Australian politician who heckled the King swore allegiance to Queen’s ‘hairs’

Lidia Thorpe claims she didn’t break oath she swore in senate because she didn’t say ‘heirs’

The Aboriginal Australian politician who harangued King Charles III on Monday has denied accusations that she breached her parliamentary oath, insisting that she pledged allegiance to the “hairs” of Queen Elizabeth II rather than her “heirs”.
Lidia Thorpe’s extraordinary defence came amid calls for her to resign as a member of the Australian senate, the upper house of parliament.
She made headlines around the world when she interrupted a reception for King Charles and Queen Camilla during their six-day visit to Australia, yelling “f–k the colony”, “this is not your land” and “you are not our King”.
Referring to her swearing in to Australia’s parliament in Canberra in 2022, when she raised her fist in a black power-style symbol of defiance, Ms Thorpe denied that she breached her promise to “bear true allegiance” to Queen Elizabeth II and her successors.
“I swore allegiance to the Queen’s hairs,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“If you listen close enough, it wasn’t her ‘heirs’, it was her ‘hairs’ that I was giving my allegiance to, and now that they are no longer here, I don’t know where that stands.”
She said she had no intention of resigning.
There have been calls this week for her to step down, notably from the leader of the opposition Liberal Party.
Peter Dutton said that if Ms Thorpe was so vehemently opposed to Australia’s constitutional system, she should resign and stop taking her generous parliamentary salary.
“I think there’s a very strong argument for somebody who doesn’t believe in the system but is willing to take a quarter of a million dollars a year from the system to resign in principle,” Mr Dutton said.
“If you were truly about your cause and not yourself, I think that’s a decision you would make.”
Scrutiny of her swearing in appears to show that she did indeed say “hairs” rather than “heirs”, the ABC reported.
But her words were recorded by Hansard, the parliamentary record, as “heirs”.
Simon Birmingham, the leader of the centre-Right Liberal Party in the senate, said there were now questions over whether Ms Thorpe was eligible to sit in the upper chamber.
He said his party would “explore options and consider legal opinions as to the implications of senator Thorpe’s admission” about saying “hairs” rather than “heirs”.
Bridget McKenzie, a senator from the conservative Nationals party, described Ms Thorpe as “the only parliamentarian I’ve ever known to disavow their oath of allegiance to our sovereign, and their heirs and successors”. She said the indigenous politician had “essentially breached” the oath of allegiance she took.
Jane Hume, a senator from the state of Victoria, said Ms Thorpe should resign.
“She’s got what she wanted. This is a very selfish protest by someone who specialises in selfish protests,” she said.
In her interview with the ABC, Ms Thorpe repeatedly referred to Australia’s “colonial system” – despite the country becoming a self-governing dominion in 1901 – and referred to King Charles as “Charlie” and “the oppressor”. 
She said: “I don’t like the King and what he represents. I don’t like the fact that I’ve got to swear to an oppressor to do my job.”
Her outburst in Canberra has divided opinion among prominent Aboriginal figures in Australia, with some decrying the protest as an embarrassment.
Nova Peris, an Aboriginal Olympic athlete and former senator, said the stunt was “embarrassing and disrespectful to our nation and the Royal family”.
She said the protest did “not reflect the manners, or approach to reconciliation, of Aboriginal Australians at large”.
Others voiced support for Ms Thorpe and her long track record of activism on indigenous issues.
Ms Thorpe claimed that some Aborigines had contacted her to say that her outburst in front of the King had “lit a fire back in their belly”. 
She said the protest had given her “international exposure” and had won her “international allies”.