The outrage machine has been working overtime on Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe all week, ever since her ballsy protest of King Charles in Australian Parliament. I feel like history will be very kind to Senator Thorpe, but in the short-term, she’s being targeted heavily by Australian and British media. She’s getting the “Full Meghan Markle” treatment. As I’ve mentioned previously, this is not Senator Thorpe’s first rodeo with the international media. In 2022, her swearing-in as a senator became headline news. Australian senators have to swear an oath of office and swear an allegiance to the British crown. Senator Thorpe tried unsuccessfully to modify the oath, only for the other senators tell her that she *had* to do it the real way. Now that oath is being thrown back in her face, as in “if you don’t support the crown, why did you take the oath of office, HYPOCRISY MUCH?” To which Senator Thorpe had a hilarious comeback:
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has offered an extraordinary defence of whether she breached her parliamentary oath, claiming she pledged allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II’s “hairs” rather than her “heirs” when she was sworn into parliament.
The revelation comes after Senator Thorpe interrupted a royal reception in Parliament House on Monday, shouting “you are not our king” and “this is not your land” to King Charles III.
On Wednesday, the Indigenous senator was asked by the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing if she had renounced her sworn parliamentary affirmation to bear true allegiance to the monarch in her heckling of the king.
“I swore allegiance to the queen’s hairs,” she replied. “If you listen close enough, it wasn’t her ‘heirs’, it was her ‘hairs’ that I was giving my allegiance to, and now that, y’know, they are no longer here, I don’t know where that stands. I’m not giving up my job, I’m not resigning.”
Senator Thorpe was sworn in as a Greens senator for Victoria in 2022, during which she described the queen as a “coloniser” before being told to recite the oath as printed on the card.
A re-examination of the swearing-in appears to show that Senator Thorpe did pronounce “heirs” as “hairs”, though it is recorded as “heirs” in the Hansard.
In case you want to watch Senator Thorpe’s 2022 oath, I’m including the video below. She absolutely said “hairs” not “heirs.” The Australian accent is a crazy thing! Also: if they try to come for Senator Thorpe’s job – her elected position! – because she spoke truth to a tired old British king, then that will be an even bigger story, right?
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.