5 days Ago By Olivia Ireland
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe is facing a censure motion after her protest at a ceremony for King Charles on October 21 during the royal Australian tour. In a media statement from Thorpe, she said Labor and the Coalition had teamed up to censure her for her conduct. “This motion shows 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 a statement. Standing up in the Senate, Foreign Minister Penny Wong moved for the censure of Thorpe and also the separate censure of United Australia senator Ralph Babet for posting racist and homophobic slurs.
The crossbench senator, elected at a cost to mining billionaire Clive Palmer of $116 million, last week made the sexist, homophobic and ableist remarks on Elon Musk’s platform X, where right-wing influencers have celebrated the US election as normalising offensive speech. Babet shared a clip last week of misogynistic internet provocateur Andrew Tate giving a live-streamed “emergency meeting” speech about the political landscape changing as “gatekeepers are losing their power” over the economy, information and politics. “In my house we say phaggot [sic], retard and n----r,” Babet wrote in the caption.
“We are sick of you woke ass clowns. Cry more. Write an article.
Tweet about me. No one cares what you think.” Thorpe’s protest at the parliamentary ceremony to honour the King in late October made headlines around the world when she strode down the aisle yelling, “You are not our king.
You are not sovereign. “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back.
Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty.
We want treaty.” More to come Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter .
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