Australian Senator Calls Queen Elizabeth a Colonizer While Taking Her Oath of Office

Senator Lidia Thorpe of Australia called Queen Elizabeth a colonizer during her swearing-in ceremony yesterday.

As Queen Elizabeth is still head of state in Australia, all senators have to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch; however, Thorpe, the first Aboriginal Australian senator from Victoria state, decided to add a word.

She said, "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—" before she was cut off by Senate President Sue Lines. One colleague in the senate yelled, "You’re not a senator if you don’t do it properly."

"You are required to recite the oath as printed on the card," Lines told Thorpe. "Please recite the oath." Thorpe did so, while raising her hand in a fist. She later tweeted, "Sovereignty never ceded."

Britain colonized Australia beginning in 1788, and Australia was a British colony until it was declared a commonwealth in 1901. Per the Guardian, "under the Australian constitution all senators and MPs must swear an allegiance to the Queen and her heirs and successors before sitting in parliament."

Thorpe, who is of DjabWurrung, Gunnai, and Gunditjmara descent, has made history in her career; in 2017, she became the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Victoria state parliament, and in 2020, she became the first Aboriginal senator from Victoria to serve in federal parliament.

Last month, Thorpe said Australia was a "colonial project" and that the Australian flag did not represent her as an Aboriginal woman. The flag, she told Channel 10, "represents the colonization of these lands, and it has no permission to be here, there’s been no consent, there’s been no treaty, so that flag does not represent me."

She also said she ran for parliament so she could "question the illegitimate occupation of the colonial system in this country."

Thorpe continued, "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."

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