Senate clerk Richard Pye rules Lidia Thorpe eligible to be senator despite swearing oath to Queen’s ‘hairs’

The keeper of the Senate’s rules says Lidia Thorpe is eligible to be a senator despite claiming she had sworn an oath to the Queen’s “hairs” and that she was probably “trolling the media”.

Senate clerk Richard Pye told an estimates hearing on Monday he believed the independent senator was properly sworn in because she had signed a written version of the affirmation as well as speaking it.

He also said he didn’t believe the matter could be tested in the courts as it was a matter for the Senate President and House of Representatives Speaker to determine.

Senator Thorpe made international headlines with a noisy protest during King Charles III’s official parliamentary welcome when she called him a “genocidalist”, said he wasn’t her king and demanded he give Indigenous land back.

She subsequently told media that she had sworn allegiance deliberately to Queen Elizabeth II’s “hairs” rather than heirs.

But the next day, after Coalition senators questioned the validity of her seat in the Senate, she said she had simply mispronounced the word “heirs”.

“I think there’s a non-zero chance that (Senator Thorpe) had been trolling the media the previous day – although that’s probably an opinion I shouldn’t be expressing,” Mr Pye said on Monday.

“The other thing I’d say is that there is no test of the sincerity of a person in making an affirmation that is applied by the President or the Speaker.”

He said the clerks always checked the written rolls after the swearing-in at the start of Parliament and had occasionally found someone had signed in the wrong place, and got them to correct it.

Senate President Sue Lines told The West Australian in the aftermath of Senator Thorpe’s protest that as far as she was concerned, Senator Thorpe had been properly sworn in.