If I had $1 for every career-ending scandal Lidia Thorpe has somehow survived, I’d donate my millions to any cause promising to boot her out of parliament.
An exaggeration? Perhaps. Harsh? I don’t think so, because the time has come for Thorpe to bid farewell to her political career.
Let’s take a look at the latest instalment in a series of bizarre controversies clouding the independent Victorian Senator.
The news that she had been screaming outrageous profanities outside a Melbourne strip joint at three in the morning came as no surprise.
It was outrageous, sure, but not surprising. I found it entirely fitting that the bikie-dating, police-hating, Mardi Gras-ruining antagonist would happily shout disgusting insults at others, making a total disgrace of herself.
She was telling men on the street they had small penises, and yelling about the repression of Indigenous Australians.
“How to f*** does someone get in parliament like you?” one of the men retorted.
Well, anonymous foul-mouthed man, you asked the question we were all thinking.
Imagine for a moment that it wasn’t Thorpe who was caught being a public nuisance in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Imagine it was a male senator. One with a white background and a penchant for causing trouble … not unlike Thorpe herself.
Say he had stumbled out of the dirty strip joint (no disrespect to the fine owners of the Brunswick establishment), hollering at civilians on the street, telling them they had tiny genitalia and calling them dogs.
Do you seriously think we would tolerate that man remaining at one of the highest levels of government?
The number of chances Thorpe has been given during her short tenure in the Senate is unbelievable. In 2021, Thorpe commented to Liberal senator Hollie Hughes, “at least I keep my legs shut”, during a Senate discussion about people living with disabilities.
When Canberra’s Old Parliament House was set alight last year, Thorpe tweeted: “Seems like the colonial system is burning down. Happy New Year everyone #AlwayswasAlwayswillBeAboriginalLand”.
She was forced to resign as deputy Greens leader last year after she failed to declare her relationship with former bikie Dean Martin.
At the time she said she met the former Rebels president through her association with black activism, and they bonded over a passion for Indigenous rights.
I remember where I was when I heard about this. Much like how people remember where they were when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.
I was sitting next to my partner on a drive down the south coast. I leant over to him, read him the news and grinned. Surely, this would be it. This would be the end of Lidia Thorpe.
But nay, the cat with fourteen thousand lives lived on.
In February, she quit the Greens after refusing to support the Indigenous voice to parliament, saying she would continue to represent the black sovereign movement as an independent. Later that month, she lay in front of a float at the annual Sydney Mardi Gras halting the whole parade.
She claimed police pushed her to the ground on the Parliament House lawn last month after she attempted to take the stage at a rally organised for Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull.
But I digress. In the end, the likelihood of Thorpe being suspended from parliament is slim – it’s only ever happened to three federal MPs – but this absurdity must surely come to a close.
Or, if she had even a scintilla of grace, she would hand in the resignation letter herself.
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