Latest news with #Gunditjmara
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
One heard voices, another saw her future. Their art will unnerve you
When she was a little girl, Hayley Millar Baker would cover her ears with her long dark hair before falling asleep. She did so as a sign that she was unavailable to the spirit world. It was her way of saying, 'I'm not up for talking, I don't want to hear you tonight', she tells me when we meet at Buxton Contemporary gallery in Melbourne. It's a habit she continues to this day. Millar Baker hears voices, feels presences, astral travels. This awareness of a realm beyond the physical is not something she can control. Perhaps sensing my reserve about the possibility of such things, she looks at me with her remarkably bright hazel eyes and asks 'Do you believe in ghosts?' I fumble for an answer and settle for 'I don't know'. Millar Baker, who has Aboriginal heritage on her mother's side (Gunditjmara and Djabwurrung peoples) and Anglo-Indian and Portuguese-Brazilian ancestry on her father's side, has delved into the paranormal in her three short films – Nyctinasty (2021), The Umbra (2023), and her latest, Eternity the Butterfly. All three films are screening together for the first time in the veil exhibition at Buxton Contemporary, conceived by First Nations curator Hannah Presley. Indeed, Millar Baker's films and the concepts they explore are the impetus for the exhibition, which has been two years in the making and features the work of six female artists, four of them Indigenous. 'I approached Hayley about her next film and what her plans were and we started talking about Eternity the Butterfly, which now has a title and exists, but then was in the very early planning stages,' Presley says. 'We locked in the commission, and then I started to think, Hayley has two previous films, and the ideas across the films were really my inspiration to build the entire exhibition.' The exhibition deals with themes such as the importance of emotion, of instinct and ritual, of Indigenous knowledge and spirituality, and even of magic in a world that tends to privilege the rational. For Aboriginal people, 'the land is alive, the spirit world is a given', says Presley. In its premiere screening, Eternity the Butterfly is the exhibition's masterwork, shown across a nine-metre screen. Like Millar Baker's two previous films, it is beautifully austere, wryly haunting, subtly political. She sets her films in impeccable architectural spaces that jar with the mysterious happenings that take place within them. Filmed in black and white, her short films evoke the works of Hitchcock on the one hand, with their film-noir edge, and Bill Viola's mystical video art on the other, with its references to religious iconography and Renaissance paintings. It doesn't surprise me that Millar Baker is a fan of horror, but I'm intrigued to hear that Quentin Tarantino is another inspiration. She loves his 'long-winded' scenes, such as the opening of 2009's Inglourious Basterds, where the psychological tension mounts to a terrifying climax as a menacingly polite Nazi officer tries to outmanoeuvre a French farmer who is hiding a Jewish family under his house. Like Tarantino, Millar Baker is unafraid to linger over a scene, to build tension through the simplest of gestures. Loading Eternity the Butterfly is set in the stunningly minimal 'House at Big Hill', near Victoria's Great Ocean Road, designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects. In a striking performance, Georgia Mokak, who is not a professional actor (none of the actors in Millar Baker's films are), plays Eternity, a goddess-like being, who enters a meditative state and conjures ancestor spirit guides, calling them at one point with deep guttural sounds. The film's title references the life cycle of the butterfly, and its constant evolution, from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly to egg, over and over, which in turn speaks of the persistence and survival of Aboriginal culture in the face of historic efforts to suppress and destroy it. The film was about a year in the writing, another six months in post-production: 'All the scenes came to me in dreams, so that was a waiting game,' Millar Baker says. She likes to create works slowly, letting the ideas form intuitively, a method that she says is counter to the way the arts often operate in Melbourne – fast-paced and competitive. Millar Baker's past photographic work has alluded to ghostly encounters, while leaving open the possibility that the disturbing voices and noises she heard as a child could have been a play of the imagination, a warp of memory, or an idea planted