King Charles has been confronted by an Australian senator after giving a speech in the country’s parliament, who shouted: ‘This is not your land. You are not our King’ at the monarch.
Senator Lidia Thorpe, Victoria’s first aboriginal senator, the remarks while Charles spoke with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese following his speech.
Clad in traditional Aboriginal garb, she marched across the lobby and told the King ‘You committed geocide 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 lives. Give us a treaty, we need a treaty in this country. You are a genocidalist.’
As she was escorted from the chamber by security, she could be heard saying ‘F*** the colony’.
Former prime minister and staunch royalist Tony Abbott, who was also at the event, expressed his dismay at the protest, labelling it ‘unfortunate political exhibitionism’.
The senator, who refused to swear an oath to the Queen upon being elected, was one of around 20 people protesting the King’s arrival as he laid a wreath at a war memorial in Canberra earlier in the day.
She was among a number of indigenous voices to protest the King’s arrival in what has been dubbed a ‘farewell tour’ by Australian Republicans.
Upon arrival, Charles and Camilla were greeted by Aunty Serena Williams from the Ngunnawal people, who urged the King to apologise for colonial atrocities.
She told reporters: ‘We all have roles and responsibilities, and I have roles and responsibilities to my people. And I think an apology would be beautiful.’
When pressed on whether the King should personally say sorry, she said: ‘Yes. Because we have to acknowledge our past.’
Charles acknowledged the remarks during his speech in parliament and said he ‘offered to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet’, but stopped short of formally apologising.
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