21 October 2024 , 11:23
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King Charles has been confronted by an Australian senator after giving a speech in the country’s parliament, who shouted: ‘This is not your land. You are not our King’ at the monarch.
Senator Lidia Thorpe, Victoria’s first indigenous senator, made the remarks while Charles spoke with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following his speech.
Thorpe, who was dressed in a traditional long possum skin coat, marched across the lobby and told the King ‘You committed geocide 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 lives. Give us a treaty, we need a treaty in this country. You are a genocidalist.’
Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe protested the King’s arrival in Australia (Picture: Reuters)
As she was escorted from the chamber by security, she could be heard saying ‘F*** the colony’.
Former prime minister and staunch royalist Tony Abbott, who was also at the event, expressed his dismay at the protest, labelling it ‘unfortunate political exhibitionism’.
The senator, who refused to swear an oath to the Queen upon being elected, was one of around 20 people protesting the King’s arrival as he laid a wreath at a war memorial in Canberra earlier in the day.
She was among a number of indigenous voices to protest the King’s arrival in what has been dubbed a ‘farewell tour’ by Australian Republicans.
She labelled the King a ‘genocidalist’ and demanded a treaty on the abolition of the monarchy (Picture: Reuters)
Upon arrival, Charles and Camilla were greeted by Aunty Serena Williams from the Ngunnawal people, who urged the King to apologise for colonial atrocities.
She told reporters: ‘We all have roles and responsibilities, and I have roles and responsibilities to my people. And I think an apology would be beautiful.’
When pressed on whether the King should personally say sorry, she said: ‘Yes. Because we have to acknowledge our past.’
Charles acknowledged the remarks during his speech in parliament and said he ‘offered to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet’, but stopped short of formally apologising.
Charles was urged to apologise for Britain’s colonial atrocities by Indigenous leaders (Picture: AFP)
Who is Lidia Thorpe?
Ms Thorpe was elected in 2017 and sits as an independent in the upper house of the Australian parliament.
After refusing to swear allegiance to the Queen upon being elected, she was later compelled to repeat the oath of allegiance in 2022 after initially describing the late monarch as a ‘coloniser’.
In a statement ahead of the King’s visit, she said: ‘As First Peoples, we never ceded our Sovereignty over this land. The Crown invaded this country, has not sought treaty with First Peoples, and committed a Genocide of our people. King Charles is not the legitimate Sovereign of these lands.
‘Any move towards a republic must not continue this injustice. Treaty must play a central role in establishing an independent nation. A republic without a Treaty must not happen.’
The visit to Parliament House came on the fourth day of the King and Queen’s tour, which has seen a number of Australian officials avoid meetings with the royals.
A number of low-level protests have marred their visit so far, including a banner with the word ‘decolonise’ which was displayed at an event in Sydney.
Prime minister Albanese has a long-held aim of holding a referendum on breaking ties with the British monarchy and his country becoming a republic.
But the plans were put on hold after Australians overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater political rights to Indigenous people in a referendum held last year.