by a trusted elder to encourage awareness and prevent her from 'straying too far from the pack', as she puts it. But it was only in Nyctinasty, commissioned by Hetty Perkins for 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony at the National Gallery of Australia in 2022, that Millar Baker explicitly acknowledged her connection to the spirit world. She stars as a woman, alone at night in an elegant contemporary home, who performs a series of rituals that evoke the ways in which Aboriginal people care for the body and spirit after death. She bathes, tends an open fire, applies charcoal to her hands before lying back on a couch, eyes closed, summoning. A sense of foreboding pervades the film and builds to a startling final scene. Millar Baker had just had her second child when she made the film, which adds another layer to this story about the cycles of birth and death. Comparable themes are explored in the works of Lena Yarinkura, a senior weaver from Maningrida who has made two gloriously large and intricate fibre sculptures inspired by creation stories; Glenda Nicholls (Waddi Waddi, Ngarrindjeri and Yorta Yorta) a master weaver who makes vast hanging nets, hand-woven from jute and decorated with feather flowers; Lisa Waup, who has screen-printed 365 hessian sandbags that allude to floods and waterways affected by climate change and colonisation; and Hannah Gartside, who creates sculptures from found fabrics and cast-off clothes. The exhibition also marks the first time that the work of Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska is being shown in Australia. Presley and Millar Baker were deeply affected by Grzeszykowska's photographic series, Mama, when they saw it together at the Venice Biennale in 2022. When Presley began working on the veil, she and Millar Baker immediately thought of inviting Grzeszykowska to take part. 'I was very happy of course,' Grzeszykowska tells me via Zoom from her home in Warsaw. 'I really admire the works in the exhibition because the art is so true, so I'm kind of proud that my work fits this, and I really like this intercultural context.' Mama is an eerie, darkly humorous and disturbing series of photographs of Grzeszykowska's daughter Franciszka, who was then seven years old, playing with an uncannily life-like and life-size bust of her mother. Franciszka bathes this artificial mother figure, hugs it, gives it a cigarette, paints its face, takes it down to a river bank in a trolley cart, swims with it, and eventually buries it. Like Millar Baker's films, the series evolved organically, the idea revealing itself over time. Grzeszykowska had ordered a bust of herself from a company that makes props for films. She documented the process – an interesting exercise, as it was the first time she could view 'herself' from behind a camera. But this documentation didn't seem strong enough for a finished artwork. So she took the bust home, put it in her living room, and went about her daily chores while she thought about what she might do with it. 'After a few weeks I noticed that my daughter started to play with it. She was combing its hair and she was dressing it up, she was really treating this object as if it was a doll,' Grzeszykowska says. The role of mother and child was reversed. The resulting photographs are psychologically unsettling and imbued with a haunting sense of mortality. The mother figure may not be real, but the complex emotions that the photographs stir certainly are. 'I must admit there are some photographs in the series which are more intense, even for me,' Grzeszykowska says. One of them is the photograph of Franciszka washing the doll in the bathtub. Grzeszykowska's bathroom is small, so she had to shoot the photographs from a mirror on the opposite wall of the bath. 'This picture is amazing,' she says, 'because when I saw it seemed to me that I was looking into the future.' As the curator who has brought these artists and their distinctly different mediums together, Presley says it's rare in Australia for the work of a senior weaver such as Lena Yarinkura to be exhibited alongside that of a Polish feminist photographer. But these are exactly the kinds of connections and juxtapositions that she feels are important for Indigenous artists. 'We're at a stage where we've got these really established artists that need to communicate with other artists,' Presley says. There's a lot to absorb in this quietly expansive exhibition, and when I come to writing this piece, I'm not sure how or where to start. The words come to me in my sleep: When she was a little girl, Hayley Millar Baker would cover her ears with her long dark hair before falling asleep.
