Lidia Thorpe deserves an apology over ex-bikie kissing saga

Ex-Greens senator Lidia Thorpe has retracted claims she dated a former Rebels bikie, and now we all owe her an apology. Here’s why.

OPINION

There is a bit of a problem for far-left lovemakers when it comes to the time-honoured tradition of horizontal folk-dancing. They were once the movement of free love but now that freedom has been fully franked.

It all started out a bit gross — baby boomer hippies migrating between mudponds at Woodstock — and then it ended up somewhere in Canon Law, with doctrines dictating who can and cannot look at each other in nightclubs, or who has to say what before they plant Percy in the playpen.

And as you can see from the links above you are not witnessing the crazed descent of a madman. This has all actually happened.

But thankfully the new lunar left dogma is that people are still free to have a snog on Australia Day or Invasion Day or whatever you want to call it.

Lidia Thorpe at Sydney Mardi Gras.

As with so many liberation movements conducted from the fiercely contested badlands of Northcote, where the greatest source of oppression for the local population is overpriced drinks, this has been led by the magnificent Lidia Thorpe. And for once I agree with her.

Thorpe is currently trying to kill off an Indigenous Voice to parliament, which is unforgivable, and she last month blockaded a Mardi Gras float, which is incomprehensible.

But she is also now saying that she has been unfairly caned for playing tonsil-hockey with an ex-biker who turned out to be … Well, an ex-biker.

“I had no relationship with that person. I was given legal advice by the Greens lawyer to say that I had dated this person,” Thorpe told Parliament this week.

Thorpe addressed the kiss this week. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

“I got a call from that person that said: ‘Ah, did we date?’

“We kissed once at a rally on the 26th of January. I had no idea who this person was or his background.”

I have never in my whole life instantly wanted to know both less and more about everything that is happening here.

Thorpe’s connection to Dean Martin — which is, sadly for business, the least scary name in the bikie world — may indeed be tenuous.

Former Rebels bikie member Dean Martin. Picture: Nine news

The problem for her is that countless other tenuous relationships have been deemed both career-and soul-destroying by her erstwhile allies in the new censorious left.

Barnaby Joyce’s affair with a Coalition staffer — with whom he is now in a committed relationship — so scandalised the chattering classes that Malcolm Turnbull had to introduce his infamous bonk ban.

Likewise Alan Tudge also had his career destroyed over a consensual extramarital relationship, driven by the same ABC which is currently tying itself in knots over how much airtime it should give Thorpe to sh*tcan the Voice.

Two AFL executives were famously forced to resign in 2017 over “inappropriate relationships”, which were again completely consensual. The former CEO of Nine was forced to resign over a consensual relationship in 2020. And the Mayor of Toronto — the largest city of Australia with Snow — had to resign over a relationship with a staffer just last month.

All completely consensual but all deemed effectively sackable just because the parties worked together and one was more senior than the other.

Likewise Lidia and Dean clearly worked together at the Invasion Day rally — and good for them — yet she is still an Australian Senator even after abandoning the party which got her elected.

Thorpe says she remains friends with Martin. Picture: Facebook

But the truly amazing thing is not just that after all of this Thorpe’s political career has not only survived but been championed by the extreme left. It is that she is actually demanding an apology for it!

I’ve got to say I’m really starting to love her more and more. She’s like Meghan Markle with balls.

And I’ve got to say that in an incredibly weird and twisted way, she’s right. As long as she hasn’t breached any national security provisions — and I doubt she could retain any information long enough to pass it on anyway — whatever relationship she’s in should be nobody’s business but hers and the local OMC chapter.

Indeed, as International Women’s Day is marked this week, maybe more women in power should be having relationships with their associates and colleagues and underlings and seeing if the same standard applies to them.

After all, why shouldn’t they have all the same rights and freedoms that men enjoy?

And, after all, love is love.

Originally published as Lidia Thorpe deserves an apology over ex-bikie kissing saga