Australian lawmakers on Monday voted to censure Indigenous Sen. Lidia Thorpe after she heckled Britain’s King Charles III in an address to parliament in October as seen here. Photo by Lukas Coch/EPA-EFE
Nov. 18 (UPI) — An Indigenous Australian senator was censured by fellow lawmakers Monday for a “disrespectful and disruptive” outburst at Britain’s King Charles III as he addressed dignitaries in the Great Hall of Parliament in Canberra during a state visit in October.
Lawmakers voted 46-12 to censure independent Sen. Lidia Thorpe and bar her from membership of any delegation representing the chamber after she yelled “you are not my king” and “this is not your land,” in an effort to publicize the fact many Indigenous Australians never relinquished sovereignty or their land to Britain.
The censure is a symbolic slap on the wrist only with no consequences, legally or politically.
Thorpe said after the vote that she had been denied the right to defend herself in front of her colleagues because her flight to Canberra had been delayed and vowed she would continue to speak out about Australia’s colonial beginnings and how they continued to disadvantage first nation peoples to this day.
“You’ve only given me more exposure and if the colonizing king were to come back to Australia, I would do it again,” she said.
“The censure is a diversion away from the real issues in this country,” she added accusing the ruling Labor-led coalition of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of trying to silence her.
“The British Crown committed heinous crimes against the first peoples of this country. I will not be silent,” said Thorpe who has been campaigning for a treaty between the Australian government and its Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples, in line with New Zealand and other former colonies of Britain.
in 2022, Thorpe refused to swear allegiance to the crown when she was sworn in for her second term as senator for Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab-Wurrung in the state of Victoria, prefacing “Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second” with the phrase “the colonizing,” raising questions over her constitutional status in the legislature.
In an October 2023 referendum, Australia voted overwhelmingly against against a proposed constitutional amendment giving increased political rights to Indigenous people and to establish “The Voice,” a representative advisory body.
Thorpe’s censure came two weeks after the newly elected mayor and four councilors of a city in northwestern Canada’s Yukon territory refused to swear an oath to Charles, despite doing so being a requirement to take office.
The Yukon’s municipal act required the Dawson City politicians to take an oath of allegiance to the British monarch within 40 days or face having their election victories voided, triggering fresh elections.
The five swore or affirmed the required oath of office, but refused to take the oath of allegiance.
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