September 10, 2025 • 18 mins
In Australia, the massive manhunt continues for suspected cop killer Dezi Freeman in rural Victoria.
Officers had gone to his remote property in Porepunkah with a search warrant – but were met with gunfire. Two officers died at the scene.
Hundreds of officers are looking for the so-called ‘sovereign citizen’ with a hatred of authority.
Police have also announced a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
A former magistrate apparently issued a stark warning just weeks before the shooting, about the sovereign citizen movement in the country.
He had told Four Corners that Governments are underestimating the reach and threats of these movements”.
So, how do countries deal with growing sects of anti-government conspiracy theorists? And what should New Zealand learn from the tragic events in Porepunkah?
Today on The Front Page, University of Otago associate professor Stephen Young is with us to discuss these fringe groups, and how we might deal with them in future.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. In Australia,
the massive manhunt continues for suspected cop killer Desi Freeman
in rural Victoria. Officers had gone to his remote property
(00:27):
in Porpunka with a search warrant, but were met with gunfire.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Two officers died at the scene.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Now hundreds of police officers are looking for the so
called sovereign citizen with a hatred of authority. Police have
also announced a one million dollar reward for information leading
to his arrest. A former magistrate apparently issued a stark
warning just weeks before the shooting about the sovereign citizen
(00:56):
movement in the country. He had told four Corners that
governments are underestimating the reach and threats of these movements.
So how do countries deal with growing sects of anti
government conspiracy theorists and what should New Zealand learn from
the tragic events in Portpunker. Today on the Front Page,
(01:18):
University of Otago Associate Professor Stephen Young is with us
to discuss these fringe groups and how we might deal
with them in future.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
First off, Stephen, Let's start with an easy one. What
is a sovereign citizen?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
You say this is easy, but I'm not sure that
it really is a sovereign citizen. Is that it's an
umbrella term that we use to refer to various groups.
There are groups and individuals who largely believe that they
are independent or they have a way of the state.
What we think as scholars and researchers these people, what
(02:02):
sort of ties them all together is that they use
something called pseudo law. And again this is our term
for them. They wouldn't see it this way, but we
say they use a legal system that doesn't have any
authority to us, But they think we have a corrupt
system and they have the true law. So according to them,
(02:23):
they have a law that sort of supersedes ours, I guess,
and we say that they have a law that has
no authority at all, it just looks like nonsense and
gibbers to us.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So that's essentially who sovereign citizens are.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Because I did read somewhere that the term sovereign citizen
isn't universally liked by those people, I suppose that is
there another term that they use to describe themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Or you know, it's hard.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
There isn't a consistent term that they use because these movements,
these groups are very diverse. They identify themselves in various ways,
so it's not like we can say, oh, they're one thing.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And we can call them that.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So part of the trouble that we have is terminolot
of people. We say they're sovereign citizens, and they'll say, no,
that's not us, that's an oxymoron, and then they'll sort of,
you know, describe why it is. We agree it is
an oxymoron, but that is a term that was used
in the United States in the nineteen nineties by some
of these people. It's just that's sort of when this
(03:27):
term came big.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Well, it must be because they come from so many
different groups.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It must be quite difficult to kind of quantify how
serious the situation is here, right.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, that's right. It's really hard to quantify.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
We I should say, I don't know how many there
are there.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
I have seen reports.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
There's an intelligence report and police report that says there's
a dozen groups in New Zealand and maybe twelve hundred people,
but we don't know. That could be a huge underrepresentation.
Probably is considering how much we're seeing a sort of
pop up, But we don't know exactly how many people
(04:08):
are out there that we would actually qualify or count
as sovereign citizens or as suer law appearance.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And in terms of their beliefs as well, I believe
that it goes from very kind of low. You know,
they will drive without a driver's license because they don't
believe in in the conformity of driver's licenses all the
way through.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
It can get pretty violent.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So in terms of how they impact the courts and
local government and I guess other aspects of society, how
does that all work?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, that's another great question.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
There is a range of activities that engage in Some
of them are more sort of paramilitary type of activity
associated with militia movements. Of course that's the United States.
We haven't seen that here in Altadro and New Zealand.
I hope that we don't see that here, but there
are some threats that's sort of a rise in the
(05:01):
New Zealand context. The biggest one and perhaps the most problematic,
is that they file lots of paperwork. They're quite litigious
and they'll appeal. They'll appeal anything including rates payments rates increases.
