Christopher Bruce Hardy loses appeal after threatening Labor MP Jodie Harrison

A sovereign citizen conspiracy theorist who threatened an MP has lost a bid to have an anti-terror court order removed because he was too deranged to be classed as a terrorist.

A sovereign citizen conspiracy theorist, who told an MP she would “be hung until you are dead”, has lost his bid to have an anti-terrorism order lifted, after arguing he was too deranged.

Christopher Bruce Hardy stuffed two envelopes into NSW Labor MP Jodie Harrison’s office in Charlestown, Newcastle, in March 2017.

On them was written: “To the Minister, You in TREASON, you will be hung [sic] until you are dead, No Mercy, No Prisoners, You are scum”.

Threatening letters were pushed into the Charlestown office of Labor MP Jodie Harrison, which a judge said she was designed to intimidate her and her staff.

The letters contained printed documents stating the Commonwealth was a foreign-controlled corporation, which is the central tenant of the sovereign citizen conspiracy movement, which denies the lawful existence of governments.

“SovCit” activists have become a mainstay of anti-lockdown and Covid-denialism in recent years, with the nation’s first state border breachers flying the movement’s red Australian flag and accusing police of being “corporate cops” while they were arrested.

Last week supporters of the alleged arson attack on Old Parliament House in Canberra espoused SovCit rhetoric outside court.

Hardy has no connection to recent incidents — and his crimes predated the SovCit-Covid cult — but the courts have found he was at least inspired by the movement.

Police searched Hardy’s home after the letters landed in Ms Harrison’s office and found ceremonial knives, an air gun that looked like a real firearm and blueprints for 3D printed guns.

Hardy, a former jeweller, was sentenced for sending threatening letters and firearm offences for the weapons and 3D gun blueprints. He served a year in prison for the offences.

Police raided his home, near Newcastle, again in late 2018 and found hundreds more blueprints that could assemble a dozen 3D guns.

Hardy was placed on an intensive corrections order, essentially prison in the community, and ordered to complete 350 hours of community service.

Then the NSW Supreme Court began imposing extended supervision orders under the Terrorism High Risk Offenders laws.

The laws allow authorities to keep certain offenders under near-constant surveillance and a judge found Hardy “advocated support for violent extremism”.

Hardy, this year, fought to stop the latest extended supervision order in the NSW Court of Appeal.

His lawyers claimed the judge who placed him on the terror order was mistaken to find Hardy was “a convicted NSW terrorism activity offender”.

Key to Hardy’s defence was his mental state; his lawyers claimed he suffered from a “transient delusional disorder” and was not able to fulfil the criteria of a politically or religiously motivated terrorist.

Justice John Basten said Hardy’s “bizarre behaviour” in 2017 included him hanging plastic sheets around his house because he believed “an outbreak of fungal spores” was affecting his health.

The judge found that Hardy intended to hang up the plastic sheeting — even if it was based on a delusion.

The same logic applied to his support for violent extremism, the judge said. Hardy’s delusions wouldn’t take away his intentions.

The judge also pointed to posts made on the normally work-oriented website LinkedIn.

“Save a dollar — bash A POLITICIAN — they are the scum of this earth,” Hardy wrote, before accusing Malcolm Turnbull of being a corporation employee.

“Fluoride is poison,” he said in another post. “Since our government corporation is killing us, I guess that gives us the right to KILL THEM.”

Hardy had made decisions about what he was posting, Justice Basten said, so the terrorism order was justified on those grounds.

Hardy’s legal team also fought the order on other grounds, claiming the original judge should have listened to mental health experts and shouldn’t have taken issue with Hardy’s refusal to give evidence.

But Justice Basten said the original judge made no errors on those grounds as well.

Justice Basten said the case had “deeply troubling” parts that justified further orders against Hardy.

Justice Richard Weeks White said it was clear that Hardy threatened extreme violence and supported the SovCit movement.

“Hardy’s threat addressed to the Minister, written on the envelope to be read by parliamentary staff, was not merely a threat to the Minister that he or she would be hanged for treason, but notice to the staff, who would be expected to read the envelope, that the Minister’s supposedly treasonous conduct deserved such punishment,” he said.

“This clearly advocated support for violent extremism.”

The judges dismissed Hardy’s attempt to lift the order and it will last for 18 months until the end of January 2023.

He remains under intensive, community-based imprisonment until June this year.