When you prompt a headline like “You are not our king: Charles III heckled in Australia’s Parliament” in The New York Times, you are having an impact.
My first thought about the self-proclaimed voice for the “Blak sovereign movement”, Greens defector and now independent Senator Lidia Thorpe’s royal intervention in Canberra this week was that she’s a bit bonkers. You know, there she goes again. I’ll own being too hasty in this initial response.
A second thought, which has taken root, is that Thorpe, a Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjamara woman, has held up an international mirror to Australia, and reflected its abject failure on both Indigenous reconciliation and the republic.
As well as yelling “This is not your country” and “You are not our king”, Thorpe challenged the monarch with: “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us — our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.” A double whammy, reconciliation and republic, courtesy of Thorpe, possum-skin coat and all. Radical chic, in a most unparliamentary style.
The mirror Thorpe held up is hard to look at because it reveals uncomfortable truths. A nation that clings to a foreign monarch, going all gushy when a newish but septuagenarian king deigns to reign upon us with a royal visit, roughly 250 years after Captain Cook landed on our shores and more than 120 years since nationhood. A nation that broke the hearts of many of its First Nations peoples with the Voice rejection, repudiating 65,000 years of Indigenous history and culture — and broke the hearts of many non-Indigenous Australians too.
All of which moves me into the “Onya Sheila” camp when it comes to Thorpe, this time at least, and at the risk of this language choice showing my vintage and country Queensland origins.
Standing on principle
I suspect others may well have swung this way too over the past 48 hours, as Thorpe has used her latest stunt-driven media moment to double down, including multiple follow-up interviews. But not of course Opposition Leader Peter Dutton who has played to his conservative base and called for Thorpe to resign from the Parliament. Others in the Coalition, such as Nationals senator and opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie, are suggesting it was a sackable offence, questioning whether Thorpe has breached the constitution by repudiating her parliamentary vows of allegiance. Over the top? It’s actually almost funny in a Shakespearean dark comedy kind of way.
Dutton’s team, the Liberal-National Coalition, which politically sabotaged the republic referendum a generation ago and the Voice to Parliament referendum last year, is the major party-last refuge for Australian monarchists — and plenty of racists too. But now these conservative diehards have been served up with King Charles III, a monarch who’s more woke than a Mardi Gras float, whose life and worldview has become significantly defined by his environmentalism and climate concern.
Meanwhile, the king on his brief visit has been hosted by a republican prime minister and, monarchists fear, a progressive and republic-inclined governor-general, albeit with a slew of republican premiers staying away from the royal party. If anything, one suspects the king is more than sympathetic to Australia’s traditional owners, who never ceded control to British invaders, who never received recognition by treaty, and who are still waiting for proper reconciliation.
As he said: “Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have done me the great honour of sharing so generously their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom.”
But why am I getting so heated up about this? There are lots of things to hate in this world, but hypocrisy is high on my list.
White elephant in the room
Nearly four decades ago, when Australia was at the forefront of global pressure on the white regime in South Africa over its apartheid policy, my patriotism was punctured by an angry South African-produced television documentary that dubbed Australia “OMO-land”. The punchline, for those who weren’t washing clothes in the 1970s and 1980s, is that the OMO laundry detergent advertising line was that “It all comes out white in the wash”.
What’s changed? Not much. A white British king, who through some historical anachronism and national lethargy is still the Australian king, does a matey visit with his missus, and the nation swoons. Meanwhile, an Indigenous woman, from very Australian stock, gets vilified by many — but also lauded by many — for telling some home truths, admittedly rather loudly, in front of the media and their cameras. Sounds like OMO-land is alive and well.
Nor do I forget that Thorpe opposed the Voice from the left, no doubt contributing in some way to its defeat, because she was and is focused on more powerful recognition and recompense through treaty.
Over recent weeks, however, I’ve been struck by the contradictory moral shambles that post-Voice Australia has become. I’ve been hearing the stories of Indigenous campaigners who put their trust in the Australian people to give them the Voice and were spurned. Some are now emerging from their post-referendum withdrawal and silence to share their pain and try to find some grounds for new optimism. I’ve also sat among far-right enthusiasts who are now emboldened to mock simple acts of respect to Indigenous Australians, such as acknowledgement of country.
For the past week, after attending the Global Nature Positive Summit, a major international sustainability event in Sydney, I’ve been struggling to finalise an article about how impressively the Australian and NSW government co-hosts managed it from an Indigenous perspective. I’ve wanted to say it’s the best I’ve ever seen in terms of moving from the tokenistic to profound recognition and inclusion of Indigenous voices, perspectives and rights in a conference. Not just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but Maori, Fijian and other Pacific Islanders, and embedded in every aspect of the summit.
I’ve also wanted to share the hope and ambition of many, that in pursuing net zero and nature positive to address the climate and natural ecosystem crises in tandem, Australia is being presented with its greatest post-Voice opportunities to deliver real self-determination and economic empowerment to Indigenous peoples.
Voice in the wilderness
But I’ve battled an inner voice saying this is wrong. Our nation can’t truly present this to the world as who we are because we haven’t resolved it ourselves. Because Thorpe’s mirror to the world reflects a different picture. It shows that if you reject the moderate Indigenous leaders and their generosity in making modest reform propositions, you are going to face far angrier, more militant and radical demands.
We still need the Voice, and ultimately we will have to get to the treaty, but the sad truth is we have an awful lot of truth-telling to do first.
FOOTNOTE: To add to the case for how much Australia lags, I was stunned to hear “Indigenous reconciliation” raised as a priority opportunity at a major pro-nuclear event earlier this month by a Canadian reactor engineering executive who said of his country:
“We made a disaster of Indigenous relationships over the last 150 years. I don’t know how similar our two countries are, but I have a feeling [it’s] pretty close. We did terrible things, and for the last 20 years, we’ve been trying to bring that truth out and reconcile what we did and how we go forward as one nation. And in First Nations, in Canada, there’s 650 and they are very active in energy storage, energy production, energy issues, energy policy. They want to be part of the future, so we don’t build any energy systems in Canada without First Nations being part of the story. From day one, the equity of owners being part of the country, there’s no longer any running right over people …”
As the Global Nature Positive Summit was told in the same week, Australia lags at least 30 years behind best-practice Canada when it comes to Indigenous economic empowerment.
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