By Max Ormond

These words rang out from Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung Senator Lidia Thorpe in the Great Hall of Canberra’s Parliament House to the foreign King Charles III. One has to admire her courage for pointing out to the British Royals their unpalatable history of invasion, dispossession, genocide of the First Peoples. Consequently they have no right to be monarch’s of this land. However, Lidia Thorpe’s truth telling got short-shrift, and she was manhandled out of the Great Hall.

The silencing of Lidia Thorpe resumed with reactionary politicians such as Bridget McKenzie, who opined that Thorpe’s protest may have been a breach of her parliamentary oath. The attempt here is to erase honest history and deflect from the real issue of Britain invading Australia and that the First Peoples never ceded their sovereignty.

For sycophantic politicians, it is disrespectful to point out that King Charles and his queen are direct beneficiaries of colonisation, genocide and exploitation that the British Empire carried out in Australia. To deflect from the issue of First Peoples sovereignty, McKenzie argues that whoever is elected into the Australian parliament must pledge their fealty to the British King, not to the Australian people.

The implication here is that the price of entry to parliament is to remain silent about the crimes by a criminal monarch committed against Australians, all because the current regime in Australia was constitutionally founded on a British monarchy. One could deduce from McKenzie’s obsession with swearing allegiance to his majesty, heirs et al. she bears no lawful responsibility to Australians and, in fact, could choose to act contrary to the interests of Australians.

However, this is nothing new in Australian history. The two-party parliamentary system regularly enacts legislation that disadvantages Australian interests but pursues the interests of foreign empires; namely the British in the past and now American hegemony.

The Comprador Australian state continues the horrendous record of violence against Indigenous people which originated in the force used by the British to subjugate the sovereign First Peoples. The British masked this as bringing civilisation, but it was done for profit, which poured into the royal exchequer for generations and has stayed there.

It is embarrassing and sickening to witness from the prime minister down the excessive fawning towards King Charles with Menzies-like speeches of welcome. In particular, Prime Minister Albanese’s toadying to the royals places him in the category of the past Governor General John Kerr and erases the memory of Gough Whitlam’s progressive policies.

We await with interest how the reactionary compradors in the federal parliament will go about the censure of Lidia Thorpe’s “disrespectful behaviour” and “breach of allegiance” to the royals. Lidia Thorpe might be put on trial through senate denunciation and other parliamentary resolutions of vengeance, but Australia’s so-called “open society” will be up for critical analysis and examination in the court of public opinion and found wanting.

This year the Australian public have witnessed two brave women, Senator Fatima Payman and Senator Lidia Thorpe, who have stood up in the federal parliament for human rights, opposition to racism, dispossession and genocide, in marked contrast to the pathetic minions who sit in this house of disgrace. They have both exposed the role of the Labor-Coalition swat team’s attempts to squash dissent in Australia and their vassalage deference to the US and UK.

Many indigenous and non-indigenous Australians from a range of ethnic backgrounds approve and support Lidia Thorpe for what she did in shouting truth to King Charles and exposing the real history that took place in this country. It might take a long time to end but the “colonial cringe” will eventually meet it’s use by date.