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Greens senator Lidia Thorpe’s former chief-of-staff says he was scared and appalled by her outburst in a gathering with two Indigenous group leaders at Parliament Home final 12 months, calling her behaviour among the many most unprofessional conduct he has ever witnessed.
The claims by Thorpe’s ex-top adviser reinforce the account of the assembly by Aboriginal elder Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, aged in her 70s, who has beforehand alleged the tirade of abuse levelled at her by the senator distressed her a lot she sought medical consideration from the parliamentary nurse.
Lidia Thorpe has at all times defended her assembly with the Victorian elders as a “strong” dialogue.Credit score:Alex Ellinghausen
David Mejia-Canales, who resigned from Thorpe’s workplace in June, accompanied the senator to the assembly with Atkinson and Marcus Stewart, the co-chairs of the First Peoples’ Meeting of Victoria, and their coverage adviser Nicole Schlesinger, to debate the state’s treaty course of in a committee room in Parliament Home, Canberra on June 22, 2021.
His account of what occurred, and his efforts to tell the Greens’ management of Thorpe’s “appalling conduct”, are detailed in an apology emailed from his Parliament Home tackle to Atkinson and Stewart in June, one 12 months after the assembly, as one in all his ultimate acts earlier than leaving the senator’s workplace.
Within the e mail, a duplicate of which has been obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Mejia-Canales mentioned he nonetheless didn’t know why Thorpe had agreed to the assembly solely to proceed “to behave so badly”.
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