Dear Ttbn,

I must admit that I haven't been following this discussion, mainly because of too much bad names and personal insults, but I do come back from time to time to check whether anyone replied to my posts, and found your post which is refreshingly decent.

I do not know who this Thorpe is, nor would I bother to find out.
You say s/he is a senator and that s/he lied his/her way to the Senate.

Well if s/he lied to his/her voters, then that is a very serious matter and so wrong.

But, if s/he told the truth to his/her voters, telling them openly that s/he does not see him/herself as Australian, yet they voted for him/her anyway, then s/he has every right to be in the Senate and represent them there, even if s/he had to lie to the authorities due to their unjust and unreasonable demand of loyalty to Australia rather than to her voters.

Yuyutsu,

There is nothing "unjust and unreasonable" about the expectation of loyalty to Australia from all Australians, particularly politicians, and even more particularly, politicians who get the job in the Senator by dint of position on the party ticket and a ridiculously low number of votes they don't have to work for like lower house politicians do. Thorpe is there to represent her state, not a particular group of people in that state, nor to spout her own, clearly seditious, views. There was a time when she and Bandt could have been removed from parliament, and I, for one, very much miss that provision.

You say that you don't know anything about Thorpe. Might I suggest you find out about her, and other politicians who are supposed to be working for their keep, not just spouting slogans and telling the people who pay them how awful they are?

Dear Ttbn,

I have no time or interest to go researching about individual politicians, thus for the purpose of this discussion I accept whatever you say about this Thorpe at face value, that "there is this Thorpe person in the Senate who did such and such" - I would only use him/her as an example anyway.

«There is nothing "unjust and unreasonable" about the expectation of loyalty to Australia from all Australians»

Would you care to provide me with any intelligent explanation why you think that to be the case, why those who were born or happen to live in this continent owe any loyalty to the state of Australia, just like why those who were born or happen to live in China owe any loyalty to the state of China or those who were born or happen to live in Russia owe any loyalty to the state of Russia?

By "intelligent" I mean any argument that is more convincing than "well, if they don't oblige then they will be beaten with a big stick".

As for politicians, I believe that they should represent the views of their voters - neither of any state, nor of any political party, nor their own, nor of any other organisation, whatever these views are, including loyal or otherwise. Since there are several views in the community, there are in a democracy also several politicians to attempt representing them all. SO LONG AS they faithfully represent their electors, removing a politician, for whatever reason, is equivalent to silencing their electors - only the electors should be able to remove their own representative.

Hi Yuyutsu,

What the likes of ttbn and others can't stomach is the fact that those they support, the rabid right are abject failures at the ballot box. Australians simply won't support them, so they demand those who are supported (elected) should cow-tail to their way of thinking, while such people and their ideas are unrepresentative. Lidia Thorpe was easily returned as a Greens Senator for Victoria with a personal vote of 40,174, and an overall Green vote of 484,561, whilst the lead candidate for Is Mise's Shooters Party in that state scored a miserable 2,642 about 1/20th of Lidia's vote or 0.004 of a quota, one of the first candidates eliminated.

"Greens senator Lidia Thorpe said Australia’s flag does not represent her and it only represents the “colonisation” of the country."

Totally agree with Lidia, whilst the Australian flag contains the British Union Jack it symbolises colonial murder and genocide of our First Nations people. I'm not big on flags, and flag waving, they are used too often to engender nationalistic hate for others, rather than being a positive symbol of inclusion and unification.

If these guys were in Germany, they would want the Nazi swastika on the national flag, just to rub Jewish noses in it, that's how far right they are.

Pauliar,

Considering that Lidia Thorpe is more British than aboriginal, the union Jack should represent her perfectly. But what else could we expect from a gold digger that never gave a crap about her aboriginality until she realised that there was a lot of money in being a sanctimonious hypocrite.

Dear Paul,

With due respect, you have not addressed the specific issues I raised.

You seemed to explain why a particular Australian politician was legitimately elected, while I insisted on the universal principle of true representation.

You seemed to provide specific reasons why people ought not be loyal to Australia and respect its flag, while I stated in the most general terms that people need not be loyal to their countries (unless of course they want to), nor need to provide any reason(s) for their disloyalty.