She tore up the piece of paper on camera and said she would use it as “kindling”.
She vowed to repeat her actions if King Charles and Queen Camilla ever returned to Australia.
“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,” she told ABC.
She claimed that the Crown had “systematically worked to erase us”.
Her outburst against the monarch was condemned at the time by Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and there were calls for Ms Thorpe to resign which she staunchly refused.
Peter Dutton, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, said that if Ms Thorpe was so vehemently opposed to Australia’s constitutional system, she should step down and stop taking her generous parliamentary salary.
The independent senator is a seasoned protester known for her attention-grabbing political stunts.
The 51-year-old politician, who is descended from Gunnai, Djab Wurrung and Gunditjmara indigenous clans, comes from a prominent family of Aboriginal activists.
Her father, who is white, has accused her of being “racist towards white people”. Roy Illingworth said that he was “a bit disappointed in the way she has been carrying on lately”.
He added: “After all, she has got an English background, as well as Irish. She didn’t use to be like this. Maybe the power has gone to her head.”
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