By shouting at King Charles and in the ensuing confusion over whether she had genuinely sworn allegiance to the Queen’s “heirs” and successors, Senator Lidia Thorpe has stirred outrage, including among the opposition hinting darkly that they will consult constitutional lawyers or consider other procedures.

They may be disappointed to learn that there is no constitutional avenue for removing her from parliament. She is not, so far as we know, disqualified from sitting in parliament by any of the provisions in section 44 of the constitution: she is not a dual citizen, nor is she under allegiance to a foreign power. She has not been convicted of treason, is not an undischarged bankrupt, and there is nothing to suggest she holds office of profit under the crown, or has a pecuniary interest in the commonwealth public service.

Under section 42 of the constitution, every MP and senator must make an oath or affirmation before taking his or her seat, and the wording is specified: a declaration of allegiance to Queen Victoria and her “heirs and successors according to law”. Thorpe initially said she deliberately said “hairs” instead of “heirs” but on Thursday appeared to backtrack, saying she misspoke.

An elected person cannot take his or her seat without taking the oath or affirmation, but once taken, nothing in the constitution states the consequences for incorrectly pronouncing the words in the oath.

There is nothing in legislation either to help remove Thorpe (if that is what is wanted), since the Parliamentary Privileges Act of 1987 tells us that “A House does not have power to expel a member from membership of a House”. The power to expel has been exercised once in Australia’s history, in 1920, when Labor MP Hugh Mahon was removed for declaring, among other things, that the British Empire was “bloody and accursed” (Thorpe is likely to agree).

But we have no historical examples in Australia in which mispronunciation of a word in an oath has rendered an oath-taker ineligible for parliamentary office. Pronunciation of words varies, in any case, depending on a person’s accent – whether foreign or regional or cultural – and differences in accent surely could not be grounds for non-admission to parliament.

Certainly, there are non-Australian examples to consider: in Hong Kong in 2016, several pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council were disqualified for deliberately mispronouncing words or substituting vulgar words in the oath of office as a protest against the reference in the oath to Hong Kong as a constitutive part of China.

British parliamentary history also offers an example in which an elected person was prevented from even starting to take the oath, in the case of Charles Bradlaugh. The founder of the British Secular Society was elected four times to the House of Commons in the 1880s but was physically restrained and expelled from parliament because as an atheist at a time when no alternative secular “affirmation” was available, he would not be sincere in swearing with reference to God. Australia’s federal parliamentarians’ oath, in contrast, has always allowed for a secular alternative, an affirmation as an alternative to swearing (uppercase words and exclamation mark as in the constitution) “SO HELP ME GOD!” And, happily, there are no examples in Australia’s history in which the degree of sincerity in reciting a parliamentary oath has been tested or treated as a ground for expelling an elected member.

More importantly, however, in making the issue about her conduct, attention has been drawn away from the larger question about the role of the British monarch and the British government in the dispossession of the Indigenous people, as well as whether we want to retain our constitutional ties to the British monarchy. These are matters worthy of serious discussion.

We might even ask a more basic question: is it appropriate for members of a democracy to swear an oath to a “sovereign” person? In a democracy it is the people who are sovereign. Members of parliament are their representatives and their shared allegiance must be to the democratic commonwealth of Australia. We would do well to consider this principle and look to the “pledge of commitment” in Australia’s naturalisation ceremony: a pledge of “loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey”.

Let’s consider what this means, and whether, ultimately, we might like to replace the anachronistic parliamentary oath in the constitution with something more democratic. That might be a fitting conclusion to the fuss about Lidia Thorpe’s mispronunciation of a word.