SHAH ALAM - Aboriginal activist Lidia Thorpe made a dramatic scene as she was sworn in as an Australian senator yesterday when she called the Queen a ‘coloniser’ and gave a Black Power salute, as reported by The Daily Mail.
The report stated the 48-year-old politician strode across the floor of the Senate in Canberra with her right fist in the air in a Black Power salute as she recited her oath of allegiance to Her Majesty.
"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,” she recited.
Her oath received objections from other senators in the room before Labor’s Senate president Sue Lines asked for silence and asked her to recite the oath as printed on the card, as she is required to.
With another senator heard to say that none of them like it, Thorpe repeated the oath as printed in a mocking way.
Her conduct received immediate criticism from politicians and Australians.
She was criticised for using an ‘unthinking and infantile approach to closing the gap’ between white people and indigenous people, even being referred as a "Angela Davis wannabe" in reference to the US Black Power leader while social media critics saw her as an embarrassment.
Her response to this? She said in a tweet that native Australians, who lived in Australia before the British arrived, never yielded to colonialists.
"Sovereignty never ceded,” she tweeted.
However, her behaviour still received heavy criticism on Twitter for her claim that Australia's parliament was not authorised to exist, and she joined the body just to "infiltrate" it while getting the pay and privileges that come with being a member of parliament.
The critics ranged from someone saying that she is an ‘absolute idiot’, 'a total embarrassment to parliament and those she claims she represents’ as well as comments saying that she is racist and a ‘hate speech spewing troll’ that should be put behind bars.
"How childish Lidia... Another look at me moment for you. Can you please tell me one good thing you've done for indigenous Australians?” another commented.
Having both European and Native American ancestry, Thorpe claimed in June that her decision to join the ‘colonial project’ of parliament was motivated by her desire to ‘renew the nation’ and serve as a voice and advocate for First Nations people.
The senator comes from a line of women who have made careers out of advocating for Aboriginal rights. Her mother Marjorie Thorpe participated in the national inquiry into the so-called ‘stolen generations’, while her grandmother Alma Thorpe founded Victoria's Aboriginal health service.
"I signed up to become a senator in the colonial project, and that wasn't an easy decision for me personally, and it wasn't an easy decision for my family either to support me in this.
"However, we need voices like this to question the illegitimate occupation of the colonial system in this country,” she said.
Not everyone is of the same view, apparently, as her conduct garnered support from Greens Leader Adam Bandt.
"'Always was. Always will be,” he tweeted.
A rising number of people want the country to break its connections with the monarchy, especially now that Anthony Albanese, the new Labor prime minister, thinks the moment is right to move toward becoming a republic.
Even though he nominated a ministry for the republic, no action could be taken until a vote was held.
During the more than 100 years that Australia was a British colony, thousands of Aboriginal Australians were slained and entire communities were uprooted.
Although the nation achieved de facto independence in 1901, it had never actually established itself as a republic.
Australia narrowly decided against deposing the queen in 1999 amid controversy over whether parliamentarians or the public would choose her successor.
Most Australians, according to polls, supported the idea of being a republic, but there was little consensus on the process for picking a leader of state.
For now, the anticipated query posed to the public seems to be if they support changing the constitution to create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese worries that providing too much information would lead to people voting ‘no’ if they ‘disagree with one out of 50’ proposed clauses.
"We're not doing that, we're learning from history," he said, referring to the unsuccessful 1999 referendum on Australia becoming a republic, which many people rejected not because they opposed it in principle but because there was disagreement over how the head of state would be selected.
Prior to saying it would be the topic of a referendum over the following three years, the Prime Minister faced criticism from various sectors for the vague and extremely broad powers of the Voice to Parliament.
The Coalition's spokesman for Indigenous Australians, Julian Leeser, stated that while he supported the notion of a council based on race that would have the authority to advise the government on any policies that might affect Aboriginal people, they need to see more of the specifics.
Meanwhile, public broadcaster's Indigenous Affairs editor Bridget Brennan filled in some of the gaps regarding what she believes the Voice should imply during an appearance on the Insiders show.
'This has to be about justice. It has to be about reparations. It has to be about giving some power to Aboriginal communities,' she said. Reparations refer to making amends for a wrong that has been done by offering compensation or other forms of support, which may also be paid as war damage reparations by a defeated state.
Brennan said the Prime Minister faced a difficult task to convince people across the country to vote Yes in the referendum. "(Mr Albanese) is going to have different messages to sell to people. But I actually think there is an appetite now to see some transformative change,” she said.
Brennan, who is of Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta descent, emphasised the importance of a strong and powerful Voice to Parliament.
"When we imagine what a Voice (to Parliament) would look like, I think it does need to have teeth, it does need to be feared (and) revered.
"It needs to be a building; it needs to be an institution that has much more than a voice. It has (to have) some control and some autonomy,” she added.