So Bridget McKenzie thinks Lidia Thorpe’s protest against King Charles raises some “quite tricky constitutional questions”. Yes it does, but not the ones she thinks.
When Australians go to the polls for each federal election it is not a top of mind consideration for most that anyone we elect will be prohibited from taking up the seat in parliament we have offered them if they refuse to swear the constitutional oath of allegiance to a foreign king. It is not top of mind that those to whom we hand power will be forced to swear to be loyal solely to another country’s sovereign, rather than to the people of Australia. Clearly, it’s not top of mind for Senator Bridget McKenzie, given the nature of her criticism of Senator Lidia Thorpe’s protest.
Thorpe gave voice to what many regard as the perfectly legitimate complaint of oppressed and dispossessed indigenous Australians to the current figurehead of that oppression. But far from taking issue with either the substance or legitimacy of Thorpe’s complaint, McKenzie did no more than attempt to imply that Thorpe had no right to make it – because, in McKenzie’s opinion, it gives rise to questions about whether the protest may have amounted to a breach of her parliamentary oath.
We may assume then that McKenzie is quite comfortable with the current singular constitutional arrangements in which anyone who is elected to a seat in the Australian parliament must pledge their fealty not to the Australian people and their interests but to a foreign monarch. More than that, she’s implying that the price of entry to........