Suspended independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has showed she will not back down, entering the chamber a day after she was ousted.
She entered the Senate press gallery on Nov. 28 morning and yelled for a “Free Palestine,” as debate rumbled in the chamber below.
The former Greens senator left soon after.
The Senate voted to suspend the outspoken Victorian senator the previous night after she threw pieces of paper at One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson and called her a “convicted racist.”
She also flipped the middle finger on the way out of the chamber.
After her suspension, Senator Thorpe will not be able to officially attend the chamber or vote on any legislation on the final sitting day of the year, but she has no regrets.
“I‘d do it all over again,” she told ABC on Nov. 28. “I’ll do what it takes to stamp out racism that I’ve experienced all my life.”
The government, Coalition, Senators Hanson, David Pocock and Ralph Babet all voted to oust Senator Thorpe—with only the Greens standing against the motion.
“The Senate had to push back,” manager of government business in the Senate, Katy Gallagher, said.
“If people saw what happened yesterday, they would not tolerate it in their workplace.”
But Senator Thorpe insists it is no coincidence she has been suspended on the day her bill was scheduled for debate.
The push would strip the attorney-general of his power to block the prosecution of genocide and other atrocities in Australian courts, but the senator will be unable to speak to it.
“This was always a debate [Labor] didn’t want to have,” she said.
“Whether you’re a Palestinian Australian who has seen your family murdered in Gaza, or a ‘Blak’ mother wanting to hold this government to account for the ongoing removal of First Nations children, my bill would give people in this country a better chance for justice.
The outspoken senator is due to address a group of grassroots organisers in front of Parliament House as they call for the bill’s passage.
“Australia has been avoiding its obligation to prevent and punish Genocide, and has failed to implement the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, despite being a signatory,” Senator Thorpe said.
