Lidia Thorpe, an Australian senator, has defended her heckling of King Charles during his speech at Parliament House, calling him a genocide perpetrator and claiming that “he’s not of this land.”
“I wanted the King of England to understand that he is not the head of state of our nation. Following the demonstration, she told the BBC, “He is not my king.”
In Canberra, Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian, disrupted the ceremony by yelling for about a minute before security dragged him away.
An outspoken supporter of a treaty between the Australian government and its Indigenous peoples is Victoria’s Thorpe.
Such a treaty has never been established in Australia, in contrast to New Zealand and other former British possessions.