If there's a limb that sort of impacts the properly,
anywhere they will dispute this, they will appeal it. Usually
(05:24):
we would say, you know, it's fine for people to
dispute things and to use legal processes, but if they're
also invoking legal conspiracies or archaic and irrelevant legal materials
to do this, it's a waste of time. And that's
the biggest problem is that if local councils, if government
actors of courts have to spend resources responding to these
(05:47):
requests or to these problems, that means they're not spending
money on public needs which are really important. And it means
that we people who are complying are actually paying for
the conspiracies down the line. And this is a problem.
I think that's the largest one. The other is ideological,
(06:07):
meaning they don't believe in government, they don't trust the state,
and they're working in certain ways to undermine it. And
as you pointed out, the third sort of area where
there's a risk is with violence.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
It's a low risk, but it's still there.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, And in terms of all of that paperwork and
I guess clogging up the system is there little to
do about that because of democracy.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I suppose you're.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Asking great questions. I think that there are ways to
streamline it. I'm not sure that we've really sort of
instituted policies to do this. I know that in courts,
if there's India that the seal law and that the
claim has no merit, the register can sort of flag
this as a claim and it can go to a
(06:55):
judge and they can say, Okay, this has no merit,
we're not dealing with it. Just get out of court,
and then they have to sort of ventilate the claim
in court, which saves time in the long run, but
it's still sort of an intensive process as far as
I know. Local councils, employment tribunals don't really have processes
in place, so when they cee suit a law, they
can just sort of stamp it and reject it. And
(07:16):
of course local councils can't just reject things from citizens.
They have to deal with them, which makes local councils
kind of a target for this type of overload of information.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Since Daisy Freeman is accused of opening fire and killing
it to police officers and attempting it to murder a
third police have received one thousand phone calls to crime stoppers.
In terms of what it's like here on the ground,
there are still more than four hundred and fifty police
members from Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia working
tirelessly to bring this man to justice, and they say
(07:58):
they will not stop until that is done.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Now, of course, we're talking about this subject while police
in Australia are looking for a man. His name's Desi Freeman,
and he is a so called sovereign citizen. And I
found it interesting actually in Australia, a couple of weeks
before this incident happened, a former magistrate apparently actually issued
a warning about sovereign citizens there.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
In terms of here in New Zealand, should we be worried?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
That's hard to say. We haven't seen that type of
violence from sovereign citizens here, but we know that they're active,
and this indicates that there is a latent possibility of violence.
I think I don't want to be sort of prosthetic
or anything like that. I really hope that I'm wrong,
(08:51):
but I think there is the possibility of violence. There's
that report I mentioned from intelligence. Police even indicated that
at some point, it's likely that there's going to be
some sort of unknown violence that occurs from these people.
We just don't know when it's going to arise or how.
(09:12):
We have seen very sort of low level violence by
sovereign citizens here. There was a common law sheriff that
basically showed up at a council and attacked someone, and
then another one went into a former mayor's house and
declared that they own the house. I'm not sure that
counts as violence. It might have just been more terrifying.
(09:33):
It's definitely a trespass, but I'm not sure it's like
the high level violence that really gets under people's skin
and motivates them to pack.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
You mentioned the US before, and that's interesting because it
is a huge becoming a huge issue there. I saw
that there are large numbers of violent incidents there. The
FBI has labeled sovereign citizens a domestic terrorism threat. Do
you think we should do the same here, really front
foot the issue or do you think that's quite an
(10:01):
extreme approach.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
That is an extreme approach and is because of extremists
in the United States has quite a few extremists. The
history of the United States shows that there's quite a
few of them, so a researcher there, Christine Sartowski, has
noted in six hundred by events of violence by sovereign
citizens over the last twenty years or thirty years, so
(10:28):
that it's quite a bit more than we have here,
I would say, so, I think the concern in the
United States is larger than it is here, and what
we're seeing now in Australia also indicates that this is
becoming more violent there. I don't know if that means
it's going to become violent here. I think when we
start to see indications that is, I think we have
(10:49):
to take that seriously. I will say, however, there already
are indications that the government has responded to the serious threats.
