Lidia Thorpe’s whacky trainwrecks to nowhere

The Victorian Indigenous senator’s predictable and embarrassing political stunts are all about boosting her profile rather than advancing causes she professes to fight for, all the while pocketing a taxpayer-funded salary of almost $260,000 from an institution she claims to rage against.

Lidia Thorpe always knows where the cameras will be.

Lidia Thorpe is a one-trick pony who craves shameless publicity over substance while pocketing a taxpayer-funded salary of almost $260,000 working in an institution she claims to rage against.

The Victorian Indigenous senator’s predictable and embarrassing political stunts are all about boosting her profile rather than advancing causes she professes to fight for.

The 51-year-old’s cartoonish scandals during her time in parliament – aided and abetted by Adam Bandt’s extremist Greens – discard any attempt to progress meaningful reform, policy or action.

From Monday morning, government MPs and officials knew Thorpe had arrived at Parliament House and would likely ambush King Charles III in the Great Hall with a typically incoherent rant.

Thorpe always knows where the cameras will be and seized on the opportunity that her spray would go global, given international interest in the king’s visit.

Everyone knows the king, a progressive monarch who was an early mover on climate change, has no role in the day-to-day running of Australia.

But that didn’t stop Thorpe.

“You are not our king. You are not sovereign,” she shouted.

“You committed genocide 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 land. Give us a treaty. We want treaty.”

The king, who was received in Canberra by two previously staunch pro-republicans in Anthony Albanese and Governor-General Samantha Mostyn, is no stranger to heckling.

What did Thorpe want him to do?

Get out a pen and sign a treaty, write out a cheque or put on handcuffs? And who was Thorpe representing … Indigenous leaders or herself?

Thorpe, who has accused the Albanese government and Coalition of being “complicit in genocide” in Gaza, is playing hard to the inner-city dwelling, far-left of the Greens (yes, they exist).

The Greens, who have claimed for years they are going to fix their broken candidate vetting processes, inflicted Thorpe on Australians in 2020 as a replacement for former leader Richard Di Natale.

Thorpe conveniently waited eight-months after winning a six-year term as a Greens senator in 2022 before quitting the party to sit on the crossbench.

Why do Australians have to put up with MPs and senators winning spots in parliament on the back of their party brand and then claiming independent status?

Crossbench moves typically involve scandals, tantrums, grandstanding and personal gain.

Thorpe, similar to other scandal-plagued crossbenchers who have come before, knows she would have little chance of winning a seat in her own right.

Illustration: John Spooner

If she was true to her activist roots, she would quit her well-paid job in federal parliament and establish a new movement unaligned from political parties and the “establishment”.

Thorpe earns a base salary of $233,600, plus an additional $25,696 as chair of a select committee.

Like other MPs and senators, she has claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel allowances, employee travel claims and office, communications, transport and other costs.

It screams hypocrisy for Thorpe to enjoy taxpayer-funded perks while having such disdain and disrespect for the institution she voluntarily works for.