Fringe politicians are cosying up with Indigenous activists to protest the voice, only to find themselves enmeshed in a laundry list of wacky conspiracies.
The voice has rattled brains and nowhere more than on the fringes, where politicians actively court Indigenous activists apparently without doing a few basic checks first.
If nothing else, it proves politicians can never let a moment of national consternation go by without exploiting it for political gain.
Welcome to the fringe of Indigenous activism. If you thought Lidia Thorpe was barking mad, I have news.
There will be rallies this weekend in major cities. They are not organised or supported by the No or Yes camps but those in attendance will be yelling no to the voice as well as no to 5G, the World Economic Forum and the New World Order. A spokesman for the major No group, Fair Australia, said the rally scheduled in Sydney on Saturday was “not supported, endorsed or funded by us in any way”.
The good news is, it’s going to be all right because Vladimir Putin is coming to save us.
Earlier this week, Bruce Shillingsworth Junior posted a happy snap on his Facebook page showing him in the company of his dad, Bruce Senior, inside the NSW parliament.
“Yaama (Hello in the Gamilaraay dialect), today ‘House of Lore’ answered a request from Parliament of NSW to meet in working against impeding agendas.”
All righty.
Less than three weeks ago, an ACT jury found Shillingsworth Jr guilty of aiding and abetting arson of the Old Parliament House, Canberra which was set alight on December 30, 2021. He will be sentenced on October 26.
The fire caused $5.3 million in damages. The Old Parliament House is now the Museum of Australian Democracy. There were people inside the building before flames engulfed the entrance.
There was just a hint of Guy Fawkes in 1605 about it. Freedom movement activists watching on Facebook lives urged those present to take the building and install their own government.
Shillingsworth Jr represented himself in the ACT Supreme Court dressed in a possum skin, a headdress and not much else throughout the trial. It was one of those awkward moments for the media who lapsed into describing Shillingsworth’s garb as “traditional garments” uncertain of the cultural origins. Who knows? Maybe Shillingsworth Jr just likes to cosplay.
His defence was that the fire was a simple “cultural ceremony” gone badly wrong. He described the Old Parliament which first sat in 1927 as a “significant symbol” with the ceremony designed to “cleanse out the bad spirits.”
The jury wasn’t having it. Following his conviction, Justice David Mossop extended Shillingsworth’s bail and urged him to seek legal representation for the sentencing process.
It would seem the NSW parliament, which first sat in 1856, obviously does not require cleansing.
Neither does the Russian Consulate in Double Bay, in Sydney’s east, where Shillingsworth Jr visited in March and was snapped again with Russian consul-general Igor Azhaev. The two great minds met to discuss “diplomatic relations” between Russia and the motley group Shillingsworth Jr represents.
“Yaama,” Shillingsworth Jr wrote, “Diplomatic relations are two-way long-term investments that can only be strengthened. It’s an honour to sit with Russia on tribal Gadigal lands, at Russia’s Consulate in demonstration of our commitments to respecting and sharing of cultures and sovereignties.”
Now is probably a good time to report that Russia has not endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Russian indigenous groups, including the Crimean Tartars in the illegally annexed Crimea, face routine persecution. One group, Izvatas, in northeastern Russia, have been seeking recognition for decades, which continues to be ignored, and at least one other, the Kerek, is already extinct.
But what’s a little genocide between friends?
According to the promotional posters, or at least one version of them, Bruce Shillingsworth Jr is due to speak at a rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park on Saturday. Other speakers include NSW MPs John Ruddick and Tania Mihailuk.
I say one version because there have been many. The rally was supposed to be held at the Sydney Town Hall but has been moved. Why? It’s hard to be certain but it seems all is not happiness, light and pass the port to the right in the Freedom Movement.
John Ruddick told Nine Media during the week he was “horrified” that an event he was listed to speak at had descended into a dog’s breakfast of 5G
“This is a single-issue referendum; we don’t want it merging with all the other stuff,” he said.
Another fringe group that calls itself Stop the Rot, Sack the Lot led by perennial nuisance Dave ‘Guru’ Graham doesn’t want to limit its freedom of expression to just the upcoming referendum. He wants to be the keynote speaker. Graham thinks the referendum is not about the voice but whether the UN can march in and take over Australia.
“I’m not being big-headed or anything,” Guru, whose head is actually quite dainty, said on one of his lives this week, “But I believe that God wants me to have the first say to put them on notice and the last say to fix up the day. Or not fix up the day but get the message out for the day.”
Guru then went on an expletive-laden rant that will have disappointed God, denouncing Ruddick as an oppressor of free speech.
Guru’s mob have released their own poster promoting their own rally to begin at exactly the same time, at exactly the same place, on exactly the same bat channel as the rally where Ruddick will be clambering to the lectern.
It promises more action and amusement than any of the footy finals this weekend.
The rally itself has been heavily promoted by Simeon Boikov, Russia’s own Julian Assange. Boikov retired to the Russian Consulate after assaulting a 76-year old man at a pro-Ukrainian rally in Sydney in December 2022 and has not come out since. He was convicted in absentia of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in February. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Ultimately, this is not a tale of the voice or the arguments for or against it. This is a gathering of the dregs of fringe politics in this country where convicted criminals take pride of place, a mix of the mad, the bad and the ugly while politicians keen for their votes are hurled into a maelstrom of every mad conspiracy theory going around.
It’s the company you keep, guys.
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