So they made a list of people that they thought
could be sovereign citizens, and I think they've built gun
licenses from sixty or so of them. So this is
a preventative measure and I think that the government has
(11:10):
done a good job with that. I'm not sure that
they need to declare them in domestic terrorists here.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I saw that experts in Australia who have been tracking
the sovereign citizen movement there was they said that there
was a clear inflection point, and that was something over
there called the Convoy to Canberra. It was a protest
held outside Parliament House in early twenty twenty two. That
was the largest protest ever held on the steps of
Parliament in Canberra and was attended by citizens, anti vaxxers
(11:39):
and activists protesting COVID restrictions imposed by governments.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Now that sounds somewhat familiar, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
How did co Yeah, how did COVID exacerbate the growth
and visibility of these groups?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
I would say COVID was an accelerant or citizen movement
and pseudo law here.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Typically, whenever there's.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
A societal crisis, people want to explain it in some way.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
COVID was particularly.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Impactful because it's combined a bunch of things that people
don't like, like doctors and medical intervention, telling people that
they need to get shots, having mandates about this really
got under people's skin.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It felt like to many people government intrusion.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
The ability to lock down the country to prevent people
from going out of their house.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
That's a restriction of freedom of movement.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
If you believe that the government is doing things wrong,
you might go look for reasons online for that. Unfortunately,
many people found pseudo law and found these sovereign system ideas,
and that's why we think there has been such a
growth in this movement since COVID. It's unfortunate, but I
(12:58):
think it's kind of here to stay.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Do you think that even the presence of sovereign citizens
and people who believe in pseudo law is an indication
that perhaps.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Democracy is working? I suppose.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I mean what I'm getting at is, do you think
there are any sovereign citizens in China? Or are there
sovereign citizens groups in North Korea?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
If I was going to take it that far, their.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Presence alone, Yeah, their presence alone and their ability to
speak out against the government is an indication surely that
we have a good doctor democratic society.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I like this question.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I haven't heard this question before, so my sense is
that people are allowed to speak out here. They have
freedom of speech, so we hear about that in ways
that maybe went This also means that the ideas travel online,
it can spread easier. But I will also say I
think that sovereign citizens moves and pseudolow rose when people
(14:03):
feel like government's not working for them. So we might
say on the one hand, it's indicative that democracy is working.
But on the other hand, I think they're also feeling
inequality and problems in society, and they're looking for reasons.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
To explain that. The problem is they're not really explaining it.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
They're finding conspiracy theories, right, And that's the problem here,
that it's not helping solve the problem, it's actually compounding
the problems.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
What do you think the government here could do in preparation?
I suppose, And is there any reasoning with these people?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That's good?
Speaker 4 (14:42):
So there's two questions. The one is there reasoning with them?
It's hard to say. I'm not directly involved in speaking
to many of them, so based I'm just sort of
speaking based upon the research.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
That I know.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
There's an indication that people have these beliefs.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You can't deprogram them.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
So when they believe that the government is corrupt, they're
going to believe the government is corrupt. If they believe
it's been taken over by a corporation, they're going to
continue to believe that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
There is some research that.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Indicates if they're also suffering from mental illness, then they
can be treated. That's not to say all these people
are suffering from mental illnesses. But if they have mental illness,
that can be treated, and this will also decrease their
activity level, so they won't be necessarily online obsessive and
spreading these messages, which means that there can be I
(15:41):
think prophylactic measures adopted. I think there could be perhaps
more regulation of social media, but this starts to wait
into territory.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
That makes me very uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Because if there's nothing illegal about selling bad legal advice,
or engaging in political discussion or even conspiracy theories, this
is all perfectly legal. And if we say, you know,
we start should regulate this in some way, it starts
to look like.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It's infringing on free speech in certain ways and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Kind of proving their point.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
It proves their points.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah, you know, the state might become somewhat of the
tyrannical government that they accuse it of being, and that's
certainly not what we want as a non conspiracy theorist.
I don't want a tyrannical government either. So it's really
tricky in terms of figuring out what the best way
to respond is.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And I suppose just teetering over that line of oh,
these people are crazy, they're filing so much paperwork, and
then the other line, which is quite you know, we
don't know how far away it is at that violence
aspect as well. Really balancing up those two.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Is yeah, it's really hard. I mean, we know that
they're filing lots of paperwork. We know that's coming up
local councils and courts and employment tribunals. We know that
this is a major part of criminal dockets now. So
there's a big question about how do we start to
do this, how do we start to unravel this?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
I think if we sort of pine the sky type thing,
if we start to think about making a society where
people don't have reasons to believe in conspiracy theories, then
they're not going to be attracted to pseudo law. They're
not going to hate the government or think that it's
working against them. I think part of this also has
(17:39):
to do with big business and banks, because part of
the narrative is that banks have more power than people
and that the government is in cahoote with banks. So
I think that there's a problem here. There's sort of
a critique they have here of the current sort of
capitalistic system and how it's running monk, but they don't
articulate it in those words.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Thanks for joining us, Steven.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Of course, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzherld, dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
behind the headlines.
Kilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. In Australia,
the massive manhunt continues for suspected cop killer Desi Freeman
in rural Victoria. Officers had gone to his remote property
(00:27):
in Porpunka with a search warrant, but were met with gunfire.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Two officers died at the scene.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Now hundreds of police officers are looking for the so
called sovereign citizen with a hatred of authority. Police have
also announced a one million dollar reward for information leading
to his arrest. A former magistrate apparently issued a stark
warning just weeks before the shooting about the sovereign citizen
(00:56):
movement in the country. He had told four Corners that
governments are underestimating the reach and threats of these movements.
So how do countries deal with growing sects of anti
government conspiracy theorists and what should New Zealand learn from
the tragic events in Portpunker. Today on the Front Page,
(01:18):
University of Otago Associate Professor Stephen Young is with us
to discuss these fringe groups and how we might deal
with them in future.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
First off, Stephen, Let's start with an easy one. What
is a sovereign citizen?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
You say this is easy, but I'm not sure that
it really is a sovereign citizen. Is that it's an
umbrella term that we use to refer to various groups.
There are groups and individuals who largely believe that they
are independent or they have a way of the state.
What we think as scholars and researchers these people, what
(02:02):
sort of ties them all together is that they use
something called pseudo law. And again this is our term
for them. They wouldn't see it this way, but we
say they use a legal system that doesn't have any
authority to us, But they think we have a corrupt
system and they have the true law. So according to them,
(02:23):
they have a law that sort of supersedes ours, I guess,
and we say that they have a law that has
no authority at all, it just looks like nonsense and
gibbers to us.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So that's essentially who sovereign citizens are.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Because I did read somewhere that the term sovereign citizen
isn't universally liked by those people, I suppose that is
there another term that they use to describe themselves.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Or you know, it's hard.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
There isn't a consistent term that they use because these movements,
these groups are very diverse. They identify themselves in various ways,
so it's not like we can say, oh, they're one thing.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
And we can call them that.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So part of the trouble that we have is terminolot
of people. We say they're sovereign citizens, and they'll say, no,
that's not us, that's an oxymoron, and then they'll sort of,
you know, describe why it is. We agree it is
an oxymoron, but that is a term that was used
in the United States in the nineteen nineties by some
of these people. It's just that's sort of when this
(03:27):
term came big.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Well, it must be because they come from so many
different groups.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
It must be quite difficult to kind of quantify how
serious the situation is here, right.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, that's right. It's really hard to quantify.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
We I should say, I don't know how many there
are there.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
I have seen reports.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
There's an intelligence report and police report that says there's
a dozen groups in New Zealand and maybe twelve hundred people,
but we don't know. That could be a huge underrepresentation.
Probably is considering how much we're seeing a sort of
pop up, But we don't know exactly how many people
(04:08):
are out there that we would actually qualify or count
as sovereign citizens or as suer law appearance.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And in terms of their beliefs as well, I believe
that it goes from very kind of low. You know,
they will drive without a driver's license because they don't
believe in in the conformity of driver's licenses all the
way through.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
It can get pretty violent.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
So in terms of how they impact the courts and
local government and I guess other aspects of society, how
does that all work?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, that's another great question.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
There is a range of activities that engage in Some
of them are more sort of paramilitary type of activity
associated with militia movements. Of course that's the United States.
We haven't seen that here in Altadro and New Zealand.
I hope that we don't see that here, but there
are some threats that's sort of a rise in the
(05:01):
New Zealand context. The biggest one and perhaps the most problematic,
is that they file lots of paperwork. They're quite litigious
and they'll appeal. They'll appeal anything including rates payments rates increases.
If there's a limb that sort of impacts the properly,
anywhere they will dispute this, they will appeal it. Usually
(05:24):
we would say, you know, it's fine for people to
dispute things and to use legal processes, but if they're
also invoking legal conspiracies or archaic and irrelevant legal materials
to do this, it's a waste of time. And that's
the biggest problem is that if local councils, if government
actors of courts have to spend resources responding to these
(05:47):
requests or to these problems, that means they're not spending
money on public needs which are really important. And it means
that we people who are complying are actually paying for
the conspiracies down the line. And this is a problem.
