“What is good for Aboriginal people in this country is ultimately good for everybody.”

That is Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe questioning the major parties' track record in dealing with First Nations issues, as Australians prepare to head to the polls this weekend. 

“No government ever has made good laws for us; they've only been bad,” Thorpe said.

“The only way we're going to get anywhere is to break the two-party system and have more independents and more minor parties in power,” she said.

“There are so many problems with the stronghold that the two-party system has, and we have the power to break that, particularly in this election.” 

In February 2023, Thorpe introduced the Human Rights Parliamentary Scrutiny Amendment Bill, which sought to amend the definition of human rights to incorporate the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Although Australia endorsed UNDRIP in 2009, as Thorpe told the Senate, "the Australian Government has failed to implement UNDRIP into law, policy, and practice across all levels of government".

The Labor Party sided with the Coalition and voted down the amendment. If passed, it would have ensured that UNDRIP was considered when assessing legislation. 

Thorpe says it was “demoralising to see Aboriginal people in Labor get in the chamber and vote down their own rights as Indigenous peoples”.

Thorpe made global headlines in October last year for disrupting a parliamentary reception for King Charles and Queen Camilla, yelling: “This is not your land. You are not my king.”

The Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum was one of the reconciliation efforts proposed by the Australian Government — a move Thorpe has criticised as merely a symbolic gesture, rather than a commitment to structural change.

“We are dealing with a very racist country, and they reared their ugly heads during the referendum,” Thorpe said.

The Blak Sovereign Movement, she said, had issued a warning to the Labor Party.

“The country is too racist to go to any kind of referendum on First Peoples of these lands. And it's going to cause harm. And it did.”

The referendum failed, with 60 per cent of Australians voting 'No', and all six states recording a majority 'No' vote, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

During the ABC’s Leaders’ Debate on April 16, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was questioned about the Uluru Statement, which called for “voice, treaty, and truth-telling”.

Albanese responded: “We accept the decision of the Australian people in that referendum. You've now moved on from all of that.”

Yet, just one month earlier, reports revealed that the Voice referendum had both normalised and exacerbated racism toward Indigenous Australians, with one in five complaints referencing the failed vote.

For Thorpe, moving beyond symbolism and pursuing genuine reconciliation looks like a returning of land. 

“We need our land back," she said, "We need the system to stop stealing our children — 24,000 of our babies are still in out-of-home care today. We need to end deaths in custody,” she said.

Thorpe's comment is backed by recent data that reveals almost 24,000 Indigenous children were placed in care at least once in the last financial year, as reported in The National Indigenous Times.

Meanwhile, Australian Institute of Criminology reports that 590 Indigenous deaths in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

“Reconciliation morning teas is, is nice and fluffy, but when you have prime ministers and ministers responsible and complicit in genocide, well, what are they having a reconciliation, or closing the gap, or voice celebration, for when it means absolutely nothing on the ground?”

The senator has also built a reputation as a vocal Palestinian advocate, introducing the Genocide Red Lines Law Reform Package with independent West Australian Senator Fatima Payman. 

The package consists of three bills that control defence, divest from illegal settlements, and stop exports linked to genocide.

“What is happening in Palestine happened to us and continues to happen to us,” Thorpe said.

She described colonisation as being about “destroying the Indigenous people of the land”, through dispossession, “raping and pillaging the land and resources”. 

She said it has devastated Aboriginal communities. 

“We end up the sickest people in our own country and the poorest people in our own country,” Thorpe said.

“They've decimated our population. And they've done very well at that,” she said.

“One part of that is assimilating us. You see the Blackfellas that are in the Labor Party and the Liberal Party — they’re completely assimilated into the white man's rhetoric and dominance of us as a people.”

Thorpe said achieving true progress would mean re-centring Indigenous culture as “the oldest continuing living culture on the planet”. 

The fabric of Australia “should be about us”, she said, with a constitution that recognises the “old law of this land”.

MOJO News contacted the Labor Party for comment on this story, but no response was received by the time of publication.