Karl Stefanovic has labelled Lidia Thorpe ‘the most loathed woman in parliament’ after the senator shouted abuse at King Charles on Monday.
But instead of taking offence at that description, the controversial politician seemed to wear it as a badge of pride.
‘It’s just another day in the colony, Karl,’ Sen Thorpe said with a shrug on Channel Nine’s Today show on Thursday.
‘I’m used to that treatment. I am the black sheep of the family, if you like. But I wanted to send a message to the King… I got that message across.
‘The whole world is talking about it and my people are happy because my people have been protesting for decades and decades, as you all know, for exactly this.’
Stefanovic then hit her with a question about her political future.
‘The question this morning you were being asked is, why the hell doesn’t Lidia Thorpe just do everyone a favour and get out of Canberra? Will you?’ he said.
‘I’m about truth telling. I’m loud, proud, black. Get used to it and listen to what I have to say,’ Ms Thorpe responded.
‘We need to grow up as a nation and get rid of him and have our own head of state.’
The King had just finished speaking in the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra on Monday when Ms Thorpe roared out a torrent of abuse at the monarch.
‘You committed genocide against our people, give us our land back!’ she shouted, while draped in a native fur coat.
Three days later, the unrepentant Victorian said ‘the message has been sent, delivered and now it’s up to the King of England to respond’.
Sen Thorpe also dismissed Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s call for her to resign over her one-sided battle of words with King Charles.
‘I’m an independent. No one can kick me out of there. I’m there to fulfil my job,’ she told Stefanovic.
‘There’s unfinished business. I’ll spend the next three years getting that unfinished business done.’
Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie questioned if Sen Thorpe’s actions breached the oath she swore to show allegiance to the king.
Sen Thorpe said the point was moot because she sneakily changed the wording of the oath when reciting the affirmation.
In swearing the oath she was supposed to say: ‘I … do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her heirs and successors according to law.’
But she told the ABC that instead she swore allegiance to the Queen’s ‘hairs’.
‘If you listen close enough, it wasn’t her ‘heirs’, it was her ‘hairs’ that I was giving my allegiance to and now that they are no longer here, I don’t know where that stands.’
Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham said he is seeking legal opinion on the matter, whether Sen Thorpe will need to retake the oath, which would be a humiliating climb-down for her, or be expelled as a senator if she refused.
‘Senator Thorpe appears yesterday to have admitted, confessed, stated very plainly that she didn’t take the oath in affirmation of office as laid down in the Constitution,’ Sen Birmingham said.
‘If that’s the case, it is a serious matter and Professor Anne Twomey, one of the nation’s leading constitutional law experts, has said this is at least a matter for the Senate President to have to review and look at whether she has complied with those constitutional obligations to take up her seat in the Senate.’
Facing the prospect of swearing allegiance to the King or being dismissed, Sen Thorpe altered her position by saying her mispronunciation of ‘heirs’ as ‘hairs’ was unintentional.
She told Sky News on Thursday, that she ‘spoke what I read on the card, on which ‘heirs’ was written.
‘Now forgive me… my English grammar isn’t as good as others, and I spoke what I read, so I misspoke,’ she said.
Constitutional law expert Ron Levy said the High Court could decide Ms Thorpe was never qualified to be in the Senate due to not taking the oath properly.
‘ She can’t be booted out of parliament for the swearing, for insulting the King,’ he told 9News.
‘However, there may be a court case that may succeed for her non-oath, for her revelation that she didn’t really swear the oath of allegiance.
‘There’s some possibility of the courts accepting the claim that she’s not duly sworn in.’