I think that's the largest one. The other is ideological,
(06:07):
meaning they don't believe in government, they don't trust the state,
and they're working in certain ways to undermine it. And
as you pointed out, the third sort of area where
there's a risk is with violence.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
It's a low risk, but it's still there.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, And in terms of all of that paperwork and
I guess clogging up the system is there little to
do about that because of democracy.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I suppose you're.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Asking great questions. I think that there are ways to
streamline it. I'm not sure that we've really sort of
instituted policies to do this. I know that in courts,
if there's India that the seal law and that the
claim has no merit, the register can sort of flag
this as a claim and it can go to a
(06:55):
judge and they can say, Okay, this has no merit,
we're not dealing with it. Just get out of court,
and then they have to sort of ventilate the claim
in court, which saves time in the long run, but
it's still sort of an intensive process as far as
I know. Local councils, employment tribunals don't really have processes
in place, so when they cee suit a law, they
can just sort of stamp it and reject it. And
(07:16):
of course local councils can't just reject things from citizens.
They have to deal with them, which makes local councils
kind of a target for this type of overload of information.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Since Daisy Freeman is accused of opening fire and killing
it to police officers and attempting it to murder a
third police have received one thousand phone calls to crime stoppers.
In terms of what it's like here on the ground,
there are still more than four hundred and fifty police
members from Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia working
tirelessly to bring this man to justice, and they say
(07:58):
they will not stop until that is done.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Now, of course, we're talking about this subject while police
in Australia are looking for a man. His name's Desi Freeman,
and he is a so called sovereign citizen. And I
found it interesting actually in Australia, a couple of weeks
before this incident happened, a former magistrate apparently actually issued
a warning about sovereign citizens there.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
In terms of here in New Zealand, should we be worried?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
That's hard to say. We haven't seen that type of
violence from sovereign citizens here, but we know that they're active,
and this indicates that there is a latent possibility of violence.
I think I don't want to be sort of prosthetic
or anything like that. I really hope that I'm wrong,
(08:51):
but I think there is the possibility of violence. There's
that report I mentioned from intelligence. Police even indicated that
at some point, it's likely that there's going to be
some sort of unknown violence that occurs from these people.
We just don't know when it's going to arise or how.
(09:12):
We have seen very sort of low level violence by
sovereign citizens here. There was a common law sheriff that
basically showed up at a council and attacked someone, and
then another one went into a former mayor's house and
declared that they own the house. I'm not sure that
counts as violence. It might have just been more terrifying.
(09:33):
It's definitely a trespass, but I'm not sure it's like
the high level violence that really gets under people's skin
and motivates them to pack.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
You mentioned the US before, and that's interesting because it
is a huge becoming a huge issue there. I saw
that there are large numbers of violent incidents there. The
FBI has labeled sovereign citizens a domestic terrorism threat. Do
you think we should do the same here, really front
foot the issue or do you think that's quite an
(10:01):
extreme approach.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
That is an extreme approach and is because of extremists
in the United States has quite a few extremists. The
history of the United States shows that there's quite a
few of them, so a researcher there, Christine Sartowski, has
noted in six hundred by events of violence by sovereign
citizens over the last twenty years or thirty years, so
(10:28):
that it's quite a bit more than we have here,
I would say, so, I think the concern in the
United States is larger than it is here, and what
we're seeing now in Australia also indicates that this is
becoming more violent there. I don't know if that means
it's going to become violent here. I think when we
start to see indications that is, I think we have
(10:49):
to take that seriously. I will say, however, there already
are indications that the government has responded to the serious threats.
So they made a list of people that they thought
could be sovereign citizens, and I think they've built gun
licenses from sixty or so of them. So this is
a preventative measure and I think that the government has
(11:10):
done a good job with that. I'm not sure that
they need to declare them in domestic terrorists here.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I saw that experts in Australia who have been tracking
the sovereign citizen movement there was they said that there
was a clear inflection point, and that was something over
there called the Convoy to Canberra. It was a protest
held outside Parliament House in early twenty twenty two. That
was the largest protest ever held on the steps of
Parliament in Canberra and was attended by citizens, anti vaxxers
(11:39):
and activists protesting COVID restrictions imposed by governments.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Now that sounds somewhat familiar, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
How did co Yeah, how did COVID exacerbate the growth
and visibility of these groups?
