Tuesday 2 August 2022 01:24 AM Jacinta Nampijinpa Price calls Lidia Thorpe 'immature' after refusal to pledge ... trends now
Aboriginal senator Jacinta Price has blasted a politician as 'immature' after she threw up a Black Power salute and refused to pledge allegiance to the Queen.
Outspoken Greens senator Lidia Thorpe marched onto the floor of the Senate chamber on Monday morning and defiantly threw up her fist as she prepared to take her oath and be sworn in to parliament.
Ms Thorpe begrudgingly swore to serve the Queen, who is still Australia's head of state, after deriding the 96-year-old monarch as a 'coloniser' on Monday.
First Nations senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said is Ms Thorpe didn't want to take the oath then 'simply don't take the job'.
'There is definitely a level of immaturity about that kind of behaviour. If you want to be a protester, then this isn't the place for it,' she told The Australian.
'Go ahead and join the resistance, but we are there to be legislators for the benefit of our nation. I think it is just disruptive behaviour.
'The majority of us in the Senate today … just saw it as contemptuous behaviour.'
Lidia Thorpe strode into the Senate with her fist in the air and mockingly called the Queen a 'coloniser' during her swearing-in ceremony in the Senate chamber on Monday
Fellow First Nations senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (pictured in the chamber on Wednesday) has said if Ms Thorpe didn't want to take the oath then 'simply don't take the job'
The display was reportedly met with 'groans' from the politician's upper house colleagues as Senate president Sue Lines asked Ms Thorpe to repeat the affirmation correctly - which she did so in a sarcastic tone.
'Senator Thorpe, Senator Thorpe, you are required to recite the oath as printed on the card,' Ms Lines said to the smirking senator.
Greens leader Adam Bandt retweeted a photo of Ms Thorpe with her fist in the air with the caption: 'Always was. Always will be'.
Radio host Ben Fordham said the Greens senator thought she was 'starring in a reality TV show' and would use every opportunity to 'pull a stunt'.
'She thinks it's The Lidia Thorpe Show,' Fordham said on his 2GB show on Tuesday morning.
'Her only concern is making herself the centre of attention.
'I think she is the greatest fake in Parliament – fake claims of racism, silly stunts and an ego bigger than Parliament House.'
The leader of the opposition in the Senate, Simon Birmingham slammed the senator's