The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
One heard voices, another saw her future. Their art will unnerve you
When she was a little girl, Hayley Millar Baker would cover her ears with her long dark hair before falling asleep. She did so as a sign that she was unavailable to the spirit world. It was her way of saying, 'I'm not up for talking, I don't want to hear you tonight', she tells me when we meet at Buxton Contemporary gallery in Melbourne. It's a habit she continues to this day. Millar Baker hears voices, feels presences, astral travels. This awareness of a realm beyond the physical is not something she can control. Perhaps sensing my reserve about the possibility of such things, she looks at me with her remarkably bright hazel eyes and asks 'Do you believe in ghosts?' I fumble for an answer and settle for 'I don't know'. Millar Baker, who has Aboriginal heritage on her mother's side (Gunditjmara and Djabwurrung peoples) and Anglo-Indian and Portuguese-Brazilian ancestry on her father's side, has delved into the paranormal in her three short films – Nyctinasty (2021), The Umbra (2023), and her latest, Eternity the Butterfly. All three films are screening together for the first time in the veil exhibition at Buxton Contemporary, conceived by First Nations curator Hannah Presley. Indeed, Millar Baker's films and the concepts they explore are the impetus for the exhibition, which has been two years in the making and features the work of six female artists, four of them Indigenous. 'I approached Hayley about her next film and what her plans were and we started talking about Eternity the Butterfly, which now has a title and exists, but then was in the very early planning stages,' Presley says. 'We locked in the commission, and then I started to think, Hayley has two previous films, and the ideas across the films were really my inspiration to build the entire exhibition.' The exhibition deals with themes such as the importance of emotion, of instinct and ritual, of Indigenous knowledge and spirituality, and even of magic in a world that tends to privilege the rational. For Aboriginal people, 'the land is alive, the spirit world is a given', says Presley. In its premiere screening, Eternity the Butterfly is the exhibition's masterwork, shown across a nine-metre screen. Like Millar Baker's two previous films, it is beautifully austere, wryly haunting, subtly political. She sets her films in impeccable architectural spaces that jar with the mysterious happenings that take place within them. Filmed in black and white, her short films evoke the works of Hitchcock on the one hand, with their film-noir edge, and Bill Viola's mystical video art on the other, with its references to religious iconography and Renaissance paintings. It doesn't surprise me that Millar Baker is a fan of horror, but I'm intrigued to hear that Quentin Tarantino is another inspiration. She loves his 'long-winded' scenes, such as the opening of 2009's Inglourious Basterds, where the psychological tension mounts to a terrifying climax as a menacingly polite Nazi officer tries to outmanoeuvre a French farmer who is hiding a Jewish family under his house. Like Tarantino, Millar Baker is unafraid to linger over a scene, to build tension through the simplest of gestures. Loading Eternity the Butterfly is set in the stunningly minimal 'House at Big Hill', near Victoria's Great Ocean Road, designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects. In a striking performance, Georgia Mokak, who is not a professional actor (none of the actors in Millar Baker's films are), plays Eternity, a goddess-like being, who enters a meditative state and conjures ancestor spirit guides, calling them at one point with deep guttural sounds. The film's title references the life cycle of the butterfly, and its constant evolution, from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly to egg, over and over, which in turn speaks of the persistence and survival of Aboriginal culture in the face of historic efforts to suppress and destroy it. The film was about a year in the writing, another six months in post-production: 'All the scenes came to me in dreams, so that was a waiting game,' Millar Baker says. She likes to create works slowly, letting the ideas form intuitively, a method that she says is counter to the way the arts often operate in Melbourne – fast-paced and competitive. Millar Baker's past photographic work has alluded to ghostly encounters, while leaving open the possibility that the disturbing voices and noises she heard as a child could have been a play of the imagination, a warp of memory, or an idea planted by a trusted elder to encourage awareness and prevent her from 'straying too far from the pack', as she puts it. But it was only in Nyctinasty, commissioned by Hetty Perkins for 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony at the National Gallery of Australia in 2022, that Millar Baker explicitly acknowledged her connection to the spirit world. She stars as a woman, alone at night in an elegant contemporary home, who performs a series of rituals that evoke the ways in which Aboriginal people care for