Controversial far-left senator Lidia Thorpe‘s son has made an anti-Australian maiden speech to Victoria’s “indigenous parliament”, and was among several newly elected members to do so.
Andrew Thorpe and 32 other representatives of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, which was last year made into a permanent body under the Labor state government’s undemocratic Treaty with indigenous people, delivered their inaugural speeches at Parliament House late last month.
Mr Thorpe, General Member for the South East Region, began his address by declaring the building was on “stolen land”, while other members called White settlers “the real savages”, claimed the land was “ours forever”, and falsely claimed there was an “ongoing genocide” of aboriginal people.
“Firstly, I want to acknowledge the land that was stolen that this building is placed upon,” he began.
He later thanked his wife for giving him “the courage and authenticity to take on the systems that have failed my people since the First Fleet tried to wipe us out”, and referred to the state as “so-called Victoria”.
The 35-year-old also said he was “deeply concerned by the disproportionate number of aboriginal children in out-of-home care in Victoria”, and that treaty was a “pathway”, not the end goal.
Another speaker, Keicha Day, Reserved Seat holder representing the Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, began with the anti-Australian phrase “sovereignty has never been ceded” and referred to a disputed alleged massacre which some historians argue never took place.
In recounting the so-called “convincing ground massacre”, she called Victoria a “crime scene” and said the alleged European whaler perpetrators were “genocidal maniacs” and “the real savages”.
She then ended her speech with the far-left extremist slogan “always was, always will be”.
Lisa Rose Thorpe, General Member for the Metro Region, claimed there was an “ongoing genocide”, and Esme Bamblett, elected to the same region, said the land “continues to be ours and will be ours forever”.
The First Peoples’ Assembly election was held in March, but only 10,000 of the 43,000 eligible aboriginal Victorians enrolled to vote, and half of those ended up casting a ballot.
Representatives in the First Peoples’ Assembly are paid a full-time annual wage of $198,000, about $14,000 less than a backbench MP, to provide advice to the Victorian government and make decisions about matters that affect aboriginal people.
In April the Labor state government changed the law to require all proposed legislation to come with a statement of compatibility with the Treaty, which was passed in October last year despite polls showing public support of just 37%, and 54% of Victorians voting against the similar Voice to Parliament in 2023.
The Liberal Party has vowed to remove the body if elected when the state goes to the polls in November, and critics say the Assembly operates as a race-based “indigenous parliament”, and gives a small “hardly representative” group of aboriginal people “an effective power of veto over every bill”.
Header image: Left, Andrew Thorpe. Right, Keicha Day (First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria).
The post Lidia Thorpe’s son leads anti-Australian maiden speeches in new ‘indigenous parliament’ first appeared on The Noticer.
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