I recently wrote about how toxic New Zealand’s political class have become. Especially in directly inverse proportion to their self-serving witterings about “kindness”. Australia’s aren’t any better, of course.
And, just like New Zealand’s, the more self-righteous they are, the bigger bullies they are. Especially behind the scenes.
Greens senator Lidia Thorpe’s former chief-of-staff says he was scared and appalled by her outburst in a meeting with two Indigenous community leaders at Parliament House last year, calling her behaviour among the most unprofessional conduct he has ever witnessed.
As Aboriginal Australian blogger TheBlackSteamTrain once wrote, of his appearance on an ABC panel discussion, the palefaced “Aboriginal” activists talked a big game about indigenous culture — and then completely trampled on indigenous culture, by talking rudely over an Elder.
Thorpe is no better.
The claims by Thorpe’s ex-top adviser reinforce the account of the meeting by Aboriginal elder Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, aged in her 70s, who has previously alleged the tirade of abuse levelled at her by the senator distressed her so much she sought medical attention from the parliamentary nurse.
David Mejia-Canales, who resigned from Thorpe’s office in June, accompanied the senator to the meeting with Atkinson and Marcus Stewart, the co-chairs of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, and their policy adviser Nicole Schlesinger, to discuss the state’s treaty process in a committee room in Parliament House, Canberra on June 22, 2021.
His account of what happened, and his efforts to inform the Greens’ leadership of Thorpe’s “appalling conduct”, are detailed in an apology emailed from his Parliament House address to Atkinson and Stewart in June, one year after the meeting, as one of his final acts before leaving the senator’s office.
In the email, a copy of which has been obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Mejia-Canales said he still did not know why Thorpe had agreed to the meeting only to proceed “to behave so badly”.
Oh, come on — has he paid no attention to Thorpe’s public career? Her entire career is based on seeking attention as loudly as she can, and then behaving as appallingly as she can, to draw even more attention. Thorpe is a tantrum-throwing political toddler.
And that’s just in public. Like many bullies, Thorpe’s behaviour in public is allegedly nothing on what she gets up to when she thinks no-one is watching.
He described his shock at how the meeting “went so wrong and so quickly”, and said his “biggest regret” was not ending the meeting sooner. He said he ended the meeting by getting a colleague to call the room’s phone.
“I hope that you can understand that I was scared and in shock because I have never, ever been in that situation at work,” he wrote.
“Eventually, I did discreetly text my colleagues to ask one of them to ring the committee room we were in, I then pretended that it was an urgent phone call and we needed to leave therefore cutting the meeting short” […]
As recently as April this year, Thorpe described the exchange as “just a normal conversation I have in parliament every day.”
Of that, I have no doubt.
The claims by Mejia-Canales about Thorpe’s behaviour follow a period of scrutiny on Parliament House’s workplace culture, including the damning 2021 Jenkins report which examined bullying and sexual harassment within the building.
Sydney Morning Herald
Remember — these are the people finger-wagging you about “hate”, and posturing about “be kind”. They’re the first to run crying about supposedly receiving “abuse”.
As Judith Collins once said, the more someone assures you of their honesty, the closer you should keep an eye on your pockets.