Is taking offence the new form of protest? If so, then Senator Lidia Thorpe, the Green-turned-independent whose disruptions of parliament have become commonplace, could teach a masterclass in it. Under Thorpe’s model, the more performative the offence-taking, the better the protest.

On Wednesday, the Victorian senator caused another parliamentary ruckus. It began when One Nation senator Pauline Hanson questioned the eligibility of Senator Fatima Payman to sit in parliament. Payman – who defected from Labor to the crossbench in July – was born in Kabul, but her family fled the Taliban, and she came to Australia as a child in 2003.

Lidia Thorpe and Pauline Hanson after a division in the Senate this week.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

She was made an Australian citizen in 2005, but has had trouble cancelling her Afghan citizenship because the Taliban government does not have diplomatic relations with Australia. Nonetheless, the legal advice is that Payman is eligible for parliament, having taken “all reasonable steps” to renounce her other citizenship. In the Senate, Payman said Hanson was “vindictive, mean, nasty” and that she “[brought] disgrace to the human race”.

I am sympathetic to Payman’s anger.

Hanson attempted to table documents relating to the matter, but Thorpe seized the papers and ripped them up. She appeared to throw them at the One Nation senator.

Thorpe was subsequently ejected from the chamber, and as she departed, she raised her middle finger in an act of defiance you might call adolescent, except it’s insulting to adolescents. The teens I know would never do anything so rude.

Afterwards, Thorpe barged into the Senate press........

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