the body and spirit after death. She bathes, tends an open fire, applies charcoal to her hands before lying back on a couch, eyes closed, summoning. A sense of foreboding pervades the film and builds to a startling final scene. Millar Baker had just had her second child when she made the film, which adds another layer to this story about the cycles of birth and death. Comparable themes are explored in the works of Lena Yarinkura, a senior weaver from Maningrida who has made two gloriously large and intricate fibre sculptures inspired by creation stories; Glenda Nicholls (Waddi Waddi, Ngarrindjeri and Yorta Yorta) a master weaver who makes vast hanging nets, hand-woven from jute and decorated with feather flowers; Lisa Waup, who has screen-printed 365 hessian sandbags that allude to floods and waterways affected by climate change and colonisation; and Hannah Gartside, who creates sculptures from found fabrics and cast-off clothes. The exhibition also marks the first time that the work of Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska is being shown in Australia. Presley and Millar Baker were deeply affected by Grzeszykowska's photographic series, Mama, when they saw it together at the Venice Biennale in 2022. When Presley began working on the veil, she and Millar Baker immediately thought of inviting Grzeszykowska to take part. 'I was very happy of course,' Grzeszykowska tells me via Zoom from her home in Warsaw. 'I really admire the works in the exhibition because the art is so true, so I'm kind of proud that my work fits this, and I really like this intercultural context.' Mama is an eerie, darkly humorous and disturbing series of photographs of Grzeszykowska's daughter Franciszka, who was then seven years old, playing with an uncannily life-like and life-size bust of her mother. Franciszka bathes this artificial mother figure, hugs it, gives it a cigarette, paints its face, takes it down to a river bank in a trolley cart, swims with it, and eventually buries it. Like Millar Baker's films, the series evolved organically, the idea revealing itself over time. Grzeszykowska had ordered a bust of herself from a company that makes props for films. She documented the process – an interesting exercise, as it was the first time she could view 'herself' from behind a camera. But this documentation didn't seem strong enough for a finished artwork. So she took the bust home, put it in her living room, and went about her daily chores while she thought about what she might do with it. 'After a few weeks I noticed that my daughter started to play with it. She was combing its hair and she was dressing it up, she was really treating this object as if it was a doll,' Grzeszykowska says. The role of mother and child was reversed. The resulting photographs are psychologically unsettling and imbued with a haunting sense of mortality. The mother figure may not be real, but the complex emotions that the photographs stir certainly are. 'I must admit there are some photographs in the series which are more intense, even for me,' Grzeszykowska says. One of them is the photograph of Franciszka washing the doll in the bathtub. Grzeszykowska's bathroom is small, so she had to shoot the photographs from a mirror on the opposite wall of the bath. 'This picture is amazing,' she says, 'because when I saw it seemed to me that I was looking into the future.' As the curator who has brought these artists and their distinctly different mediums together, Presley says it's rare in Australia for the work of a senior weaver such as Lena Yarinkura to be exhibited alongside that of a Polish feminist photographer. But these are exactly the kinds of connections and juxtapositions that she feels are important for Indigenous artists. 'We're at a stage where we've got these really established artists that need to communicate with other artists,' Presley says. There's a lot to absorb in this quietly expansive exhibition, and when I come to writing this piece, I'm not sure how or where to start. The words come to me in my sleep: When she was a little girl, Hayley Millar Baker would cover her ears with her long dark hair before falling asleep.
SBS Australia
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
NITV Radio Full - 25/06/2025
NITV Radio shares stories, news and happenings from across the country. We sit down with Hannah Presley, Curator of a major new exhibition at the Buxton Contemporary featuring artists Hayley Millar Baker, Hannah Gartside, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Glenda Nicholls, Lisa Waup and Lena Yarinkura, running from 27 June to 1 November 2025. NITV Radio also talks with a curator and artist Gülsen Özer as the BodyPlaceProject presents ngurrak-al marram-u / body of the mountain exhibition. An experiential exhibition that reveals and generates connection between humans and the land through embodied and place-responsive art. In one of the final steps on the truth telling journey, Yoorrook Justice Commissioner Travis Lovett welcomed by over five thousand people gathered at Victoria's parliament house . Gunditjmara man, Travis Lovett finished his nearly 500 kilometre trek across the state.
