Speaker 1: Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh,
Speaker 1: now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Daily OS. It's Monday, the first of September.
Speaker 2: I'm Lucy Tassel and I'm a Cholla Rock.
Speaker 1: Last week, two police were shot dead while trying to
Speaker 1: serve an arrest warrant at a rural property near the
Speaker 1: northeast Victorian town of Poor Punker. A third was wounded
Speaker 1: and is recovering in hospital. The man police alleged murdered
Speaker 1: their colleagues is believed to be a sovereign citizen, a
Speaker 1: person who does not believe in standard laws and governments.
Speaker 1: In today's episode, we'll explain what you need to know
Speaker 1: about sovereign citizens and their beliefs. Before we get into it,
Speaker 1: a quick word from our sponsor, Lucy.
Speaker 2: You and I have been researching sovereign citizens this week,
Speaker 2: following those developments in Victoria that you mentioned. Before we
Speaker 2: get into who these people are and what they believe in,
Speaker 2: can we talk about what brought this to our attention?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely. This came to our attention as a few
Speaker 1: kinds of stories do, which is that we saw it
Speaker 1: come up on the TVs that we have mounted on
Speaker 1: the wall of the newsroom that we have multiple channels
Speaker 1: running on all day, every day, and all we need
Speaker 1: to start with was that there was a police operation
Speaker 1: happening in northeast Victoria. Now that caught my attention because
Speaker 1: big news networks don't typically cover police operations while they're
Speaker 1: happening unless something really big is happening, like something has
Speaker 1: been leaked that suggests that there's a really big deal happening.
Speaker 1: Possibly someone has been killed, someone has a weapon. That's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that tends to pass the threshold
Speaker 1: for Australian news networks to be like, there's a big
Speaker 1: police operation happening right now and we don't know much
Speaker 1: more about it than that. So that immediately kind of
Speaker 1: tipped me and the whole newsroom off to the fact
Speaker 1: that something really big was happening.
Speaker 2: Now, I remember that day. It felt so chaotic and
Speaker 2: so much was happening. Now, when did we start understanding
Speaker 2: what exactly was going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, over the course of the day we got
Speaker 1: little dribs and drabs of information from the police in
Speaker 1: various forms. Understandably, the situation was developing. They could only
Speaker 1: give us so much information. But by that night, that's
Speaker 1: Tuesday night, we had a press conference from the chief
Speaker 1: of Police in Victoria. He said that ten police officers
Speaker 1: had gone to a property in northeast Victoria to execute
Speaker 1: a search warrant, that seven of those officers were physically okay,
Speaker 1: but had been traumatized, that two had been shot dead,
Speaker 1: and that a third was wounded like a gunshot wound,
Speaker 1: so quite serious. And then he started talking about someone
Speaker 1: that he at that point only referred to as the offender.
Speaker 2: Now, can you break down what we do know at
Speaker 2: this stage about what police are calling the offender.
Speaker 1: We know his name is Desi Freeman. We know he's
Speaker 1: fifty six years old. We know he has a and
Speaker 1: kids because they actually presented to police officers later on
Speaker 1: that Tuesday night. And crucially what we know is that
Speaker 1: he is someone who is called a sovereign citizen. And
Speaker 1: we also know that in the past, this belief system
Speaker 1: that he subscribes to has led to him being involved
Speaker 1: in an unsuccessful attempt to sue former Victorian Premier Dan
Speaker 1: Andrews for treason in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Now, I feel like we've heard the word treason a lot,
Speaker 2: but what does that specifically mean? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. The crime of treason is maybe the most serious
Speaker 1: crime there is other than murder in terms of how
Speaker 1: the legal system treats it in Australia. It can cover
Speaker 1: a range of fences. It could include killing the head
Speaker 1: of state. It could look like launching war against Australia
Speaker 1: as an Australian or helping an enemy of Australia to
Speaker 1: harm Australia. Sorry to say Australia so many times, but
Speaker 1: it really is about nations and what you, as a
Speaker 1: citizen of a nation do to that nation. Victorian law
Speaker 1: talks specifically about killing the sovereign, harming the sovereign. They
Speaker 1: keep saying, quote the sovereign, maiming, wounding, imprisoning, restraining the sovereign.
