I face racism in Senate every day: Thorpe

Lidia Thorpe claims she receives racist remarks ‘every day’ in parliament and has approached Senate President Sue Lines to make her workplace safer.

Lidia Thorpe says ‘it’s every day where there’s little niggly comments, racist remarks’ in parliament. Picture: Martin Ollman

Lidia Thorpe claims she faces racist remarks “every day” in parliament and has approached Senate President Sue Lines to help make her workplace safer.

Roy Illingworth. Picture: Sky News

In an interview with left-wing activist Tom Tanuki, the former Greens senator also revealed her father, Roy Illingworth, had texted her “all morning saying he loves me” after he told Sky News his daughter was a “very racist person” and called on her to acknowledge the “white side of her heritage”.

The Indigenous independent senator also claimed to have “incredible relationships” with a number of Labor cabinet ministers who had changed their bills without a formal amendment “just because (she) provided some good advice”.

Senator Thorpe said she had approached Senator Lines to seek advice on alleged racist remarks in the upper house, suggesting she was unsure whether to “pretend everything is OK”.

“It’s every day in parliament, and if you see the headlines from when I was in parliament last, it’s every day where there’s little niggly comments, racist remarks and you’ve either got to suck it up and swallow it or do you call it out?” Senator Thorpe said.