The Advertiser
23-06-2025
- The Advertiser
'Spectacular fall from grace': elder jailed for abuse
A respected Indigenous elder's "spectacular fall from grace" has culminated in a years-long jail term after he was convicted of abusing an underage umpire he mentored. Robert "Locky" Eccles, 72, was found guilty by a jury in April of four child abuse charges and handed a prison term of up to four years and eight months on Monday. He mouthed "I'm alright" to four female supporters in court as he was handed his fate. The Gunditjmara elder received a Senior Victorian of the Year award in 2021 for his "intergenerational leadership, sharing language, culture and his passion for sport with the community". However, Minister for Ageing Ingrid Stitt had since revoked the award and requested he return his trophy and certificate, the court was told. Eccles founded the Gunditjmara Aboriginal Co-operative and was appointed as an elder to Koori court hearings in the county and magistrates courts in 2016. He continued in the role until 2023, when he was charged. Eccles was also called upon by private and government organisations to deliver programs and Welcome to Country ceremonies as an elder, the court was told. "Yours has been a spectacular fall from grace," Chief Judge Amanda Chambers said on Monday. Eccles was aged 59 and working as a senior umpire in regional Victoria when he started giving full body massages to a 15-year-old junior umpire in his garage in 2011. He had mentored the teen through the local umpires association and told him the massages were important for his performance as an umpire. When the youth turned 16, the massages became sexual. Eccles sexually offended against the teenager on two occasions in 2012 and warned him not to tell anyone. The victim did not report the abuse until January 2023, when he informed his partner and police after Eccles texted him saying: "Hey mate, how are you going?" Eccles' first trial, in October 2024, was abandoned after the judge discharged the jury as she found evidence adduced by the informant to be prejudicial. His second trial resulted in a unanimous guilty verdict for four charges. He was convicted of three counts of committing an indecent act on a child aged under 16 and one of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old child under his care. The jury acquitted Eccles of another four charges of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old and one of committing an indecent act. Judge Chambers took into account Eccles' previous good character, which was demonstrated through a number of references handed to the court. He was a respected community member who had provided a significant contribution to Indigenous recognition and advancement, she added. However, offending against a child he had mentored and encouraged was "appalling", particularly given the inherent power imbalance, Judge Chambers said. The fact the offending happened in the privacy of Eccles' home, where the boy could not be protected, had amplified his vulnerability, she said. "Your offending involved the breathtaking breach of the trust that the association ... the victim's parents and grandmother had placed in you," Judge Chambers said. "What you did was so egregious that it is nonsensical to suggest you may not have fully appreciated the wrongfulness of your conduct." She found Eccles' offending had left a "profound impact" on the life of his then-teenage victim. "I often sit and reflect on what life could have been, but there is one thing for sure, I will never be the same again," the victim, who cannot be named, said in a statement. Eccles, who continues to maintain his innocence, must spent a minimum of two years and 11 months in jail before he will be eligible for parole. He has already served 67 days of this sentence and he will be registered as a serious sex offender for life. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028 Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25) A respected Indigenous elder's "spectacular fall from grace" has culminated in a years-long jail term after he was convicted of abusing an underage umpire he mentored. Robert "Locky" Eccles, 72, was found guilty by a jury in April of four child abuse charges and handed a prison term of up to four years and eight months on Monday. He mouthed "I'm alright" to four female supporters in court as he was handed his fate. The Gunditjmara elder received a Senior Victorian of the Year award in 2021 for his "intergenerational leadership, sharing language, culture and his passion for sport with the community". However, Minister for Ageing Ingrid Stitt had since revoked the award and requested he return his trophy and certificate, the court was told. Eccles founded the Gunditjmara Aboriginal Co-operative and was appointed as an elder to Koori court hearings in the county and magistrates courts in 2016. He continued in the role until 2023, when he was charged. Eccles was also called upon by private and government organisations to deliver programs and Welcome to Country ceremonies as an elder, the