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Lidia Thorpe’s mother, cousins and political allies are angling for control of the Victorian body that will act as the state’s Indigenous Voice and interact with a national Voice to parliament, generating unrest among some Victorian Indigenous leaders who fear the maverick senator’s influence.
Thorpe, a Voice critic who quit the Greens over the party’s referendum stance, is allied with at least a dozen candidates in upcoming elections for the Victorian First Peoples’ Assembly, a representative body elected by Indigenous people that is tasked with negotiating a treaty with the state government.
Senator Lidia Thorpe.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
If the Thorpe-connected candidates – including direct relatives and political allies – are successful, they would form arguably the dominant faction in the body expected to interact with the national Voice to parliament and help select Victorians for the Commonwealth advisory body.
Of the approximately 50 assembly candidates, 13 have identifiable links to Thorpe. They include her mother, Marjorie Thorpe, and cousins Alister Thorpe, Lisa Thorpe and Alice Pepper. The assembly is made up of 31 representatives.
Thorpe’s political allies include Ngarra Murray and Tracey Evans, who are seeking re-election and as assembly members last year questioned whether Labor state election candidate Lauren O’Dwyer lied about her Indigenous heritage, which prompted a rebuke from Premier Daniel Andrews.
Thorpe said last month that she expected her allies to make a run at the assembly election, which will conclude in mid-June. She did not respond to questions about this story.
Thorpe during a debate over the latest Closing the Gap report in March.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Three senior Indigenous figures in Victoria, who spoke anonymously to frankly express their concerns and avoid possible retaliation, said Thorpe’s influence could compromise the assembly’s future relationship with the national Voice that Thorpe shuns.
An eminent Victorian Indigenous leader said her community worried Thorpe’s allies would compromise goodwill with the Victorian government in its nation-first treaty talks.
“If her time in Canberra is anything to go by, then it wouldn’t take her long to destroy the treaty in Victoria,” she said.
Though currently focused on a treaty, the assembly’s remit is expected to change in coming years and morph into a Victorian Voice body. The assembly is also expected to interact with the national Voice and play a role in selecting the Victorian representatives to the national body, highlighting the factional complexities the proposed Voice to parliament may run into.
Thorpe and her allies were not supportive of the Victorian assembly when it was announced by the Andrews Labor government because they argued it did not represent all 38 Aboriginal clans in Victoria. The figure cited was heavily contested by local Aboriginal groups.
The first-term senator quit the Greens in February to free herself up to criticise the Voice and advance Indigenous sovereignty. The former Victorian parliament MP has been involved in several high-profile incidents this year, including a strip-club outburst this month that prompted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to suggest she needed support for health problems. Thorpe called his comments a “racist and misogynistic narrative”.
Thorpe has advocated for a national treaty to be given higher priority than the Voice referendum, which she has described as ineffectual. But in Victoria, Thorpe was sceptical of the Andrews government’s treaty announcement and labelled it a tokenistic gesture.
“Aboriginal people have lost faith in the Andrews Labor government, and in the Victorian treaty process,” she wrote in an Age opinion piece in October 2020.
Lisa Thorpe, in her candidate statement for the assembly election, cast doubt on the Victorian treaty process. While stating she supported the treaty, she added: “I believe the first step of Free prior and informed consent of every member of every one of our 38+ Sovereign Nations (in Victoria) and a consensus must be obtained.”
The assembly was established in 2018 and has nine members from the Melbourne region and three each from western, north-western, northern and eastern Victoria. Eleven seats were reserved for traditional owner groups.
The outgoing co-chair of the assembly, Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, sought a formal apology and complained to Greens leader Adam Bandt in 2021 after Thorpe allegedly verbally abused her and left her needing medical attention in a private meeting. Thorpe denied these allegations.
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