Lidia Thorpe has had a secret toy boy lover for the last three years.  

The firebrand independent senator, 51, has been quietly dating a man seven years her junior since 2022. 

It's understood Senator Thorpe met 43-year-old James Nicholson at an Aboriginal festival or corroboree in Shepperton, in northern Victoria, in 2022. 

Mr Nicholson, an electronics engineer, is said to be a proud Wurundjeri man whose ancestors hail from the Kulin nation in Victoria . 

But a source close to the pair said that Mr Nicholson never showed much interest in his Indigenous heritage until he met Senator Thorpe.

'He never really spoke about his Aboriginal heritage or preached about it but that all changed when Lidia came along,' the source said. 

'He started buying T-shirts with slogans like 'Land Back', 'Always, Always Will Be' and 'Voice Treaty Truth' and attending protests and marches. 

'When he started going out with her, he drove around with a baseball bat in his boot because she's a hunted woman. Nazis are after her.' 

A photo on social media shows the couple grinning side-by-side at a black-tie event in July 2022.

A second photo captioned '#blakluv', shows Senator Thorpe leaning in to kiss Mr Nicholson, while another of them sat on the grass at a picnic is captioned 'my fave' followed by three love heart emojis. 

The pair appeared together at the Mardi Gras parade on Saturday night with Senator Thorpe dressed as Wonder Woman while carrying a sign that read, 'Not My King: Sovereignty Never Ceded'. 

Mr Nicholson, meanwhile, wore a Superman outfit where the traditional 'S' was replaced with the red, black and yellow of the Aboriginal flag, alongside a placard that read, 'Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land'.

Little is known about Mr Nicholson and he has almost no online presence.

He served in the navy before becoming an electrical engineer and now lives near the sea in south-east Melbourne.

He is the father of two children to two different mothers.

Senator Thorpe has a colourful dating history. 

Before she met Mr Nicholson, she had been in a long-term relationship with Gavan McFadzean, who manages the Climate Change and Clean Energy Program at the Australian Conservation Foundation.

However, Mr McFadzean was horrified to later learn in the national media that Senator Thorpe had conducted an affair with a Rebels bikie boss.

Her brief romance with Dean Martin, the ex-president of the Rebels Victoria chapter, in early 2021 sparked a political firestorm.

Former staffers in her office had been concerned about the undisclosed relationship because she was sitting on the joint parliamentary law enforcement committee.  

As a member of the committee, Senator Thorpe received confidential briefings about organised crime and motorcycle gangs.

There is no suggestion that Mr Martin has any ongoing association with any outlaw motorcycle gangs. 

After the story broke in October 2022, Senator Thorpe was stripped of the deputy leadership of the Greens in the Senate. 

She was later cleared of any wrongdoing by a parliamentary investigation.

The report, published in March 2023, found that Senator Thorpe did not disclose any sensitive information to Mr Martin but it said she should have declared the relationship to avoid a perceived conflict of interest.

She told the Senate that her and Mr Martin had only 'kissed once at a rally'. 

'I had no idea who this person was or his background,' she said.

'I had no relationship with that person. I was given legal advice by the Greens lawyer that I had to say that I'd dated this person.'

She resigned from the party soon after and has sat as an independent ever since. 

Her partner at the time, Mr McFadzean, only learned of the betrayal through the media.

'When you find out via national media your partner was having an affair,' he posted on Facebook alongside a crying face emoji. 

Senator Thorpe became a single mother at 17 and suffered from domestic violence. 

'There were relationships here and there, but they never lasted,' she told Nine Newspapers in 2022. 

She went on to have three children and multiple grandchildren. 

Daily Mail Australia approached Senator Thorpe's office for comment.