Senator Lidia Thorpe’s behaviour recently is completely unacceptable and should result in her being removed from Parliament. This is because Sen. Thorpe has intentionally and repeatedly betrayed the formal oath she—clearly reluctantly—made at her swearing-in. Sen. Thorpe is reported to have screamed:
“F**k the colony” and “You are not my King” as well as “Give us our land back that you f**king stole from us.”
This is not just rude but such a defiant act of contumacy which gives the senate every right to expel Sen. Thorpe as a member of parliament. One cannot decry the evils of colonialism whilst also accepting $250,000 per year from the Australian taxpayer.
Significantly, Senator Thorpe failed to sincerely make the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen when she was initially required to. Instead of reading the oath, Sen. Thorpe 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 Queen Elizabeth II, to her hairs (rather than ‘heirs’) and successors.’
Just in case one is accused of “splitting hairs” over this, Ms Thorpe went on to explain in an interview with the ABC that her mispronunciation was indeed, intentional. Note how Thorpe unambiguously recently clarified:
“I swore allegiance to the Queen’s hairs if you listen close enough. It wasn’t her heirs, it was her hairs that I was giving my allegiance to. And now that, you know, they’re no longer here, I don’t know where that stands.”
While Sen. Thorpe did finally comply after being reprimanded by the Chair, it was clear that it was under duress—hence her raised fist in protest—and hence, was not genuine. Indeed, another senator was heard to say, ‘None of us like it.’ The Senate should really have had the political courage not to proceed with her installation as a senator back then.
Another aspect that the Australian Senate needs to look into is whether Ms Thorpe is in breach of Section 44 of the Constitution which relates to “…any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power.”
With Thorpe repeatedly asserting that indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded, the question must be asked, has she given her oath of allegiance to a power other than to that of Australia? From her abusive statements to the reigning Monarch about aboriginal sovereignty and in particular ‘You are not our King’ Thorpe’s loyalties are clearly elsewhere.
Victor Davis Hanson likewise makes the important point in his book The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalisation Are Destroying the Idea of America (Basic Books, 2021):
Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.
In practical terms, the US Constitution guarantees citizens security under a republic whose officials they alone choose and that assures them liberties. What exactly are these privileges? Everything from free speech, due process, and habeas corpus to the right to own and bear arms, to stand trial before a jury of one’s peers, and to vote without restrictions as to race, religion, and sex. America, then, is only as good as the citizens of any era who choose to preserve and to nourish it for one more generation. Republics are so often lost not over centuries but within a single decade.
Hanson is absolutely right, ‘Sometimes citizens can do just as much harm to their commonwealth by violating custom and tradition as by breaking laws.’ Indeed, it is incomparably more destructive when done by an elected official. One who has promised to uphold the sovereignty of the very institution she has repeatedly said she is seeking to destroy.
It is crucial for the Australian Senate to uphold its customs and traditions lest our culture be irreparably corroded from within. This is not a political issue, but a moral one. Senator Thorpe has clearly rejected the oath she has hypocritically sworn to do and as such the senate should vote to dismiss her from office. As Andrew Hastie, the shadow defence minister, said in a recent social media post:
We witness once again the emotional incontinent of the activist left. Senator Lidia Thorpe disgraced herself and embarrassed us all by essentially abusing the King and the Queen just after he finished his address. She was promptly thrown out, but still it was the one downside of the day. Still it is a reminder that if we care about our institutions, we’ve got to fight for them because the activist left are always going to be coming for them.
Significantly, the apostle Peter writes, ‘Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.’ (1 Pet. 2:13-14) Then, just a few verses later he writes, ‘Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honour the King’ (1 Pet. 2:17).
Senator Thorpe has not only failed to honour the king—the supreme authority—but also shown contumacy for the parliamentary institution as a whole. Therefore it is beholden upon the Australian government to have her removed as a senator. Failing to act as such is just as egregious as the disgraceful words and behaviour of Senator Thorpe herself.