Speaker 2: I've lost count of how many times you said sovereign. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But under the Victorian legal context, who specifically is that
Speaker 2: referring to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's referring to King Charles the Third, who
Speaker 1: is our head of state. His power is exercised by
Speaker 1: Governor General Sam Mostyn. So under Australian law, the sovereign
Speaker 1: that phrase means the king or the Queen of the day.
Speaker 1: There's also this idea that a nation can have sovereign
Speaker 1: tea so basically control over its own government, setting its
Speaker 1: own rules. In Australia, this manifests as we have our
Speaker 1: own independent government. We're part of the Commonwealth, but we
Speaker 1: still we have our government. It makes its own rules
Speaker 1: and its members are elected by us. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: the nation of Australia has control over the nation of Australia.
Speaker 1: Another country invading us to take over would be a
Speaker 1: violation of sovereignty. And there's another context. You might have
Speaker 1: heard the word sovereignty or sovereign and that's in the
Speaker 1: phrase sovereignty was never ceded, So that's referring to the
Speaker 1: fact that Australia's first nations never agreed to hand over
Speaker 1: their land to the British Empire. That, of course, is
Speaker 1: a legitimate idea, while sov CITs ideas are not.
Speaker 2: So to bring it back to the topic of today's podcast, Yeah,
Speaker 2: what would you say are the top three things people
Speaker 2: should know about sovereign citizens?
Speaker 1: So sob CITs we can call them solvi sits. That's
Speaker 1: probably just faster. They have this idea of sovereignty that
Speaker 1: is somewhere between the ideas of sovereignty being a single
Speaker 1: person and sovereignty being something about government power. So I
Speaker 1: think that's part of the first thing that I think
Speaker 1: people should know, which is they should know about their
Speaker 1: ideology and where it came from. Second, I think the
Speaker 1: listeners should know about what they're up to in Australia.
Speaker 1: And third, I think TDA listeners should know how and
Speaker 1: why this belief system could lead to violence against police
Speaker 1: officers specifically, since that's kind of what's brought it to
Speaker 1: our attention this time around.
Speaker 2: And to bring it back to your first point, what
Speaker 2: do self sits believe in?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a variety and a diversity of beliefs, but
Speaker 1: I think broadly speaking, they reject government authority and the
Speaker 1: rule of law, and they don't participate in traditional societal structures.
Speaker 1: They instead perpetuate this thing called pseudo law, so fake law,
Speaker 1: which is like a mishmash of legal jargon that can
Speaker 1: kind of differ from person to person or from group
Speaker 1: to group. It has, though a fundamental lack of clarity
Speaker 1: that is quite easy to identify once you know what
Speaker 1: you're listening for. There are certain catch phrases and words
Speaker 1: like obviously sovereign, things like natural person, things like saying
Speaker 1: I'm traveling instead of driving. That it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to get into and it's quite complicated, but basically you'll
Speaker 1: know it like you know when you hear it. There
Speaker 1: are lots of examples online of that, primarily from so
Speaker 1: of CITs who have been pulled over by police for
Speaker 1: various traffic violations. And then again, I would say, another
Speaker 1: crucial aspect of the belief system I would say is
Speaker 1: this idea that at some point in history, governments, starting
Speaker 1: with the US government, took away or sold the rights
Speaker 1: of individual citizens and became corporations. Sovereign citizens tend to
Speaker 1: believe that they have figured out a way to get
Speaker 1: their original rights back from before governments became corporations, and
Speaker 1: that this means that they don't have to pay taxes
Speaker 1: or comply with laws, because all of these things are
Speaker 1: part of the fake corporation government, not the true government.
Speaker 2: Now, Lucy, you've touched lightly on the historical context of
Speaker 2: this movement. Can you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: where this ideology came from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it came from a few different groups in the
Speaker 1: US in the mid twentieth century who were generally speaking
Speaker 1: against paying taxes. It also stems from a group called
Speaker 1: Posse Commatatis, which is a far right extremist, antisemitic, aca
Speaker 1: and racist group that formed in the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: That group's beliefs were also strongly anti government and anti laws,
Speaker 1: and involved the idea that the US Constitution was being
Speaker 1: wrongly interpreted and that the government had no rights over
Speaker 1: sovereign individuals or the money they earned. Again coming back
Speaker 1: to paying taxes, So there's these kind of different streams
Speaker 1: of ideas that are fairly united by this idea that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have to pay taxes to a government that
Speaker 1: has no control over us.
