CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The Australian media outrage machine is in overdrive today, after an Aboriginal woman dared to say the quiet parts out loud. In front of the King of all people.
Britain’s King Charles III has been delivered some hard truths during his first visit to the country as a reigning monarch, after Federal Senator Lidia Thorpe dared to highlight some of the things that no Royal has ever even thought about except for maybe our darling Diana.
“You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us!” Senator Lidia Thorpe yelled.
“Our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land!”
“This is not your land!” Thorpe continued as she was led away by security.
Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman, Lydia Thorpe has been a senator for Victoria since 2020, the first Aboriginal senator from that state. And after a fiery first term in politics, yesterday’s incident is nothing but consistent.
But as of yesterday, she has broken the number one rule for Aboriginal people who find themselves in such important spaces. Senator Thorpe stands accused of not knowing her place, and not even trying to be ‘one of the good ones’
It’s so embarrassing for Australia that senior Coalition MPs are considering a censure motion against Lidia Thorpe, which is something they’ve been seeking since she exposed one of their own colleagues for sexually harassing her.
Meanwhile Australia’s newspaper duopoly of Murdoch and Nine are dismissing the Senator’s message as a ‘Royal Pain’ and a ‘stunt’ – as they work tirelessly to discredit the very real historical events that have been successfully excluded from our high school curriculums.
The fact of the matter is that Senator Lidia Thorpe has forced not only the Royal family to confront an uncomfortable subject, but Australia as well. It’s especially frustrating after the nation overwhelmingly voted against Indigenous self-determination last year in a hope that they’d never have to confront these historical facts that are directly responsible for the ongoing disparities faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders when it comes to health, education and life expectancy
However, just like the average Brit doesn’t know the difference between Ireland and Northern Ireland, it seems that King Charles actually had no idea about any of the things Senator Thorpe was yelling at him yesterday.
“WAIT WHAT?!” gasped his Majesty, as Lidia Thorpe was dragged to the back of the room yesterday.
“Mummy never mentioned any of this.”
“Get that woman’s details. I need to know more. What the hell. I thought climate change was hard enough to talk about… but you’re telling me that after 100 years of massacres, we systematically kidnapped an entire generation of Aboriginal children and forced them to be raised by abusive priests before condemning them to a lifetime of miserable destitute and extreme over-representation in incarceration rates?”
“Huh? Why isn’t anyone else talking about this?”
MORE TO COME.
