Indigenous Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe Shouts in Protest at Visiting King Charles

An Indigenous senator has interrupted a reception for British monarch King Charles III during his first visit since taking the throne, calling for a treaty between the Australian government and First Nations peoples. 

At an event held to welcome the king to Australia at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday, Senator Lidia Thorpe shouted to the British monarch that he was not her king and he should “give us our land back.”

Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe disrupts proceedings as Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla attend a reception at Parliament House in Canberra on Oct. 21, 2024.Lukas Coch—Pool/Getty Images

“Give us what you stole from us,” Thorpe said, before being quickly escorted out of the room by security. “You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. We want treaty.”

King Charles is on his first trip to Australia since being crowned in 2023. While Australia is governed separately from the British throne, the king remains its head of state. A national vote in 1999 on whether to become republic was defeated comprehensively.

The king was seated on a podium during Thorpe’s protest, and talked quietly to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Thorpe is a vocal advocate for Indigenous Australian rights, often protesting at events or on the floor of the Senate.

She was previously a senator for the left-wing Greens Party but quit the group in 2023 over their support for an Indigenous advisory group to Parliament—a body which Thorpe opposed.