Wednesday saw an ugly incident that brought shame on the Senate. It was shocking – full of provocation, accusations of racism, and what was described by Senate president Sue Lines as “physically threatening behaviour”.
Three women senators were at the centre of the uproar, which culminated in the maverick Lidia Thorpe being suspended, after she had earlier thrown torn-up paper at One Nation’s Pauline Hanson.
It started when Hanson moved to question the eligibility of former Labor senator Fatima Payman, now a crossbencher, to sit in parliament. Payman, who came from Afghanistan as a child, had trouble trying to renounce her Afghan citizenship because of the Taliban regime.
