When Lidia Thorpe went on a raging, racist rampage of abuse outside a Melbourne strip joint, some commented that it was a preview of what the “Voice” in action would look like. They were more right than they knew.
Lidia Thorpe’s mother, cousins and political allies are angling for control of the Victorian body that will act as the state’s Indigenous Voice and interact with a national Voice to parliament, generating unrest among some Victorian Indigenous leaders who fear the maverick senator’s influence.
Gosh — an “indigenous” taxpayer trough getting hit by a feeding frenzy of nepotistic, box-ticking chancers? Who could have ever foreseen it?
If the Thorpe-connected candidates – including direct relatives and political allies – are successful, they would form arguably the dominant faction in the body expected to interact with the national Voice to parliament and help select Victorians for the Commonwealth advisory body.
Of the approximately 50 assembly candidates, 13 have identifiable links to Thorpe. They include her mother, Marjorie Thorpe, and cousins Alister Thorpe, Lisa Thorpe and Alice Pepper. The assembly is made up of 31 representatives.
Think “Mahuta Inc.” on steroids.
Three senior Indigenous figures in Victoria, who spoke anonymously to frankly express their concerns and avoid possible retaliation, said Thorpe’s influence could compromise the assembly’s future relationship with the national Voice that Thorpe shuns.
“Avoid possible retaliation”? Presumably, they’re thinking of Thorpe’s penchant for launching into screaming tirades of abuse. Not just at random people outside strip clubs, either: Thorpe’s former staffers have testified that she so brutally abused an elderly Aboriginal woman that the victim had to be taken to the parliamentary nurse.
Or perhaps they’re concerned about Thorpe’s connections with outlaw motorcycle gangs?
Still, it mightn’t be all for the worse.
An eminent Victorian Indigenous leader said her community worried Thorpe’s allies would compromise goodwill with the Victorian government in its nation-first treaty talks.
“If her time in Canberra is anything to go by, then it wouldn’t take her long to destroy the treaty in Victoria,” she said.
Oh dear. How sad.
Though currently focused on a treaty, the assembly’s remit is expected to change in coming years and morph into a Victorian Voice body. The assembly is also expected to interact with the national Voice and play a role in selecting the Victorian representatives to the national body, highlighting the factional complexities the proposed Voice to parliament may run into.
The Age
On the contrary, the whole charade is a telling insight into just what Australians are potentially letting themselves in for. Feuding gangs of pasty-white “box-tickers”, fighting and screaming over who’s more “Aboriginal” and entitled to get their claws into a pile of taxpayer-funded gold.
And, unlike every other “Indigenous” body that succumbed to the same unprincipled, nepotistic greed, like ATSIC, no government will be able to rid us of it. Not when its apartheid existence has been written into the Constitution by the feckless Albanese government.
For what it’s worth, we all owe Lidia Thorpe some backhanded thanks, I guess.