Nick Tabakoff The Australian April 30, 2023
Broadcasters are being forced to adopt unorthodox methods to try to persuade Australia’s newest human headline, former Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe, to come on their shows for interviews. The Indigenous senator has seemingly dodged what we’re assured have been continued requests for her to appear on radio and TV shows in recent weeks.
But Thorpe herself has presented a very different version of events through her own channels, suggesting on Twitter last month her non-appearance in the mainstream media was due to racism. “The media seemed to white ban me,” she tweeted.
But it turns out Thorpe’s incendiary claim was immediately challenged. Melbourne’s top-rating host Neil Mitchell braved Thorpe’s Twitter handle to contradict her claim she had been “white-banned” by the media.
“This media man did not ban you,” Mitchell responded. “Your office has either declined or not called back. You personally ignore my DMs. Happy to interview you next week. It is in your hands.”
Mitchell got an instant result. “Sweet Neil, your invitation is accepted,” Thorpe pronounced.
She replied: “You have my number old mate.”
The senator was as good as her word. A fortnight after Mitchell’s public contradiction of her claim, Thorpe appeared on his 3AW show last week, in an interview packed with quotable quotes frequently playing into her racism claims.
Most notably, she directly shirtfronted PM Anthony Albanese’s apparent questioning of her mental health.
“If Albo wants to know about my health, then I’ve been diagnosed with an allergy to racists,” she told Mitchell.
“I think about it in the parliament each day, where I’ve had senators cry to me because of their guilt of what white people did to black people. I wonder about those people’s mental health.”
She also challenged the claims by her own non-Indigenous father, Roy Illingworth – who we talked to in last week’s Diary — that she was herself “racist” towards white people.
She told Mitchell: “We cannot be racist to white people. White people don’t fall into that category.”
Mitchell said turning to Twitter had helped to cut through her “white ban” mentality. “Twitter is usually a sewer but, used properly, it can be useful,” he said.
He also emerged a fan of the controversial senator: “Perhaps it’s the old leftie in me, but I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Lidia Thorpe. She’s refreshingly direct in an era of sanitised and overly-mindered politicians. I’m happy to have her back on whenever.”
1/ Senator Lidia Thorpe. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
Comment by Nelle-back in the day when she was an attractive woman before hate toxicity and misguided assumptions turned her into the woman in the top picture
Nelle's journey 