An Aboriginal senator told King Charles III that Australia was not his land, as the British king visited the Australian Parliament on Monday.
Senator Lydia Thorpe was escorted out of the royal couple’s parliamentary reception after she shouted that British colonists had taken Aboriginal lands and bones.
“You have committed genocide against our people,” she shouted. “Give us what you stole from us: our bones, our skulls, our children, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty.”
No treaty was concluded between the British colonists and the indigenous peoples of Australia.
Charles spoke calmly with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese while security officials prevented Thorpe from approaching.
“This is not your land. You are not mine,” Thorpe shouted as she was led from the hall.
Thorpe is known for her high-profile protest actions. When she was confirmed to the Senate in 2022, she was not allowed to describe the then-monarch as “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II the Colonial.” She briefly blocked a police cruiser in Sydney’s gay and lesbian town of Madre Gras last year by lying in the street in front of it. Last year, she was also banned for life from a Melbourne strip club after a video emerged of her abusing male customers.
Albanese, who wants the country to become a republic with an Australian head of state, made an oblique reference to the issue in his speech welcoming the king.
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“You have shown great respect for Australians, even at times when we have discussed the future of our constitutional arrangements and the nature of our relationship with the Crown,” Albanese said. But, he said, “Nothing stands still.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who wants to keep the British monarch as king of Australia, said many supporters of the Republic were honored to attend a reception for Charles and Queen Camilla at Parliament House in the capital, Canberra.
“People got their hair cut, people got their shoes shined, their clothes were ironed, and that’s just Republicans,” Dutton joked.
But the governments of the six Australian states expressed their support for the Australian head of state by rejecting invitations to attend the reception. Both said they had more pressing engagements on Monday, but royalists agreed the royal family had been ignored.
Charles used the beginning of his speech to thank Aunt Violet Sheridan, a Canberra Aboriginal, for her traditional welcome to the King and Queen.
“Let me also say how deeply I appreciate this morning’s moving Country Welcome Ceremony, which gives me the opportunity to pay my respects to the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet, the Ngunnawal people, and all the First Nations peoples who have loved and cared for this continent for 65 years,” Charles said. “A thousand years.”
“Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have given me the great honor of generously sharing their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and reinforced by this traditional wisdom,” Charles added.
The Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to keep Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. This outcome is widely seen as a result of disagreement over how to choose a president rather than majority support for the king.
Albanese ruled out holding another referendum on this issue during his current three-year term in government. But this is a possibility if the center-left Labor Party is re-elected in the elections scheduled for May next year.
Charles was drawn into the debate over Australian republicanism months before his visit.
The Australian Republic Movement, which wants Australia to sever its constitutional ties with Britain, wrote to Charles in December last year requesting that a meeting be held in Australia and for the king to plead its case. Buckingham Palace wrote politely in March to say that the King’s meetings would be decided by the Australian government. The meeting with ARM does not appear in the official itinerary.
“Whether or not Australia becomes a republic is for the Australian people to decide,” the Buckingham Palace letter said.
Earlier on Monday, Charles and Camilla laid wreaths at the Australian War Memorial and then shook hands with well-wishers on the second full day of their visit.
The memorial estimates 4,000 people came out to see the couple.
Charles, 75, is undergoing treatment for cancer, which has led to the itinerary being shortened. This is Charles’ seventeenth trip to Australia and his first since he became king in 2022. This is the first visit to Australia by a British monarch since his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, traveled to the distant country in 2011.
Charles and Camilla rested the day after their late arrival on Friday before making their first public appearance of the trip at a church service in Sydney on Sunday. They then flew to Canberra where they visited the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier and a reception at Parliament House.
Before leaving the War Memorial, they stopped to greet hundreds of people who gathered under clear skies and raised Australian flags.
On Wednesday, Charles will travel to Samoa, where he will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
