Lidia Thorpe, for her own good and the good of the nation, needs to be removed from Parliament.

And the fact that there is not a precedent should not be the reason why action is not taken against a politician that is embarrassing herself, the voters she represents, and our country on the international stage.

If the Greens defector is unwell, she needs assistance – and that is best done without the glare of an unforgiving media and some parliamentary peers who are no doubt keen to see her fail.

Such help should not prohibit a pathway back to representing her State in the national Senate either – but it should be a prerequisite for her continuing.

But if Thorpe’s behaviour is just brutish, rude, ignorant and shameless – as it is being perceived by the broad population at the moment – she needs to leave Parliament.

And if she doesn’t of her own accord, we should be having a national discussion on how it is possible to remove a politician whose behaviour is so obnoxious that it harms our reputation, beyond Canberra.

Just imagine if we were reading, often, about a prominent national member of the US Senate, who was spotted crawling across the lawn after gatecrashing a rally, or who dropped the f-bomb in Parliament or who stopped a big televised national street parade, or who was caught taunting a voter claiming they had a ‘small penis’.

We’d ridicule them, and what they stood for. We’d laugh at them, and tell our children that’s how not to act. Our respect would sit at nil, and they’d quickly become the subject of our teens’ social media ridicule and TikTok reels.

So why are we skirting around Senator Lidia Thorpe’s behaviour?

Just imagine if she wasn’t a politician from another country, but a male Senator based in Canberra.

Would we not be having loud and incessant conversations about the need to act, as a matter of urgency?

So why aren’t we having those conversations when it is a female Senator?

Over decades, our respect for politicians – as a broad band of policy makers – has well and truly slumped.

And that’s probably deserved as political populism and laziness and party politics trumps individual authenticity and even honesty in many cases.

But this is different, and we are all responsible if we walk by and ignore the out-of-control antics of a national politician hell-bent on capturing the televised stage for herself.

It’s exactly what we teach our children not to do: we teach them to stand up to bad behaviour, and not to do that is surely akin to supporting it.

Lidia Thorpe deserves no more consideration than the parliamentary peer who sits next to her, in the same chamber.

Assistance, if needed. Punishment, if not. And both delivered away from the political stage and spotlight.

As time goes by, Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie becomes the stateswoman many would never have considered.

After the latest fracas outside a Melbourne nightclub, Lambie said the Thorpe “must take responsibility’’ for the litany of incidents that have now made headlines.

“I think that when you are out that late and you put yourself in that sort of situation, you better take responsibility for your actions,” she told Sky News.

“If you do not think you’re in a good way, go and do what the rest of us do – go and get some counselling or psychology because quite frankly, something needs to be done.

“But I would say this to Lidia: you just cannot keep doing this. A good start would be admitting you are part of the problem and the responsibility of your own actions need to be taken into your own hands.”

Jacqui Lambie, thank you. That’s a political declaration all voters should support.