Qld council election candidates questioned over My Place

A conspiracy group opposed to vaccinations and 5G towers and with links to holocaust denial and anti-semitism has denied it is secretly trying to infiltrate local councils at the upcoming Queensland election.

Splice or splash image for My Place yarn.

A conspiracy group opposed to vaccinations and 5G towers and with links to holocaust denial and antisemitism has denied it is secretly trying to infiltrate local councils in Queensland.

When Gympie election candidate Charlie Horne announced his intention to run for his local council on March 16, he was approached several weeks later by a woman who said she represented My Place Gympie, and asked him if he wanted to meet with the group at a local cafe, The Brown Jug.

He declined the offer, saying he was happy to listen to people’s concerns but valued his independence as a candidate.

“They invited me to a meeting, and I didn’t know what it was all about,” Mr Horne said.

My Place Gympie is a regional branch of a much bigger group created by Victorian “sovereign citizen” Darren Bergwerf as a meeting place for people who are opposed to 5G towers and Covid vaccinations, among other things.

(Australian Federal Police define “sovereign citizens” as those seeking to dissociate from society and not engage with societal requirements such as paying tax. The movement has surged in the wake of the Covid pandemic.)

The My Place movement made national headlines in early 2023, with reports by news.com, the ABC, and The Age, that it was part of Mr Bergwerf’s plan to “re-educate Australians and build a parallel society in preparation for what he believes is the inevitable collapse of civilisation as we know it”.

Darren Bergwerf, a Victorian resident and sovereign citizen who has stood for election at the state and federal levels , founded My Place with the goal of building a “parallel society” in preparation for an expected collapse in civilisation.

Mr Bergwerf is one of six administrators of the My Place Gympie Facebook page.

Social media pages linked to My Place have also hosted anti-Semitic content.

Mr Bergwerf himself has been reported by the ABC as believing there was a question mark over the holocaust as he “wasn’t there”.

In November 2022, My Place hosted former high-ranking Australian SAS officer Riccardo Bosi as a guest speaker - he was reported (by the ABC) to have called for politicians, health workers and bureaucrats to be hanged over the pandemic management.

My Place has been criticised by senior academics, including Deakin University extremism expert Dr Josh Roose, who said its beliefs “raised alarm bells” and warned local councils that they needed to be aware of the group’s goals.

My Place statistics across Qld

The Gympie My Place Facebook page, which has more than 1100 members, is private to those who have not joined.

It is one of 50 My Place Facebook pages running across the state.

Facebook groups have been launched at Agnes Water, Bargara, Beerwah, Biggenden, Blackbutt and surrounds, Boonah, Bundaberg, Cairns, Capricorn Coast, Central Queensland, Charleville, Cleveland, Cooktown, Coolum beach, Coomera, Deception Bay, Gayndah, Gemfields Central Queensland, Gladstone, Glasshouse Mountains, Glen Allyn Far North Queensland, Gold Coast, Gympie, Hervey Bay, Ingham, Inner North East Brisbane, Ipswich, Jimboomba, Lockyer, Logan, Maleny, Mareeba, Maryborough, Mission Beach, Mooloolaba, Moreton Bay Islands, Mount Garnet, Mount Isa, Nambour, Narangbah, Noosa and the Sunshine Coast, Ravenshoe, Sarina, Stafford Heights, Tamborine, Tin Can Bay and Cooloola, Toowoomba, Townsville, Wynnum Manly, and Yatala.

The Gympie group is also one of two in the state with a web page, the other being at the Gold Coast.

Its stated goal is to “implement a project that allows us to step away from the current systems that are not serving our best interests”.

My Place has 50 Facebook group's running across Queensland, and more than 200 across Australia.

Included on the page are the latest newsletters about their meetings, outlines of the group’s meeting agendas, and a “council watch” page with the groups’ own notes from each month’s council meetings.

The ABC, in its coverage, said a slide show created by My Place urged branches to create a “council action group” to attend meetings and “establish constant control over council decisions”.

The notes from the first council meeting attended by the Gympie group in January 2023 reveal it “intentionally” hid its identity from local media for public relations purposes.

“We have started. We did not mention who we are intentionally as we need to build our exposure in the public to gain support before we move too quickly,” the report says.

At the January Gympie council meeting, a group spokesman told The Gympie Times they were “just community members … who want transparency”.

The overarching My Place Australia website also includes documents outlining the “Birth Certificate Fraud” and how parliament and governments were a “straw man”.

The group’s “positive culture agreement” published online includes a request for My Place members to “agree to communicate to the project management team before speaking (with) or contacting media of any sort”.

Mr Bergwerf, who has run as an independent at federal and state elections including the March 2 Dunkley by-election, denied that My Place was “a political movement of any sort”.

A slide show reportedly created by members of a My Place branch in Victoria outlined plans to create a council watch group and “establish constant control over council decisions”. A report published online by the Gympie branch of the group says its members “intentionally” hid its identify from local media at the first council meeting they attended in January, 2023, to allow the group to build its exposure in the public “to gain support”.

