King Charles III has been heckled by an Indigenous senator in Australia during a visit to the country’s parliament building.
The senator, Lidia Thorpe, shouted at the King after his speech: “You committed genocide against our people. 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.”
As she was removed from the hall, Ms Thorpe could be heard shouting: “This is not your land. You are not my king.”
The visit is the King’s first to the country since being coronated in 2022. In video footage of the incident, he can be seen quietly speaking to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as Ms Thorpe is removed from the building.
Who is Lidia Thorpe?
The 51-year-old became the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to Victorian parliament in 2017, and has been a senator for the state since 2020. She used to be a member of Australia’s Green party before leaving to become an independent senator last year.
Ms Thorpe - who is a Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung Indigenous woman - has become a prominent voice in Australian politics regarding issues affecting the country’s Indigenous population. As well as calling for a treaty between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, Ms Thorpe’s politics also concern land rights, environmental problems and the justice system.
This isn’t the first instance where she’s criticised the royal family: when re-elected in 2022, she called the late Queen Elizabeth II “the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II” in her oath of office, and spent the country’s national day of mourning for the late monarch rallying against British colonisation. Ms Thorpe has also made headlines in Australia over the years for similar demonstrations, including protesting against police attendance at Sydney’s Mardi Gras festival and staging an anti-trans counter-protest in 2023.
What was Lidia Thorpe protesting about?
Britain’s colonisation of Australia included a massacre of the country’s Indigenous population between 1788 and 1930, with Indigenous Australians still facing racism and discrimination today.
The treaty that Ms Thorpe mentioned in her demonstration refers to an agreement many are calling for which would enable Australia to become a republic, independent from the UK, and establish a treaty with Aboriginal people as part of it. Currently, Australia is the only Commonwealth country that has never made a treaty with its indigenous people.
