Does Australia desperately need a waka-jumping law? If we did, it would spare us the childish antics of the likes of Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe. Both were nobodies elected on party tickets, then promptly quit and stayed on as ‘independents’, which mostly seems to mean carrying on like two-bob watches and desperately trying to get attention any way they can, no matter how disgracefully.
Shame on their fellow senators for indulging them like spoiled toddlers.
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe has been suspended for the remainder of the sitting week after Labor and the Coalition voted to take disciplinary action against the outspoken upper house member following another offensive outburst in the Senate chamber.
Note that: another.
As if screeching abuse at the King, literally crawling through the mud on the parliament lawns and howling racist abuse after being arseholed out a strip club weren’t enough.
Not that being suspended would ever stop Thorpe from making a prize dickhead of herself.
Independent senator Lidia Thorpe reportedly entered the Senate press gallery to chant pro-Palestine slogans down at the senators a day after she was suspended for tearing up paper and throwing the pieces at One Nation leader Pauline Hanson on the Senate floor.
Senator Thorpe’s interruption could be heard over the Senate microphones.
“Free, free Palestine – from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
If only we could all be free of this attention-seeking disgrace.
Labor Senate leader Penny Wong moved the motion to suspend Senator Thorpe late on Wednesday after the former-Greens senator ripped up papers and threw them before marching out of the chamber with her middle finger raised.
The latest in a series of profane protests by Senator Thorpe was sparked after Pauline Hanson sought to table papers which she claimed questioned former Labor senator Fatima Payman’s eligibility to sit in parliament due to her citizenship.
Which is an entirely legitimate question, given that Payman remains an Afghan citizen. As a raft of Australian politicians found out a few years ago, the High Court takes Section 44 of the Constitution, which prevents a citizen or subject of a foreign power sitting in parliament, very seriously. Payman claims that she has been unable to cancel her Afghan citizenship because of the new Taliban government, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t be tested in court.
Just screaming ‘racist!’ isn’t good enough.
[Thorpe] said Senator Hanson’s move to question the citizenship eligibility of Labor-turned-independent senator Fatima Payman was an “act of racism”.
“She constantly is, across the floor, spewing racism and disgusting violence towards us and anybody else who is not white,” Senator Thorpe told ABC TV.
Well, that rules her out, then. She’s whiter than snow, however improbably she might claim to be ‘black’.
Senate president Sue Lines said Senator Thorpe’s conduct was “not acceptable” and she had met with Labor, the Coalition and the Greens about the appropriate disciplinary action to take […]
Opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham said it was time to “draw a line in the sand” over Senator Thorpe’s conduct, criticising the Greens for voting against the motion to suspend her.
If ever there was a case for outlawing waka-jumping, it’s clowns like Thorpe.
