In 2020, the Australian Senate censured a private citizen for wrongspeak. In 2025, a sitting senator threatens a terror attack on Parliament House and nearly every MP (with a couple of notable exceptions) is too gutless to do a damn thing.
In 2020, Bettina Arndt, a member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to the community as a social commentator and to gender equity through advocacy for men”, made the mistake of saying the wrong thing. Responding to a police statement regarding a domestic murder, Arndt wrote on social media “Congratulations to the Queensland police for keeping an open mind and awaiting proper evidence, including the possibility that Rowan Baxter might have been ‘driven too far’.” Insensitive? Perhaps. Foolish? Certainly, given the entirely predictable screeching outrage that ensued.
With stunning chutzpah, Labor’s infamous ‘mean girls’, accused of bullying a colleague to the point she suffered a fatal heart attack from stress, got on their little soapboxes. Labor frontbenchers Penny Wong and Kristina Keneally moved a motion to censure Arndt and demand the stripping her honour. MPs of both major parties joined in the pile-on.
Leaving aside the blatant hypocrisy, the whole exercise was a shocking abuse of power. Arndt, as a private citizen, had no recourse to defend herself. She had no power to confront her accusers, who got to hide behind parliamentary privilege as they weaponised their bullying with the full weight of parliament behind them.
Piling hypocrisy on hypocrisy, both major parties are all-but silent as a fellow MP makes a terrorist threat against parliament itself.
In a speech immediately condemned by the federal opposition and Jewish leaders, [Senator Lidia Thorpe] likened the Palestinian struggle to the fight for indigenous rights in Australia, saying the two causes were bound by history of resistance. “So we stand with you every day, and we will fight every day, and we will turn up every day and if I have to burn down Parliament House to make a point … I am not there to make friends,” she told the crowd.
Note that these goons were protesting even after their long-demanded ceasefire had come into operation and a peace deal tentatively accepted. The lie of being ‘anti-war’ has been brutally exposed for the lie it always was. When they’re demanding ‘intifada’ (violence against Jews), they’re clearly the opposite of ‘anti-war’. If they’re protesting the peace, then it’s beyond dispute that ‘war’ was never the issue.
The government was conspicuous by its absence from a commemoration of the October 7 massacres in Sydney’s Dover Heights on Sunday night. The opposition leader attended. Not one federal Labor MP did.
Probably just as well, given the boos and jeers from the crowd at the mention of Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong.
The Australian sought comment on Sunday from Mr Albanese and Penny Wong, as leader of the government in the Senate, including whether there would be any move to censure Senator Thorpe or refer the remarks to the Australian Federal Police, but was told there would be no further comment.
Instead, a government spokeswoman said that “protest is an important part of our democracy, but it also must be respectful of others”.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, whose electorate has the highest percentage of Muslims in Australia, tried to downplay Thorpe’s threat.
Mr Burke was asked whether he thought the comments were “acceptable” coming from a senator. “Of course they’re not, they speak for themselves,” he said. “I just don’t think there’s any benefit, and certainly not benefit to social cohesion, in me responding by getting angrier and ramping it up.”
Mr Burke – the manager of business in the House – said there were separate processes in the Senate and did not say whether the government would take any action against Senator Thorpe.
So, they’ll sanction a private citizen for saying the wrong thing, but not a senator for threatening violence.
Of course, Thorpe has defended her threat, saying it was “clearly a figure of speech”. Which may be true, but then, so was Arndt’s statement. That didn’t stop the most powerful people in the land ganging up to attack someone who had no recourse to fight back. At least Thorpe, should she be subject (as she should) to a censure motion, will have the opportunity denied to Arndt: to face her accusers and challenge them.
Besides, four years ago, Thorpe defended a arson attack on the Old Parliament House – now the Museum of Australian Democracy – when its doors were set alight by violent Aboriginal activists. So, she has form here, beyond ‘figures of speech’.
Senator Thorpe’s “belligerent” speech was slammed by Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin who said Senator Thorpe had “no connection to the land, its history or its conflict”.
At least a few of her fellow MPs are not so gutless as to stand silent while this shrieking harpy threatens terrorism on Australian democracy.
Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume says independent senator Lidia Thorpe has hit “new lows” by threatening to burn down Parliament House for Palestine, and has told Labor to do something about Senator Thorpe’s continued stunts in her office […]
“In any other workplace, had a threat been made towards the workplace, well, they’d be out on their ear. They’d be fired.
“They’d be locked out of the building.”
Other MPs are urging meaningful action.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says she has written to the federal police asking for an investigation of independent senator Lidia Thorpe after she said she would burn down Parliament House for Palestine, and likened it to an act of “treason” […]
Nationals leader David Littleproud has called on parliament to take action […]
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and we should not walk past what Lidia Thorpe has done here. This has gone too far.”
Don’t count on the weak, spineless Albanese government to risk a single vote by taking action, though.
