Sean Burke Politicom 20 April 2023
Rogue Federal Senator Lidia Thorpe doesn’t have mental health issues – she’s just “racist” and “cruel”, according to her father. The MP’s estranged parent, Roy Illingworth, said Senator Thorpe wanted for nothing as a child, but lost the plot after becoming a “greenie activist”. The way she is and the way she has changed over the years, I think she is a very racist person against white people,” Mr Illingworth told Sky News’ Bolt Report this week.
“She doesn’t acknowledge any of her white side,” he said.
DISAPPOINTED
“I’m a bit disappointed in her the way she has been carrying on lately. After all she’s got an English background, as well as Irish.”
Senator Thorpe has made headlines on multiple occasions during the past few months after physically clashing with police and, more recently, with members of the public.
On Australia Day this year she told a Melbourne rally that Aboriginal people were at “war” with non-indigenous Australians.
“The way she’s carrying on – I don’t know. She never used to be like that. Maybe it’s the power that’s gone to her head, not sure,” her father said.
“But she’s still my daughter and I still love her.”
On her claims that she’d been oppressed all her life, Mr Illingworth responded: “There was no way she was. She was spoiled.
“She was the first-born among her cousins, so she was really spoiled. She never went without anything growing up … and she knows that too.
“She’s not right there and she’s even more privileged now with the position she’s in.”
GREENIES
He said she had begun to focus solely on her aboriginality at about 16 or 17 after she had started “mixing with the greenies”.
“And since she began running as a politician, she kind of turned racist,” he said.
“She never ever mentions anything about her white father in her speeches, which sometimes disappoints me a bit because I know when she was younger, she was never like that.”
Mr Illingworth said his relationship with his daughter had fractured.
“I moved away from her because I didn’t trust her. She said a lot of bad and evil things to me over the years.
“She never acknowledged her only brother because he’s white.
“She was very cruel to me a few times so I just didn’t have very much to do with her.
“But she still contacts me for Fathers’ Day and birthdays. She rang me not that long ago. We still love each other and at the end of the day she’s always going to be my daughter, so what can you do?”
He said he didn’t think his daughter had mental health issues, as suggested by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week.
HEALTH
“That’s the way she has always been. She has no health problems.
“I have friends who ring me, they feel bad for me … you never know what she’s going to get up to.
“The elders who she grew up with wouldn’t be liking all this, either. It’s just the way she’s gone as an activist … it’s coming from other people who are guiding her through all this, I reckon.
“She’s bringing up her own kids to hate the country they live in.”
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