Western Australian senator Dorinda Cox shocked people yesterday when she announced she was leaving the Greens and defecting to the Labor party.
Today Labor were celebrating and welcoming Senator Cox to their ranks with a social media post that proclaimed she is Western Australia’s first Indigenous senator.
It must have come as a shock for former Labor senator Patrick Dodson. Colloquially known as the Grandfather of Reconciliation, Senator Dodson represented Labor from May 2016 until his retirement in January 2024.
Senator Dodson is a Yawuru man from Broome, and one of the most high profile Indigenous Australians in recent decades. In the hype of welcoming the new Senator to their ranks it looks like party officials forgot their own groundbreaking history.
Labor later updated the post to correctly identify Senator Cox as the first female Indigenous senator from Western Australia. But before they updated the copy to be factually correct, screen shots were captured by youth news outlet 6News.
A spokesperson for the Labor party to OUTinPerth that the error was simply a “typo”.
The senator appeared alongside the Prime Minister in Perth on Sunday and announced she was switching parties, saying her views were more closely aligned with Labor’s that The Greens.
Cox joined the senate in 2021 filling a casual vacancy caused by the retirement of Senator Rachel Siewert. She was The Greens lead senate candidate at the 2022 election winning the seat in her own right.
Cox is a Yamatji-Noongar woman who served as a police officer before moving into politics.
Just a few weeks ago she unsuccessfully ran to be The Greens Deputy leader, and has been a vocal critic of Labor’s approval of an extension of Woodside’s gas operations on the North West Shelf.
Greens leader Larissa Walters only found out about the defection 90 minutes before it was publicly announced and has described it as “disappointing”. Today she told the ABC that there was “no animosity” towards Senator Cox, and she wished her the best in her future political career.
