Uncle Robbie Thorpe and the truth Vs. King Charles and the law 

It is difficult to credibly argue that genocide was not committed on Australian shores without sounding like a deranged, budgie-smuggling, onion-eating, supremacist weirdo. 

While the bulk of Australian history written across the last 250 years speaks of “discovery”, “settlement” and more recently “frontier wars”, the lived reality on this continent paints an unmistakable, unbroken picture of imperial conquest, of resource extraction for foreign powers, and of the dispossession and domination of this land’s Indigenous Peoples. Though we try our hardest not to talk about it, ultimately, the bodies are not buried all that deep. 

Both history and the law claim to be about the truth. In practice, both disciplines are really about finding the best story that fits within a society’s boundaries. And those boundaries, believe it or not, are set by the legacies of the conquerors, the extractors, and the dominators. This is why, even with historic truth firmly on his side, even with International law clear as day, Uncle Robbie Thorpe is not expecting to find justice inside these “bullshit courts.”

Ten minutes before his historic case in Melbourne’s Supreme Court – an attempt to charge King Charles III, as a representative of the Crown, with the crime of genocide – Uncle Robbie Thorpe, a Gunnai man and founder of Camp Sovereignty is laughing with his legal entourage. The chuckles are directed at the ornate walls of the antechamber to the Red Court, lined with hundreds of black and white photographs of all the judges who have ever served. They are, without exception, all white. The vast majority have beards. An occasional pearl-wearing woman makes the odd appearance. This is diversity, settler-colonial style, and sometimes you do have to laugh at the odds.

Signs of institutional bullshit don’t seem to faze Thorpe this deep into his decades-long truth-telling journey, but the on-the-nose environmental storytelling and the monochrome row of beady dead eyes in the court’s antechamber creep me the fuck out.

***

“I accuse your king of the ongoing crime of genocide against my people.” 

Like Metallica beginning a set with Battery, Thorpe leads with a banger. Little would be held back throughout the hearing. “It seems to me that Australia is unable and unwilling to deal with these crimes,” Thorpe says. “I have been trying for 30 years. We are dying at the hands of these courts. Deaths in custody is an act of genocide as far as I am concerned.” 

His case centres on the argument that, as a signatory to the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, Australia’s Indigenous People have a case to be made against the British Crown. The counter-argument, apparently, is not that genocide didn’t happen here, but that within Australian law genocide is not illegal. Which feels mental. 

“This crime should have been dealt with back in 1948 when Australia signed the genocide convention. But they never put it into law here! This is an illegal occupation, and your courts and your laws are invalid.” 

Possessing a profound sense of “fuck it, let’s see what happens” energy, Thorpe’s legal strategy throughout the day is one of unvarnished truth. He brings reasonable moral and logical arguments to the hearing, backed with evidence, and never cedes ground to colonial framing or establishment norms.

He also begins his case by moving a series of motions that would, a reasonable person might conclude, lowkey piss off all the judges. 

First, he insists presiding judge Karin Emerton recuse herself because of her bias, having previously sworn allegiance to Robbie’s opponent in this case, King Charles III, in ruling over her previous cases. 

People don’t try to sue the King of England all that often, so I guess it hasn’t come up much before, but you gotta admit: he’s got a point. 

After a brief recess, the three judges return to the courtroom and announce that they aren’t compromised by their oaths, and therefore would be negligent in their royal duties if they didn’t hear the rest of this case. Motion denied.

Escalating somewhat, Thorpe then asks if he can bring weapons into the court, boomerangs and spears, as symbols of his peoples’ struggle against their occupation. “This is our land and these are our weapons. They symbolise our fight here. Colonisers brought guns and didn’t consult our law. These courts are dangerous places for Aboriginal people.“

With as much mustered sincerity as possible, the judges assure us they are aware of the “sensitivities” surrounding this case, but, no, they don’t feel super chill about having spears in the courtroom. They are, after all, very important people.   

Undeterred, Thorpe’s next soon-to-be denied motion asks that the case be relocated to Camp Sovereignty, just down the road, where the judges and Robbie could sit around a fire on chairs of matching height, in order to reach an understanding amongst equals and therefore a truer connection of perspectives. (As a neurodiverse punk who struggles with hierarchy, all of this sounds perfectly reasonable to me!) Alas, motion denied, from atop the high chairs. 

