Indigenous Australian senator Lidia Thorpe was removed from the parliament after she yelled anti-colonial slogans at King Charles during his visit to the parliament on Monday. “Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us!” the independent senator was heard screaming in an almost minute-tirade, after the King Charles address to the parliament.
The independent lawmaker denounced the monarchy, saying, “This is not your land, you are not my king,” as she condemned what she described as the “genocide” of Indigenous Australians by European colonisers.
Australia, once a British colony for over a century, saw the deaths and displacement of thousands of Aboriginal Australians. Although the country gained self-governance in 1901, it has yet to fully sever ties with the British monarchy, with King Charles remaining the head of state.
Charles is currently on a nine-day visit to Australia and Samoa, his first major foreign trip since being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.
However, this is not the first senator Thorpe has made headlines for staunch opposition to the monarchy. In 2022, when she took her oath of office, she raised her fist in defiance while reluctantly pledging allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, who was then Australia’s head of state.
“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she had said then.
“Senator Thorpe, Senator Thorpe, you are required to recite the oath as printed on the card,” said the chamber’s president Sue Lines.
In 1999, Australians narrowly rejected a proposal to remove the queen as head of state, with the debate centering around whether her successor would be appointed by parliament rather than elected by the public.
In 2023, a majority of Australians also voted against constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and the establishment of an Indigenous consultative assembly.
( with inputs from AFP)