Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe has been forced to undertake her parliamentary oath for a second time after referring to the Queen as a “coloniser”.
The outspoken Senator for Victoria lifted her fist into the air in what appeared to be a black power salute as she marched towards the central table of the chamber on Monday morning.
She then sarcastically recited the oath of allegiance and added her own spin, which was swiftly shut down by other senators.
“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful, and I bear true allegiance to the colonizing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said, drawing uproar from the Senate.
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“You’re not a senator if you don’t do it properly,” interjected one Senator.
“None of us like it,” Ms Thorpe said amid the commotion.
Senate President Sue Lines reprimanded Ms Thorpe for directing her “to recite the oath as printed on the card.”
Ms Thorpe reluctantly finished the correct oath and was sworn into Parliament.
She later took to Twitter to declare: “Sovereignty never ceded.”
Greens leader Adam Bandt threw his support behind Ms Thorpe’s gesture, tweeting: “Always was. Always will be.”
Ms Thorpe has been highly outspoken about the nation’s colonialist history, and has repeatedly argued the Australian flag represents “dispossession, massacre and genocide”.
“The colonial project came here and murdered our people well I’m sorry that we’re not happy about that,” she told ABC radio in June.
“I’m sorry that this flag represents so much trauma for so many people, not all people but so many and they’re the people that I’m representing.”
Last week, Ms Thorpe posted a tweet criticizing the oath of allegiance.
“It’s 2022 and we’re swearing allegiance to a queen of another country,” she wrote.
Politicians are required to recite the oath before taking their seat in parliament.
Ms Thorpe has previously revealed she was only a member to “infiltrate” the system.
“I am here for my people, and I will sacrifice swearing allegiance to the colonizer to get into the media like I am right now, to get into the parliament like I am every day,” she told Network Ten’s the Project.
“To make this country put a mirror up to itself and ask, who are we? Where do we come from and where are we going?”
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