Source : Perth Now news
Independents Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe and the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi say they have experienced racism in the Senate chamber as the trio call for the upper house’s rules to change so parliament is a “safe workplace for women of colour”.
On Thursday, the group penned a joint letter to Senate president Sue Lines that outlined “overt and insidious” experiences of racism, claiming standing orders and procedural rules have been used to silence those who call out racism.
The letter demands Senator Lines establish an inquiry into racism in the upper house and implement mandatory anti-racism training for all parliamentarians.
“We are subjected by racism in the force of power when we call out racism. The system turns on us, rather than the perpetrators of racism,” Senator Faruqi said at a press conference
“We are told to sit down and shut up. We are told we are out of order, out of line … We are told we break rules that others can seemingly plough, and we are told to be silent when something we say offends white people.”
She then acknowledged the role of “robust debate” in parliament but said she would “never accept that racism has to be part of (her) job”.
Asked if they had approached any of their colleagues from diverse backgrounds in parliament to join calls for change, Senator Thorpe claimed the majority of these colleagues belonged to a major party where they had to “toe the line and vote against dealing with racism”.
“I think that is culturally unsafe for every non-white politician that is forced by their major party to vote down laws that stop racism … I feel for those people, but we’re not shackled to a party line,” she said.
All three senators are also some of parliament’s most outspoken advocates for the Palestinian cause. Asked if they believed this was a factor in their experiences of racism, Senator Faruqi said: “Senator Payman, Senator Thorpe and I do stand up to the government.
“We actually hold a mirror up to them and hold them accountable for many things, including the genocide in Gaza, including not standing up for racism, including calling them out every time when they refuse to act on the horrific, toxic, racist and sexist behaviour that happens around this place, so of course we are the three who are going to be targeted.”
The trio also urged Labor to implement the National Anti-Racism Framework to tackle discrimination.
Labor had previously agreed to a parliamentary racism and sexism probe put forward by Senator Thorpe and Senator Faruqi in November 2024, but the committee never met on the issue and it became void after the 2025 election.
This month, both senators tried to re-establish the inquiry, but it was shot down after Labor and the Coalition voted against it.
