Senator snubs ‘colonising’ Queen during public oath
AN AUSTRALIAN senator pledged allegiance to the “colonialist Queen” during a swearing-in ceremony, before colleagues forced her to retake the oath.
Lidia Thorpe, a Green Party senator who is an indigenous member of Australia’s Upper House, raised a clenched fist while reciting the oath incorrectly.
Reading from a printed card, she said: “I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising Her Majesty the Queen.”
The stunt caused consternation among some of her colleagues in the house and Sue Lines, the senate president, demanded that she recite the oath as printed.
One senator told her: “You can’t be a senator if you don’t do it properly.”
Ms Thorpe subsequently retook the oath, reading it correctly.
She later tweeted a photograph of her raised fist in the air, writing: “Sovereignty never ceded.”
Under Australia’s constitution, all parliamentarians must swear allegiance to the monarch.
Adam Bandt, the leader of the Green Party, doubled down on his colleague’s remarks, saying the Queen “always was, always will be” a coloniser.
Last week, an assistant minister for the republic from the incumbent Labor Party said swearing allegiance to the Queen was “archaic and ridiculous”.
Matt Thistlethwaite said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald: “It does not represent the Australia we live in and it’s further evidence of why we need to begin discussing becoming a republic with our own head of state. We are no longer British.”
The oath-taking ceremony was not the first time Ms Thorpe has caused controversy, previously saying that the Australian flag represented “dispossession, massacre and genocide”.
At the weekend, Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, announced he was planning to hold a referendum on recognising First Nations people in the constitution and requiring consultation with them over issues and decisions that affect their lives. Such a move would bring Australia in line with New Zealand, Canada and the US.
Before he was elected, Mr Albanese said it was “inevitable” that the Queen would be replaced as Australia’s head of state. But the government has made clear it is no longer committed to a vote on the issue in the next three years.
Recent polling suggested that republicans would win a narrow majority of 54 per cent in the event of a referendum, but that people are split over the best way to select a head of state.