“IF that’s not racism, what is it!? screamed Senator Fatima Payman (WA), glaring at Senator Pauline Hanson and slamming her little fist down on the podium.
Almost simultaneously Senator Lidia Thorpe tore up and tossed documents at the One Nation leader and gave the Senate chamber the finger sign as she stormed out.
So what was it that got under the skin of these two senators and Payman in particular? It was Section 44 of the Constitution, which bars senators having an allegiance to a foreign power. The loyalty of these two is seriously in question.
On Wednesday, Labor voted with Hanson to allow documents questioning Payman’s eligibility to sit in the chamber because of her dual citizenship status to be tabled in the Senate. Payman was previously a Labor Party senator and has dual Australian and Afghani citizenship, but claims she has been unable to renounce the latter because of the Taliban regime running the country.
When elected as a Labor Senator in 2022, Payman was forced to prove she had made efforts to revoke her Afghanistan citizenship, but Hanson is not convinced she made sufficient efforts to do that.
Senator Thorpe meanwhile, has publicly and angrily vented her rejection of the English Crown, lawfully the people’s representative and Head of Government represented locally by the Governor General and state Governors.
Thorpe, who carries a Black Lives Matter-style giant chip on her shoulder, would apparently overthrow this government and replace it with some neo-Marxist Indigenous-centric republic beholden to the UN via UNDRIP.
