The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen has been obsessively orbiting the debate around the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament for some time. This week she’s been eclipsed by a photo-captioner. Sledging the Albanese government’s Voice proposal, Albrechtsen claims it is so out there “it could have been drafted by Senator Lidia Thorpe, who revels in her radicalism”.
Which would have been a highly effective sledge if it weren’t for the fact that Thorpe has been a consistent and vocal critic of the Voice proposal, as Bernard Keane notes today.
She wrote a long opinion piece in the Nine papers in early August to that effect. And only this morning, the Greens Senator and DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman called a Voice referendum a “waste of money” that could be better spent on Indigenous communities. She also expressed her (again, consistent and on the record) preference for a treaty.
Given this is unfair enough to invite the suspicion that the point is being wilfully missed, the photo caption lands a little differently:
Every other caption in the piece is simply a straight description of who is being photographed (e.g. “Shaquille O’Neal with Anthony Albanese and Linda Burney”), so the sight of Thorpe raising her fist on the Senate floor, captioned “Lidia Thorpe revels in her radicalism” almost lands as a sarcastic comment on the piece.
