The rise and fall of Lidia Thorpe

There can be no doubt that Lidia Thorpe has achieved a lot in her time, but like many before and still to come, she has shown a political naivety since coming to federal politics.

Although she made significant achievements prior to entering federal politics, which we will acknowledge, she has been an absolute nightmare for the Greens since entering the senate. We will also look at this in some detail later in the article.

Thorpe grew up in a housing commission flat in Collingwood, and left school at the age of 14. She became a single mother at the age of 17.

Despite this, she later went on to earn a Diploma of Community Development, a Graduate Certificate in Public Sector Management and a Certificate IV in Indigenous Leadership, and carved out quite an impressive career.

She worked as the Aboriginal employment adviser for the Municipal Association of Victoria and was president of the Lakes Entrance Basketball Association for three years.

She was a member of the school council of the Nowa Nowa Primary School, a steering committee for Indigenous administrators and the Institute of Public Administration Australia (Victoria).

She worked as a project manager with the East Gippsland Shire Council, Indigenous manager at Centrelink and manager at Lake Tyers Aboriginal Training Centre.

In 2013, Thorpe was declared bankrupt with over $700,000 in debts, including monies owed to Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) and $55,000 owed to the Australian Taxation Office. This was perhaps her first controversy, as it is unclear exactly where the money from the IBA went, or for what purpose it was lent.

She claimed her bankruptcy resulted from domestic violence, which her alcoholic ex-husband confirmed. Though the details are sketchy, it highlights the need for the government to ensure that both partners is a relationship have financial independence.

Men and women can be trapped in abusive relationships because of the current Centrelink rules, and often lose everything, just as Lidia did.

Again, she overcame adversity, and became co-chair of the Victorian NAIDOC Committee from 2014 to 2017. She was discharged from bankruptcy in 2016.

Lidia entered Victorian state politics at the Northcote by-election in 2017, winning the seat for the Greens and becoming the first Aboriginal woman elected to the state’s parliament. Her successes for the Aboriginal people were quite impressive, and it was during this time that she began to push for clan sovereignty to be recognised as part of a treaty process.

She lost her seat at the 2018 state election, largely due to internal scandals in the Victorian Greens.

In October 2020, she replaced Richard Di Natale as a senator from Victoria, becoming the first Aboriginal woman to represent Victoria in the Senate and the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian from the Greens. And this is where her political naivety started to show.

She seemed to forget that she was representing a party, even though the Greens are not actually a federal party. They are a union of independent state parties supposedly working together as one. This model has not always worked as well as they might have hoped.

She went rogue, without checking her facts or doing her research, and often without thinking before acting.

In Parliament in May 2021, she attacked new bail laws being introduced in the Northern Territory and assumed that the Attorney-General of the Northern Territory was a white male. The attorney-general, Selena Uibo, was, in fact, an Indigenous woman. 

Thorpe criticised the laws as racist, while Uibo countered that Thorpe simply said outrageous things to get on television and was not qualified to speak on the Northern Territory’s issues.

In December 2021, Thorpe was accused of telling Liberal senator Hollie Hughes “at least I keep my legs shut” during a parliamentary session, and making negative comments in relation to Hughes’ autistic son. Thorpe later apologised, but denied the disability discrimination.

Again in December 2021, Thorpe tweeted “”Seems like the colonial system is burning down. Happy New Year everyone #AlwayswasAlwayswillBeAboriginalLand” in reference to a fire at Old Parliament House. The tweet was almost universally condemned.

In June 2022, after being re-elected in May, Thorpe stated that her intention was to ‘infiltrate’ the Australian parliament and that the Australian flag had “no permission to be [in parliament]”. Fellow Aboriginal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price denounced Thorpe’s comments and called for her dismissal from parliament.

During her swearing-in ceremony, which was delayed due to her unexplained absence the week prior, she added the words “the colonising” in the required Oath of Allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II. Thorpe was immediately criticised by fellow senators.

After instruction by Labor Senate president Sue Lines and interjections from others that the oath must be taken word-by-word, Thorpe recited the pledge once more, this time omitting the two words.

In October 2022, Thorpe was forced to resign from her position as Greens’ deputy leader in the Senate, after it was revealed that in 2021 she had dated the ex-president of the Rebels outlaw bikie gang, Dean Martin.

At the time of the relationship, she had held the justice portfolio for the Greens and had been serving on the joint parliamentary law enforcement committee, so had been privy to confidential briefings about bikie gangs and organised crime. Thorpe had not disclosed the relationship. The matter was referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

It was also reported in October 2022 that following a complaint by one of her staff, the Department of Finance was reviewing the culture of Thorpe’s office.

This week, Thorpe is again in the spotlight after announcing that she would resign from the Greens to become an independent senator, sitting on the crossbench, over disagreements concerning the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

In a statement, Thorpe stated that “this country has a strong grassroots black sovereign movement, full of staunch and committed warriors, and I want to represent that movement fully in this Parliament. It has become clear to me, that I can’t do that from within the Greens.”

Many are confused about what “black sovereignty” actually is, and Thorpe has so far been unable to give clear details of exactly what she is hoping to achieve by this move.

One thing is probably certain: if she wasn’t on an ASIO watch list before, she is now. Comments about infiltrating the parliament to bring it down don’t go unnoticed.

Lidia needs to consider her future in federal politics. While there can be no doubt she has overcome adversity to get to her current position, and that she has done considerable good prior to federal politics, she has embraced the extreme left with an almost fanatical fervour. And fanatics are rarely rational people.

Craig Hill is a Brisbane-based Social Justice Campaigner, Writer, Teacher and Business Consultant. He has campaigned for social justice in Australia, promoted human rights in China and worked with the homeless in Honolulu. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Education and a degree in Management.