court was told. "Yours has been a spectacular fall from grace," Chief Judge Amanda Chambers said on Monday. Eccles was aged 59 and working as a senior umpire in regional Victoria when he started giving full body massages to a 15-year-old junior umpire in his garage in 2011. He had mentored the teen through the local umpires association and told him the massages were important for his performance as an umpire. When the youth turned 16, the massages became sexual. Eccles sexually offended against the teenager on two occasions in 2012 and warned him not to tell anyone. The victim did not report the abuse until January 2023, when he informed his partner and police after Eccles texted him saying: "Hey mate, how are you going?" Eccles' first trial, in October 2024, was abandoned after the judge discharged the jury as she found evidence adduced by the informant to be prejudicial. His second trial resulted in a unanimous guilty verdict for four charges. He was convicted of three counts of committing an indecent act on a child aged under 16 and one of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old child under his care. The jury acquitted Eccles of another four charges of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old and one of committing an indecent act. Judge Chambers took into account Eccles' previous good character, which was demonstrated through a number of references handed to the court. He was a respected community member who had provided a significant contribution to Indigenous recognition and advancement, she added. However, offending against a child he had mentored and encouraged was "appalling", particularly given the inherent power imbalance, Judge Chambers said. The fact the offending happened in the privacy of Eccles' home, where the boy could not be protected, had amplified his vulnerability, she said. "Your offending involved the breathtaking breach of the trust that the association ... the victim's parents and grandmother had placed in you," Judge Chambers said. "What you did was so egregious that it is nonsensical to suggest you may not have fully appreciated the wrongfulness of your conduct." She found Eccles' offending had left a "profound impact" on the life of his then-teenage victim. "I often sit and reflect on what life could have been, but there is one thing for sure, I will never be the same again," the victim, who cannot be named, said in a statement. Eccles, who continues to maintain his innocence, must spent a minimum of two years and 11 months in jail before he will be eligible for parole. He has already served 67 days of this sentence and he will be registered as a serious sex offender for life. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028 Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25) A respected Indigenous elder's "spectacular fall from grace" has culminated in a years-long jail term after he was convicted of abusing an underage umpire he mentored. Robert "Locky" Eccles, 72, was found guilty by a jury in April of four child abuse charges and handed a prison term of up to four years and eight months on Monday. He mouthed "I'm alright" to four female supporters in court as he was handed his fate. The Gunditjmara elder received a Senior Victorian of the Year award in 2021 for his "intergenerational leadership, sharing language, culture and his passion for sport with the community". However, Minister for Ageing Ingrid Stitt had since revoked the award and requested he return his trophy and certificate, the court was told. Eccles founded the Gunditjmara Aboriginal Co-operative and was appointed as an elder to Koori court hearings in the county and magistrates courts in 2016. He continued in the role until 2023, when he was charged. Eccles was also called upon by private and government organisations to deliver programs and Welcome to Country ceremonies as an elder, the court was told. "Yours has been a spectacular fall from grace," Chief Judge Amanda Chambers said on Monday. Eccles was aged 59 and working as a senior umpire in regional Victoria when he started giving full body massages to a 15-year-old junior umpire in his garage in 2011. He had mentored the teen through the local umpires association and told him the massages were important for his performance as an umpire. When the youth turned 16, the massages became sexual. Eccles sexually offended against the teenager on two occasions in 2012 and warned him not to tell anyone. The victim did not report the abuse until January 2023, when he informed his partner and police after Eccles texted him saying: "Hey mate, how are you going?" Eccles' first trial, in October 2024, was abandoned after the judge discharged the jury as she found evidence adduced by the informant to be prejudicial. His second trial resulted in a unanimous guilty verdict for four charges. He was convicted of three counts of committing an indecent act on a child aged under 16 and one of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old child under his care. The jury acquitted Eccles of another four charges