Yesterday Charles III was heckled in Parliament House in Canberra. He might consider it a happy milestone: he has only been on the throne two years. Lidia Thorpe, an Indigenous independent senator, shouted: “You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us — our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. You destroyed our land. Give us a treaty. You are a genocidalist. This is not your land. You are not my king. Fuck the colony”.
It was a predictable heckle: the treatment of the Aboriginal Australians is appalling and remains so, even as Thorpe was hustled out. The king looked unworried because strange things happen to kings all the time. They must because they are our sole remaining depositary of public magic, and people behave oddly around them. Meeting Thorpe was not even the oddest thing that happened to the king yesterday.
