Always was, always will be, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land, air, and waters.

So I was delighted to see First Nations Senator Lidia Thorpe call out the current King Charles… and disgusted to see mainstream media reporting it as “angry woman attacks 80-year-old man with cancer”.

Senator Thorpe is a Gunnai, Gunditjmara, and Djab Wurrung mother, grandmother, and advocate.

Senator Thorpe had tried earlier that month and that week to arrange a private meeting with King Charles to discuss these matters outside of the public forum, but he had refused.

She waited politely until King Charles had finished his speech before she made her statement to him.

Then Lidia Thorpe delivered her now already-famous speech.

Lidia Thorpe’s speech to King Charles

“You are not my king. You are not sovereign. 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. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want a treaty in this country. This is not your land. This is not your land. You are not my king. You are not our king. Fuck the colony.”

And she’s right.

Here’s why.

How ongoing colonialism is harming First Nations people

King Charles, whom many Australians would have preferred to have remained Prince Charles, is a white man who has benefited from centuries of violently invading these Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander countries and killing their people, and ongoing colonisation through horrific human rights abuses:

• Murder:
  Massacred countless Aboriginal people and stole their land.
• Deprivation of liberty:
  Took countless Aboriginal people away from their lands and waters and made them live in missions and reserves. This practice continues, because they even jailed Uncle Jim Everett Puralia Meenamatta on his 82nd birthday for defending native Tasmanian forests in Lutruwita from logging by the government’s Forestry Tasmania. He says carrying out Palawa law on Country was his birthday gift to the forests.
• Stolen Generation:
  Stole multiple generations of children from their parents and their families, and never apologised, and continues to do so. (Although our then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did say Sorry as one of his first actions in 2008.) In fact, Australian governments promised in the Closing the Gap agreements to reduce the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in OOHC by 45% by 2031, but they are nowhere close to that target. The government’s own data shows the national rate of Aboriginal children being removed from their families is actually getting worse over time. Bring them home.
• Slavery:
  Kept Aboriginal workers as slaves, not paying them wages or pensions until (officially) 1972 and in some cases even later, and has never repaid this money. This has prevented these people from enjoying the same financial independence and dignified retirement as white Australians. This slavery continues through financial abuse, by the government forcing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to use cashless welfare cards that dictate where and how they can spend their money. This is still happening, in communities across the Northern Territory, Queensland, the Kimberleys in Western Australia, and South Australia.
• Jailing children:
  Puts children as young as 10 years old in adult prisons, often when they’re just accused, not convicted. Some Aboriginal children are even in indefinite detention, like Australia perpetrates against refugees (another horrific human rights abuse). In the past year, two children have died in juvenile detention in Western Australia alone. As reported by the Guardian, in 2024, the Northern Territory lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 years back down to 10, even though the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has been saying since 2019 that the minimum age of criminal responsibility must be 14 years old. The Queensland government has suspended its own Human Rights Act to imprison children in police watch houses for adults. The Victorian government has gone back on its promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. And NSW has recently made its youth bail laws even harsher. These governments refuse to action recommendations from research and Aboriginal communities themselves, which prevent and improve the socioeconomic conditions that lead to youthful misdemeanours, and traditional restorative justice and mentoring practices that keep children in their communities and prevent adult crime and incarceration. (See the AIHW to find out more about child incarceration.)
• Jailing adults:
  Imprisons Aboriginal people at far higher rates than non-indigenous people, and again, this rate is getting worse, not better. Find out more about this reality, and what the research shows we should be doing instead, such as Aboriginal restorative justice practices.
• Forbidding language and culture:
  Stopped Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from using their languages and cultural practices, in a damaging but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to whitewash Aboriginal peoples and cultures.
• Systemic discrimination and racism:
  Across the colonial justice and legal system, education, healthcare, and other areas, there are endless barriers to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accessing these services and being treated fairly.
• Domestic violence:
  The police in every state and territory of Australia allow Aboriginal women and children to be murdered through domestic violence at a rate 8 times higher than non-indigenous women and children.
• Theft of land:
  Refused to pay rent to Aboriginal communities for land claimed by the government – which started at around $27.7 billion in 1900 and is now more than $101 QUADRILLION worth of rent at the time of writing (including compound interest on the debt), and still going up. See the calculations by UAP Company for the artwork by Richard Bell. Anyone who can is welcome to help pay the rent.
• Disturbing the dead:
  Destroyed Aboriginal burial grounds, disturbing the spirits of dead ancestors and causing damage to those communities.
• Socioeconomic discrimination:
  Polluted the land so that many traditional food sources are no longer available, causing reliance on colonial food, which has caused generations of health problems. Colonisers simultaneously made fresh/healthy food more expensive in rural and remote communities (and plenty of metro communities, honestly).
• Intergenerational trauma:
  Created centuries of intergenerational trauma that the government has yet to adequately redress.
• Environmental destruction:
  Colonisation has destroyed millennia of successful land management and biodiversity practices by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
• …and many more injustices.

It’s not a record any ruler could be proud of.

But King Charles’ and Camilla’s reaction to Lidia Thorpe’s speech was non-plussed, perhaps amused, a typically British colonial reaction when Aboriginal people (and other groups) try to assert their rights.

During her already-famous protest speech, Senator Thorpe was wearing a traditional possum-skin cloak, just as she was when she started her job in parliament in 2017, and again when she became a Senator in 2022. She carefully inserted the word “colonising” after Queen Elizabeth II’s name in the oath, and has since stated that she swore allegiance to the “hairs” of the queen, not her “heirs”, meaning she had no loyalty to Prince Charles, now King Charles.

Is Senator Thorpe perfect? No, of course not.

We’re all human, and Senator Lidia Thorpe is no different.

She was dating the leader of the outlawed Rebels biker gang while she was working in parliament, and didn’t disclose that until her staff found out… She was against the Voice to Parliament because she wanted a Treaty first, and wouldn’t compromise (which she is of course allowed to have her preferences). And she’s made some really sexist comments about other women, which sucks…

But she was still right, and I just know her words are going to ring through the ages.

We need a Treaty.

We need a Voice to Parliament.

We need reparations.

We need truth-telling justice that speaks to colonial power.

Sovereignty was never ceded.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Wait, is Australia a democracy or a monarchy?

So don’t listen to the shock jocks who are saying that Senator Thorpe is just lucky that Australia is a democracy, so “she’s not going to be put in jail” for it. (Woohoo.)

Because actually, Australia is not a true democracy, because we still report back to England’s old, rich, white, male monarch.

Technically, Australia is a constitutional monarchy, where the monarch gives power to a parliamentary system that still provides us with mostly the option to vote for a Prime Ministers who are old, rich, straight, white, men…

While you watch footage of Senator Thorpe in action, you can ask yourself two important questions…

First, how many people present at that assembly appear to be of First Nations or multicultural heritage?

And secondly, how many people who were in that room with the king (ew) who rules Australia were old, rich, straight, white men?

Acknowledgement of Country

I am not a First Nations person. My ancestors were Polish and Scottish migrants who came to Australia for work. I am a writer with white skin, and I am conscious of the ways I benefit from the colour of my skin through other white people’s subconscious biases. My writing is one small way I hope to offer acknowledgement, respect, and apology to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures of the Turrbal and Yuggerah Country that land I live and work on, and to honour their Elders past, present, and emerging. First Nations people were amazing storytellers long before my ancestors came here, and their Dreaming is eternal.