Senate votes to suspend Thorpe for a day over her paper-throwing rant

Thorpe was forced to withdraw the “native police” remark in the Senate soon afterwards, but she repeated it outside the chamber and risked formal sanctions for disrupting the upper house. Leading senators on all sides met on Wednesday night to discuss whether Thorpe’s behaviour was putting personal safety at risk.

Hanson asked for Payman to withdraw her remarks on Wednesday morning because it is a breach of the standing orders of the Senate for those in the chamber to call each other racist.

“I want these comments about calling me a racist withdrawn,” Hanson said, without responding further to Payman’s comments.

The argument triggered a vote on whether to allow Hanson to table the documents, forcing the major parties to choose sides on the crossbench dispute. The first document was a letter from Hanson to the president of the Senate, Sue Lines, setting out her concerns about Payman’s eligibility to be in the Senate. The second was a letter from Lines declining to take steps that might remove the West Australian senator.

While Payman agreed to withdraw calling Hanson a racist, she let fly with another personal attack against the One Nation leader, who wore a burqa into the Senate in 2017, angering Muslim Australians who saw this as offensive.

“I will withdraw, but you know what? Senator Hanson, how do you live with yourself?” Payman said.

“Senator Hanson, with so much violent hatred, how do you live through your days spreading hatred? How do you go to sleep? How do you look your neighbours in the eye, knowing that you come to this place and spreading the vile hatred, the vile comments that you make? It’s disgraceful. It’s disgusting.”

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Liberal frontbencher Anne Ruston stepped in to calm the debate by saying Hanson had followed the proper process in the upper house, indicating the Coalition would support her if a vote were called.

Labor, the Coalition and independent senator Jacqui Lambie voted to allow Hanson to table the documents, which claimed Payman had not done enough to renounce her Afghan citizenship to be in parliament. The Greens and Thorpe sided with Payman, who quit the Labor Party in July and now sits as an independent.

But when the key question about Payman’s citizenship was put to the Senate, the major parties combined with most crossbenchers to reject Hanson’s claims. The Senate sided with Payman by 35 to three votes.

Payman moved before the last election to renounce her Afghan citizenship but was thwarted by the Taliban’s takeover, raising obstacles to the usual process to meet the citizenship requirements in section 44 of the Constitution.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who manages the government’s business in the chamber, argued that all senators had the right to table documents – and she blamed the Greens for trying to block Hanson’s move and forcing a “destructive” debate.

“That does not mean in any way we support what Senator Hanson has been corresponding with the president and the Senate, but she does have a right to table information relating to that,” Gallagher said.

Hanson moved to intensify the argument by revealing she would appeal against a Federal Court ruling against her last month when Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said the One Nation leader had vilified her under Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.

“I think the ruling has raised alarm among many Australians that their freedom of speech, the freedom to say what they’re thinking, is constantly under threat,” Hanson said.

But the remark against Faruqi – “piss off back to Pakistan” – infuriated many senators and was mentioned by Payman on Wednesday as proof that Hanson was a racist.

Thorpe said Hanson’s claim against Payman over her citizenship was a racist move.

“Who wants a treaty, who wants peace in this country? We do. It’s the racists that are dividing us and creating hate on the streets,” Thorpe said.

“And if anyone needs to be deported, it needs to be Senator Hanson.”

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