of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old and one of committing an indecent act. Judge Chambers took into account Eccles' previous good character, which was demonstrated through a number of references handed to the court. He was a respected community member who had provided a significant contribution to Indigenous recognition and advancement, she added. However, offending against a child he had mentored and encouraged was "appalling", particularly given the inherent power imbalance, Judge Chambers said. The fact the offending happened in the privacy of Eccles' home, where the boy could not be protected, had amplified his vulnerability, she said. "Your offending involved the breathtaking breach of the trust that the association ... the victim's parents and grandmother had placed in you," Judge Chambers said. "What you did was so egregious that it is nonsensical to suggest you may not have fully appreciated the wrongfulness of your conduct." She found Eccles' offending had left a "profound impact" on the life of his then-teenage victim. "I often sit and reflect on what life could have been, but there is one thing for sure, I will never be the same again," the victim, who cannot be named, said in a statement. Eccles, who continues to maintain his innocence, must spent a minimum of two years and 11 months in jail before he will be eligible for parole. He has already served 67 days of this sentence and he will be registered as a serious sex offender for life. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028 Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)
Sky News AU
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Former Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe slammed as 'a disgrace' to Australia after 'egregiously' flipping off Buckingham Palace in provocative social media post
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has caused fresh controversy after sharing photos of herself making a rude gesture outside Buckingham Palace. The 51-year-old former Greens senator posted several images to social media on Friday showing her standing outside the gates of the royal residence, holding the Aboriginal flag and raising her middle finger. She also wore a "Blak Sovereign Movement" T-shirt. "Dropped by to collect all the stuff this lot stole, but Charlie wasn't in," she captioned the post. It's understood Thorpe, a proud Gunnai, Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman, was in London this week to attend a conference. Her post quickly drew mixed reactions, with some critics questioning whether her trip was taxpayer-funded. "Who paid for your trip?" one user asked, while another wrote: "Do you know you don't speak for Australia. We actually can't stand you, I personally look forward to your term ending in the Senate!" Others praised Thorpe's actions, calling her "Queen" and applauding the gesture. "The only Queen I'll ever recognise!" one user commented. On Sunday, the stunt was blasted by News Corp columnist and Sky News contributor Angela Mollard during The Royal Report. "She's in England at the moment, she's gone to Buckingham Palace, and outside of it, she's held up a flag, and she's egregiously put up the middle finger to the King," Mollard told host Caroline Di Russo. "She is a disgrace to this country, honestly." Mollard said she had "done a deep dive" to determine whether the Melbourne-based politician was in the UK on any official business. "Of course she has the right, like anybody has, for freedom of speech," she said. "But if she's there for any meeting, any tax-paid funded part of that trip- I'm presuming it's a private trip- then she needs to be hauled over the coals for this." Mollard also referenced Thorpe's previous clash with King Charles III during his visit to Australia with Queen Camilla last year, when Thorpe interrupted a reception at Parliament House, shouting: "You are not our king. You are not sovereign." Just moments before, the 76-year-old monarch had delivered a speech praising Australia. Thorpe was removed from the event by security and later censured by the Australian parliament in a 46 to 12 vote condemning her conduct as "disruptive and disrespectful". Reflecting on that moment, Mollard said: "Last year when that happened in parliament, I was on air all day in the UK doing television and radio crosses because the Northern Hemisphere could not believe we would have someone of that note in a public setting like that screaming at the King." She added that Thorpe's latest stunt may only strengthen public support for the royal family. "So every time she does something like this, it drives the populous to think, 'Well, she's nuts, and actually, we quite like the royal family'- they do lots of service, King Charles has been there for 76 years, he's coping with cancer and he still turns up for multiple things during the week. "She's the one who looks silly." Di Russo added that the "wild irony" was that Thorpe had to pledge allegiance to the King in order to become a senator. has contacted Senator Thorpe for further comment.
