Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe looks back on her remarkable coup against King Charles III this Monday. The monarch is visiting Australia.
Lidia Thorpe, the Aboriginal Australian senator who addressed King Charles III this Monday morning, October 21, explains. A few hours after addressing anti-colonial slogans to her, in front of Parliament in the capital Canberra, she explained herself to the British media Sky News.
“The true sovereigns of this country are us,” she declares. “The king is not our sovereign. The king lives in your country, he comes from your country. He cannot be our king.”
Australia was a British colony for more than a century, during which thousands of Aboriginal Australians were killed and entire communities displaced.
“Someone has to answer for this”
The independent senator, wearing a fur cape, denounced in front of the king what she described as the genocide of Australian indigenous people during the era of European colonization of Australia.
Charles III back in business, eight months after announcing his cancer
“There are thousands of massacre sites in this country, because of the invasions, and someone has to answer for them,” she told Sky News. “The successor is him. So it’s up to him to answer.”
“We no longer have land, your king and his predecessors stole it from us, and we want it back,” she continues.
Political highlights
Lidia Thorpe is known for her political coups and her fierce opposition to the monarchy. When she was sworn in in 2022, she raised her right fist as she reluctantly vowed to serve Queen Elizabeth II, Australia’s then head of state.
“I solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the colonizer Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said before being reprimanded.
“Senator Thorpe, you must recite the oath as it is printed,” House Speaker Sue Lines observed at the time.
Divided society
Australia gained de facto independence in 1901, but never became a full republic. King Charles remains head of state. The country rejected by referendum in 1999 a change of Constitution to become a Republic. No reform in this sense is any longer on the agenda.
In 2023, Australians rejected in another referendum measures to recognize Indigenous Australians in the Constitution and create an Indigenous Consultative Assembly.
According to polls, around a third of Australians would like to get rid of the monarchy, a third want to preserve it and a third say they are ambivalent
Charles III performs a nine-day visit in Australia and Samoa, his first major overseas tour since his cancer announcement earlier this year.
