A senator who angrily confronted King Charles as he attended a royal reception in Australia has now posted a cartoon on social media depicting the monarch having been beheaded.
Politician Lidia Thorpe staged a protest at the event attended by the King and Queen Camilla in Canberra on Monday, where she shouted that the monarch had “committed genocide against our people”.
The independent senator later shared a cartoon by Matt Chun on her Instagram story, showing Charles’ head lying on the floor with his eyes closed and crown having fallen off.
The cartoon was captioned “You are not our king” - a line Ms Thorpe shouted at Charles during her protest in Canberra earlier on Monday.
Ms Thorpe, who campaigns on First Nations issues, disrupted Charles’ welcome to the Australian capital with her outburst which overshadowed a speech by the King, highlighting his debt to the descendants of Australia’s first inhabitants.
She walked down the aisle of the Great Hall shouting: “You are not our King, you are not sovereignm…you have 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 a treaty.”
Charles had just finished speaking and was receiving applause from the crowds at Government House when Ms Thorpemoved into the aisle, and berated him for around 30 seconds as he sat on stage with the Queen and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Speaking to Sky’s Breakfast with Kay Burley, Ms Thorpe later said: “We are the real sovereigns in this country. The King lives in your country, he's from your country. He can't be our King.
“We have our bones and our skulls still in his family's possession. We want that back. We want our land back.
"And we want your King to take some leadership and sit at the table and discuss a treaty with us."
Defending her accusation of “genocide”, she claimed there are “thousands of massacre sites in this country from invasion and someone needs to answer for that”. “He is the successor, then he needs to answer,” she said.
She said she had "the support of Aboriginal people around this country".
But her actions have been met with widespread criticism on social media.
“You are a member of Parliament where he is the Head of State. He literally is your king,” responded James Benjamin.
Others branded her a “disgrace” and “a national embarrassment” and urged her to resign.
Aunty Violet Sheridan, a senior Ngunnawal Elder who formally welcomed Charles and Camilla to her ancestral lands when they entered Parliament House, said the senator did not speak for her.
“We are all so disappointed by it. To have that in the Great Hall – disgusting,” she said. “I am so upset about her. He has waited so long to be king, he has rehearsed for it all his life.
“He is our king, our sovereign and he has got cancer.”
Charles and Camilla were earlier welcomed at Canberra airport with a traditional smoking ceremony where guests wafted burning eucalyptus over themselves, chosen for its health benefits in light of the King’s ongoing cancer treatment.
The royal couple commemorated Australia’s war dead at the national memorial, laying floral tributes as hundreds of well-wishers turned out to see the couple – including an alpaca who sneezed in front of the King.
In a statement before Ms Thorpe’s outburst the senator criticised Mr Albanese, claiming his government had backed down on a treaty with Australia’s First Nations.
Mr Albanese has a long-term aim of steering Australia towards a becoming a republic but the plans are on hold after Australians overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater political rights to indigenous people in a referendum held last year.
In a speech before Charles’s address, the prime minister said to Charles: “You have shown great respect for Australians even during times when we have debated the future of our own constitutional arrangements and the nature of our relationship with the crown. Nothing stands still.”