With the pattern becoming clear, Thorpe hits his stride. “Terra Nullius is a monumental lie that these courts are based on. Do you understand anything about the ancient law of this land? Acknowledge that there is a law here that precedes colonial law,” he says.

“We have undergone multicultural awareness training,” responds one of the judges. 

And with that an entire courtroom of Indigenous people and their allies pisses itself with laughter. 

I don’t know how many funny bits genocide cases usually have, but this was an oddly cathartic moment. Luke McGregor or Rob Sitch would have nailed the line delivery if this was a scene in the type of quality satire the ABC is no longer interested in producing.

This trifecta of denied motions should be viewed as both genuine, and a clue as to Thorpe’s shit-stirring character. He pulls no punches on this issue, and nor should he. He has previously served Victoria’s Governor with an eviction notice for the stately residence in the Botanic Gardens. He also runs a truth-telling website called Crime Scene Australia. Few people are less intimated or hold less reverence for the halls of white establishment power. 

***

Indie media pay checks don’t cover random fines, so I duck out for a few moments to feed a parking meter and witness yet another piece of creepy environmental storytelling.

In the lobby, an Indigenous man in a chair is surrounded by five Protective Service Officers. I get extreme prick vibes from one particular PSO who is raising his voice and puffing his chest. 

Uncle Crow is the fire keeper at Camp Sovereignty. He tells me the PSOs found “$5 worth of medical weed” in his jacket on the way in and are now holding him while they call the police. I quietly tell Uncle Crow I left my weed in the car. It’s court, dude! I also tell the PSOs an internationally significant genocide case is occuring upstairs and they are stopping an Indigenous Elder from being there over trivial nonsense – yet another walking, talking example of what this entire ordeal is about to begin with. They don’t seem to see the meta point. Everyone is unimpressed with me. I’m told to delete the video I am recording and asked to politely fuck off. I go feed the meter. About an hour later Uncle Crow enters the courtroom. 

***

Weeks later, the verdict everyone expects arrives. No, Victoria’s Supreme Court would not be choosing truth over power, shirking responsibility, ducking history, looking away at injustice yet again. But because this was expected, it is also part of the plan. 

“This is an exercise in exhausting all the potential domestic remedies,” Thorpe says. “These courts have a duty of care in all of this, and they’ve been putting blockers in our way the whole time… We want to get to the International Criminal Court. We’ll never get a fair deal here. It is racist to the core. So we’re exhausting the domestic remedies [the High Court is the next and last step within Australia] and then we can go to the International Criminal Court. Then we’ll see what happens. They’re not all white judges there.” 

“If you want to stop genocide on this planet, clean up your own backyard first.”

Australia’s original sin has never been atoned for. Instead, we institutionalise supremacy, put a suit on it, and dress it up with diversity programs and fly Aboriginal flags outside of police stations while all those mysterious deaths in custody keep on happening. Atop a layer of historical mythmaking, a shallow culture of barbeques, sportsbetting, terrible media, and a real estate pyramid scheme on stolen land is precariously placed, encouraging the great mass of white Australia to erect mental walls around our comfort, excusing us of any duty to build a better, fairer world. 

We have been conditioned to fear this dark truth as a knee-jerk reaction. This is ruinous to us all, not just to Indigenous Peoples. While their disadvantages must remain the focal point, I maintain that this situation hurts us all on a deeply spiritual, psychic level. For just as a healthy person cannot exist without a degree of self-awareness and accountability, a nation state is destined to become reactive, narcissistic and stupid if it cannot embrace reality and account for itself. 

And it is into this dysregulated landscape that the spectre of the ultra-bigot, Pauline Hanson and her billionaire-sponsored talks of “monoculture” is being thrust upon us as artificially and unconvincingly as AI and its dystopian data centre nightmares. 

I do believe truth-telling is the balm for our collective wounds as a sick and getting sicker nation, and Uncle Robbie Thorpe is a truth-teller of extraordinary ability and conviction. 

His battle is not about contested truths, though. We all know what happened here. His journey is instead about whether truth is allowed to challenge ungodly, institutional power. Going by 2026’s standards, the victims of Israel, Epstein, Trump, the transnational cabal of supremacist, genocidal capitalists, more often than not the answer is usually no. But you have to keep asking the question. And Uncle Robbie Thorpe doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. One day, the answer might be different.