In his response to questions about the group, which he said would be sent along with The Gympie Times inquiry to the “200 My Place communities” across Australia, he described the group as somewhere for those dissatisfied with the status quo to meet.

“We are a gathering group, across the breadth of our country, of concerned Australians that are not at all happy with the way our country is being run,” Mr Bergwerf said.

He rejected any suggestion the Gympie group’s refusal to initially identify itself accurately to media at the council meeting in January 2023 showed a lack of transparency from the group.

“There is no lack of transparency on our part,” Mr Bergwerf said.

“The lack of transparency lies solely with the mainstream media”.

He also rejected any suggestion people should be hanged as “not on” and “if there is to be discipline to be brought against anyone at all that has brought harm to Australians, in the future, the courts will handle that”.

“My Place communities are all about peace, truth, lore (or) law and love of humanity.”

A response from the official My Place Queensland page suggested The Gympie Times time would be “better spent researching the excess deaths in Australia reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics” or “a report regarding the win many QLD police and ambulance officers had in the supreme court very recently”.

In 2022, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said high deaths that year were caused by Covid.

In April 2023 The Therapeutic Goods Administration had received reports of more than 900 deaths that occurred after vaccination, but determined after examination only 14 of those were linked to the shot.

Election ties to My Place

The My Place Gympie Facebook page includes among its members at least three candidates vying for election to the Gympie council on March 16: Marcel Claassen, Allona Lahn, and Tim Jerome.

The pages are private, leaving the general public unable to search their memberships unless they join.

Asked about her membership of the Facebook page, Ms Lahn said she was “part of many Facebook community groups and My Place Gympie is one of those”.

Gympie council candidate Charlie Horne said he was invited to meet with members from My Place shortly after announcing he was running, but declined their offer as he valued his independence. He said on Thursday his view was it was working as a “team” at the election.

She said she did not know Mr Bergwerf or his views and had never met him.

“I am in the group because it’s one of many local community groups,” Ms Lahn said, adding her activity in the Facebook group was minimal “other than sharing the community markets that I organise at the Mothar Mountain Hall.”

“I am my own person and therefore sovereign, as is everyone, I participate in the democratic process, have a birth certificate and driver’s licence and participate in society,” she said.

Mr Claassen did not responded to questions.

Mr Jerome said he joined the page “to see what was happening so I could make an informed decision”.

Regarding the stated claims My Place was there to “take control of council decisions”, Mr Jerome questioned if this could be inferred to include members endorsing candidates who were not themselves part of the group.

“They promote each other’s websites with the view to gaining voting support for one another,” Mr Jerome said.

These connections could be construed as leading to a voting block.

Gympie election candidate Allona Lahn, who is a member of the Facebook page, said she was in it “because it’s one f many local community groups” and her interactions on the page were minimal. Picture: Christine Schindler

One of these candidates was incumbent mayor Glen Hartwig, whose nomination form was endorsed by a member of the My Place Facebook page.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hartwig, who is recovering from injuries suffered in a serious crash while he was on the campaign trail, rejected any suggestion of a link between him and My Place.

His endorsements were given by people he knew, sometimes for years, she said.

Mr Hartwig is not himself a member of the My Place Gympie Facebook page.

It is not suggested Mr Claassen, Ms Lahn, or Mr Jerome share any of the controversial views that have been linked to My Place’s social pages.

“There is no team”

Gordon Maudsley, who is running for the region’s council seat in the Mary Valley, said he had spoken with My Place members following his own candidacy announcement.

It had been suggested Mr Maudsley present to the group at a meeting, but no formal invitation was ever offered.
He was not a member of the group nor the Facebook page.

There was a “a bit of a feeling” it was running as a “team”, especially with candidates being supported by members of the group, but there was “no proof”, Mr Maudsley said.

Rules are in place to cover groups of candidates at Queensland council elections.

Electoral Commission Qld documents says “two or more candidates may form a group to campaign collectively in a local government election, execute common policies and achieve shared goals if elected to council”.

An Electoral Commission Queensland spokeswoman said strict rules governed “teams” of candidates at the state’s elections, but being members of a private group does not fall under them unless they behave in one of several prescribed activities in a co-ordinated manner. Photo: Brett Wortman / Sunshine Coast Daily

Group campaign activities “are carried out in an intentionally co-ordinated way” and include using a common platform, using the same campaign advertisements or slogans, participating in the same fundraising activities or events, and sharing the same resources for election campaigns, other than volunteers.

“A candidate publishing a notice or letter on a website encouraging electors to vote for another candidate or group of candidates,” is an example of group campaigning, the documents say.

An ECQ spokeswoman said being members of the same private group, or any other group, “will not, in and of itself, be evidence of unlawful group campaign activity”.

“One of the prescribed activities … must be undertaken in an intentionally co-ordinated manner for these activities to be classified as ‘group campaign’ activities,” she said.

Mr Bergwerf said there would be some members keen to run at elections for all three tiers of government, including council, but “there is no team, just concerned individuals”.

Mr Horne said in his view the group was operating “as a team”, at least in Gympie.

“They invite you to join them,” he said.

Originally published as Qld council election candidates questioned over My Place