Speaker 4 (11:55):
I would say COVID was an accelerant or citizen movement
and pseudo law here.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Typically, whenever there's.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
A societal crisis, people want to explain it in some way.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
COVID was particularly.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Impactful because it's combined a bunch of things that people
don't like, like doctors and medical intervention, telling people that
they need to get shots, having mandates about this really
got under people's skin.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It felt like to many people government intrusion.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
The ability to lock down the country to prevent people
from going out of their house.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
That's a restriction of freedom of movement.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
If you believe that the government is doing things wrong,
you might go look for reasons online for that. Unfortunately,
many people found pseudo law and found these sovereign system ideas,
and that's why we think there has been such a
growth in this movement since COVID. It's unfortunate, but I
(12:58):
think it's kind of here to stay.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Do you think that even the presence of sovereign citizens
and people who believe in pseudo law is an indication
that perhaps.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Democracy is working? I suppose.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I mean what I'm getting at is, do you think
there are any sovereign citizens in China? Or are there
sovereign citizens groups in North Korea?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
If I was going to take it that far, their.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Presence alone, Yeah, their presence alone and their ability to
speak out against the government is an indication surely that
we have a good doctor democratic society.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I like this question.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I haven't heard this question before, so my sense is
that people are allowed to speak out here. They have
freedom of speech, so we hear about that in ways
that maybe went This also means that the ideas travel online,
it can spread easier. But I will also say I
think that sovereign citizens moves and pseudolow rose when people
(14:03):
feel like government's not working for them. So we might
say on the one hand, it's indicative that democracy is working.
But on the other hand, I think they're also feeling
inequality and problems in society, and they're looking for reasons.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
To explain that. The problem is they're not really explaining it.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
They're finding conspiracy theories, right, And that's the problem here,
that it's not helping solve the problem, it's actually compounding
the problems.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
What do you think the government here could do in preparation?
I suppose, And is there any reasoning with these people?
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That's good?
Speaker 4 (14:42):
So there's two questions. The one is there reasoning with them?
It's hard to say. I'm not directly involved in speaking
to many of them, so based I'm just sort of
speaking based upon the research.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
That I know.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
There's an indication that people have these beliefs.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
You can't deprogram them.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
So when they believe that the government is corrupt, they're
going to believe the government is corrupt. If they believe
it's been taken over by a corporation, they're going to
continue to believe that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
There is some research that.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Indicates if they're also suffering from mental illness, then they
can be treated. That's not to say all these people
are suffering from mental illnesses. But if they have mental illness,
that can be treated, and this will also decrease their
activity level, so they won't be necessarily online obsessive and
spreading these messages, which means that there can be I
(15:41):
think prophylactic measures adopted. I think there could be perhaps
more regulation of social media, but this starts to wait
into territory.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
That makes me very uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Because if there's nothing illegal about selling bad legal advice,
or engaging in political discussion or even conspiracy theories, this
is all perfectly legal. And if we say, you know,
we start should regulate this in some way, it starts
to look like.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It's infringing on free speech in certain ways and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Kind of proving their point.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
It proves their points.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah, you know, the state might become somewhat of the
tyrannical government that they accuse it of being, and that's
certainly not what we want as a non conspiracy theorist.
I don't want a tyrannical government either. So it's really
tricky in terms of figuring out what the best way
to respond is.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And I suppose just teetering over that line of oh,
these people are crazy, they're filing so much paperwork, and
then the other line, which is quite you know, we
don't know how far away it is at that violence
aspect as well. Really balancing up those two.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Is yeah, it's really hard. I mean, we know that
they're filing lots of paperwork. We know that's coming up
local councils and courts and employment tribunals. We know that
this is a major part of criminal dockets now. So
there's a big question about how do we start to
do this, how do we start to unravel this?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
I think if we sort of pine the sky type thing,
if we start to think about making a society where
people don't have reasons to believe in conspiracy theories, then
they're not going to be attracted to pseudo law. They're
not going to hate the government or think that it's
working against them. I think part of this also has
(17:39):
to do with big business and banks, because part of
the narrative is that banks have more power than people
and that the government is in cahoote with banks. So
I think that there's a problem here. There's sort of
a critique they have here of the current sort of
capitalistic system and how it's running monk, but they don't
articulate it in those words.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Thanks for joining us, Steven.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Of course, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzherld, dot co dot MZ.
Speaker 5 (18:18):
The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
behind the headlines.
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