Qld councils face intense lobbying by anti-fluoride conspiracy theorists
Queensland’s local councils are being relentlessly lobbied by anti-fluoride conspiracy theorists – including a prolific group founded by a ‘sovereign citizen’ and holocaust denier.
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Queensland’s local councils are being relentlessly lobbied by anti-fluoride conspiracy theorists – including a prolific group opposed to vaccinations and 5G towers founded by a “sovereign citizen” and holocaust denier.
My Place and Fluoride Free Australia are two groups consistently bombarding local councillors to ensure fluoride is not in the water, with medicos sounding the alarm that they are influencing important health decisions using dangerous misinformation campaigns.
The Courier-Mail and its sister publications across Queensland have launched the State of Decay series, highlighting the significant dental health problems in regions without fluoride, as a vocal minority continues to lobby councils to keep the vital mineral out of the water.
Founded in Victoria by Darren Bergwerf, My Place was created for people opposed to Covid vaccinations and now has 50 branches across Queensland promoting sovereign citizen messaging and conspiracy theories about 5G, fluoride, wind turbines and smart cities.
In its November online newsletter, the group says all 179 councillors in local government areas with fluoridated water had been emailed “new developments” on the issue using a template from the Fluoride Free Australia group.
The group brags councils “that are now under pressure from activists” include Gympie, Townsville, Cooktown, Toowoomba, Noosa and Redlands.
Gympie councillors voted to take fluoride out last year after a concerted My Place campaign, despite opposition from three councillors who noted a petition with just 650 signatures – including from people living in Israel, Belgium and Argentina – was not a broad sample size.
A final decision is yet to be made, but My Place noted in its newsletter it hoped to replicate the result elsewhere.
“GYMPIE MY PLACE are looking at forming templates tand (sic) other help for others to submit petitions and lobby Councillors to vote out water fluoridation,” the newsletter reads.
Posts on their Facebook page also canvas issues such as 5G, with one member describing it as a “military grade weapon used in warfare, crowd control, etc”.
Other posts link the Pfizer vaccine to cancer.
Founder Mr Bergwerf – who says he is a sovereign citizen so does not believe Australian laws are valid has previously come under fire for sharing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on social media and telling the ABC there was a question mark over the Holocaust in part because “ I wasn’t there”.
The Courier-Mail contacted Mr Bergwerf and Queensland-based members of My Place who did not respond to questions before deadline.
Councillors in Cairns voted in January not to reintroduce fluoride in the water, with Mayor
Amy Eden coming under fire from pro-fluoride councillors for refusing to meet with leading experts on the issue.
Anti-fluoride campaigners flooded the public gallery with signs saying “no fluoride, no mass medication”.
Australian Medical Association Queensland member and orthopaedic surgeon Dr Sarah Coll, who is based in Cairns and leading the pro-fluoride charge there, said some Queensland-based activists against the mineral were “bullying” community leaders.
“I have spoken to community leaders who say that they feel very bullied by anti-fluoride activists, which I think is just a very important thing to address, in that these people who are in positions of leadership are finding it hard to listen to an expert in the face of this kind of social media harassment,” she said.
“How are our children going to cope with that kind of harassment?
“So the opposition to fluoride, the anti fluoride statements, are actually quite irrational and quite illogical, and that’s where it becomes very difficult to have a conversation with people, because the data that they utilise is actually invalid and is actually the sources where it comes from are actually non existent.”
Dr Allison Hempenstall – Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service Public Health Medical Officer – said pro-fluoride advocates were getting drowned out by conspiracy theorists.
“There are lots of very passionate health professionals in far north Queensland who are advocating for water fluoridation, and they get drowned out by people who think that it’s going to cause infertility, it’s going to cause cancer, it’s going to cause bone fractures,” she said.
Fluoride Free Australia has been active in attempting to have fluoride taken out of the water in Townsville, which was the first Queensland city to introduce it in the 1960s.
There is an active petition on Townsville City Council’s website with 130 signatures calling for fluoride to be taken out to “protect our children’s neurodevelopment and cognition”.
Political scientist Associate Professor Paul Williams said sovereign citizen groups have found fertile ground in Queensland thanks to the strong presence of right-wing populism.
However these groups have been fuelled by the growth of the internet and social media, according to Prof Williams and can be “dangerous”.
“There’s a danger to democracy,” he said.
“These sort of movements, they would exist, but they would not be nowhere near as powerful without social media … so yes, it’s incredibly dangerous, because people are getting their information (from them).”
“So this is a place where people with a grievance, a grudge against society, or a particular issue, a barrier they want to push, can find a home to park their vote.”
Prof Williams said these groups have begun to thrive in small, rural towns where it is easier to be elected onto a local council compared to a metropolitan.
“This is potentially damaging, that you could get these outliers who attacking what we call the low information voter, seducing the low information voter, and then these outliers, these extremists, find themselves in positions of public decision making, and using public dollars to do it.”