No elected official should boast about what looks like trying to dodge constitutional requirements

The real problem with Lidia Thorpe is not her manners. It’s her ignorance, closely followed by her duplicity.

How could a member of the Senate be so confused about basic elements of this country’s system of government?

And how could any elected official boast about what looks like an attempt to dodge the constitutional requirement to swear allegiance to Australia’s head of state?

This affair proves the case for a renewed emphasis on civics education, not just for new members of parliament but for schools and other institutions where woke ideology is attacking the legitimacy of so-called “settler states”.

Thorpe’s shouted assertion that King Charles is not her king was not just rude, it is at odds with constitutional reality and the fact that she purported to swear allegiance to the Crown when she entered parliament.

The Crown in question is not that of Britain. It is the Australian Crown – an institution that Charles personifies by force of the Constitution which is itself an expression of the will of the Australian people.

Thorpe’s return to obscurity might be hastened by her disclosure on ABC television that she only swore allegiance to the late Queen’s “hairs” not the Queen’s heirs.

If she thinks that’s clever, she has not read section 42 of the Constitution.

This provision says that before senators can take their seats in parliament they must make an oath or affirmation “in the form set forth in the schedule to this Constitution”.

The schedule is clear: it’s heirs and successors according to law, not hairs.

If the oath of office has not been taken in the form required by section 42 – and Thorpe says it has not – she cannot sit as a senator until that requirement is met.

But even that admission might be misleading if it turns out that she also swore allegiance in writing – something that now needs to be pursued.

Thorpe also seems to have forgotten that this country has been entirely decolonised since Labor’s Bob Hawke pushed through the Australia Acts in 1986 severing our last legal links with Britain.

Thanks to Hawke and earlier steps towards true independence, the source of sovereignty in this country is not the royal family or the British parliament, but the Australian people; all of us, including Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

The King is the symbol of that sovereignty. Its source is entirely Australian.

It is beyond argument that this country once consisted of British colonies. But that’s history.

To denounce contemporary Australia in obscene terms as a colony, as Thorpe did before the King, ignores the fact that the colonial era is dead and gone.

Unlike the American Revolution our break with Britain was incremental and amicable but it was just as decisive.

Lidia Thorpe heckles King Charles III during the ceremonial welcome and Parliamentary reception. Picture: Getty Images

It was brought to completion on March 3, 1986, when the Australia Act came into force one day after equivalent legislation in Britain.

March 3, therefore, is this country’s true independence day – something that needs to be brought home to those who parrot the woke mantra calling for the “settler state” to be “decolonised”.

The Australia Act changed everything, including the nature of the Constitution which started life as part of a British statute drawing on the authority of the British parliament.

After the Australia Act, legal academic Geoffrey Lindell wrote that “ … the status of the Constitution as a fundamental law is now derived from the authority of the Australian people”.

Sir Anthony Mason, a former chief justice of the High Court, came to the same conclusion.

He wrote in the Federal Law Review that Hawke’s legislation “now provides a firmer foundation for the view that the status of the Constitution as a fundamental law springs from the authority of the Australian people”.

For Thorpe to denounce this country as a “colony” is an insult to one of the greatest achievements of one of our greatest prime ministers.

If Thorpe were aware of any of this, it was not apparent when she appeared draped in possum fur, face contorted in rage, screaming at a sick, old man who had just flown halfway around the world on his way to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.

Her performance reveals no understanding of what real decolonisation involves.

Hawke’s process did not require screaming fits and insults. It required mature negotiations with the governments of Britain and the Australian states.

History everywhere is full of triumph and tragedy. And those like Thorpe who are determined to seek out tragedy can always find plenty.

Lidia Thorpe is escorted from the chamber after her outburst. Picture: Reuters

But relitigating history does nothing for the issues of today that demand practical solutions, not performances.

Thorpe’s rant is based on the silly idea that the current monarch is to blame for everything bad that has happened to Indigenous people since 1788 when Arthur Phillip stepped ashore at Botany Bay.

There was plenty of tragedy. And it continued for too long on both sides of the frontier.

But if the King is responsible for the horrors of the past, he must also be responsible for everything on the other side of the ledger such as universal suffrage, free education, welfare, the rule of law, decolonisation and the fact that Indigenous people are equal citizens in a nation where 40 per cent of the land is under native title.

The reality is Charles did none of that. We did it all. The good and the bad.

To focus on the tragic while ignoring the triumphant is to sell Australia short. We are much more than the unbalanced caricature portrayed by this grievance monger.

Chris Merritt is vice-president of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia