Andrew Bolt: Will Greens defend vicious, race-baiting senator Lidia Thorpe?

Senator Lidia Thorpe crossed a line by shouting abuse at young police officers who were just doing their job by upholding the law. Can she really be the face of the Greens?

If Lidia Thorpe didn’t say she was Aboriginal, I doubt she’d be a Greens Senator. And even the Greens would be too ashamed to have hired such a nasty woman.

Thorpe has abused many people before, but surely even Greens leader Adam Bandt must admit his senator crossed a line by shouting at young police officers, many women, at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation.

Waving her arm in the officers’ faces, she called them an “absolute disgrace”, “violent perpetrators” and the “only criminals on this land” who were locking up “innocent people” and “Aboriginal people”. An angry crowd behind her screamed more abuse – “shame”, “white supremacist pigs” – while others spray-painted slogans on a government van.

Thorpe was part of a mob trying to stop the deportation to Christmas Island of 12 detainees, and police had to push and pepper spray some demonstrators to clear a path. But far from being “innocent people” or even “Aboriginal”, the detainees were non-citizens and included people convicted of sexual crimes and domestic violence.

Lidia Thorpe has abused many people before, but surely even Greens leader Adam Bandt must admit his senator crossed a line. Picture: Gary Ramage

As for the police, they were just doing their job by upholding the law, yet Thorpe treated them as her personal enemies.

She was vicious, intimidating and ignorant. She was also a Greens senator, a politician meant to respect our rule of law.

But respect? What respect has she shown ever since the Greens hired her to replace a retiring Greens senator, without needing to face voters, boasting they now had a trailblazing “Aboriginal woman”.

Thorpe has since cheered the burning of the doors of the Old Parliament House by Aboriginal protesters by tweeting: “Seems like the colonial system is burning down. Happy New Year everyone.”

She’s blasted the Northern Territory Attorney-General as ignorant about Aboriginal offenders – a white man who hadn’t read up on the problem – before learning this white man was an Aboriginal woman.

During a Senate debate on people with disabilities, Thorpe told Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, mother of an autistic child: “At least I keep my legs together.“ One Aboriginal elder, Geraldine Atkinson, said Thorpe was so rude and intimidating that she felt sick and needed medical help.

Thorpe even publicly called her white father a racist, and sneered at the “white tears” of Eddie McGuire, when he resigned as Collingwood president, upset at unfairly being smeared as a racist.

Is this race-baiter really the face of the Greens, the party that could hold the balance of power in the new parliament? Mr Bandt?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Will Greens defend vicious, race-baiting senator Lidia Thorpe?