Speaker 2: So you've broken it down in the US context and
Speaker 2: bringing it home here in Australia, how has that manifested?
Speaker 1: So something that was really interesting to me, the kind
Speaker 1: of sovereign citizen idea, came broadly to Australia in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties, which is also around the time that
Speaker 1: I realized I first heard of things like sovereign citizens.
Speaker 1: But it was sort of presented to me as a
Speaker 1: fun fact because I was thinking about the idea of
Speaker 1: principalities or mini nations within Australia. I remember learning as
Speaker 1: a fun fact in primary school. Oh there's a man
Speaker 1: in this state and he calls himself the prince of
Speaker 1: some made up nation, and he rules over a patch
Speaker 1: of land, or he has an island. So that was
Speaker 1: always presented to me as very lighthearted, like, there's this guy,
Speaker 1: he lives in this place and he says he's the prince.
Speaker 1: During the COVID nineteen pandemic, particularly during the lockdowns which
Speaker 1: forced people online as their primary form of socialization, that's
Speaker 1: when kind of SOBCIT ideologies really flourished in this country.
Speaker 1: It was a kind of a perfect storm. The isolation
Speaker 1: combined with repeated government orders to stay inside, as well
Speaker 1: as a significant amount of mis and disinformation about the
Speaker 1: safety of vaccines and government orders to get a vaccine
Speaker 1: and tell the government so that you could participate in
Speaker 1: public life. All of this kind of combined to for
Speaker 1: a lot of people pushed them towards this anti government,
Speaker 1: anti law ideology. And as I've said, it was during
Speaker 1: that time that we saw that attempt to sue Dan Andrews,
Speaker 1: so late twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: See, now that's one kind of attempt on authority. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and last week we saw another, you know, a very
Speaker 2: aggressive one, the killing of two police officers, So what
Speaker 2: do we know about sob CITs and the police that
Speaker 2: relationship there.
Speaker 1: In last week's case, the man suspected of killing those
Speaker 1: officers had made several anti police social media posts over
Speaker 1: the years. I think the first time this kind of
Speaker 1: broke into the public consciousness though, was the terrorist attack
Speaker 1: on police in Queensland in December twenty twenty two. The
Speaker 1: attackers in that case believed SOBCIT ideologies. They also had
Speaker 1: beliefs associated with Christian extremism which led them to murder
Speaker 1: two police officers and their neighbor. But just to say
Speaker 1: that sovereign citizenship was part of that.
Speaker 2: As you've mentioned, we've seen multiple examples of these attacks
Speaker 2: against police officers. Why do you think that, you know,
Speaker 2: these beliefs have led people to extreme violence against them?
Speaker 1: My kind of thinking, my analysis is that police are
Speaker 1: the most visible and like accessible representation of everything that
Speaker 1: sovereign citizens don't believe in, the fake government, the laws
Speaker 1: that they don't accept, even like the tax dollars that
Speaker 1: they refuse to pay. Because obviously police are a state
Speaker 1: entity that gets government funding, which and government funding comes
Speaker 1: from our taxes, so I can understand why in their ideology.
Speaker 1: Police would be kind of the most visible representation of
Speaker 1: everything they're against. The other thing about police is that
Speaker 1: they're accessible. You can call them, They're visible on a
Speaker 1: street corner, and as we've seen happen tragically now in
Speaker 1: Queensland and Victoria, they can come to your home. They
Speaker 1: can have a legitimate reason to come to your property.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's really interesting. Thank you so much for explaining
Speaker 2: that to us, Lucy.
Speaker 1: Thanks Atop.
Speaker 2: We'll be back again this evening with the day's headlines
Speaker 2: and then with another deep dive tomorrow morning. Until then,
Speaker 2: have a great day. My name is Lily Madden and
Speaker 2: I'm a proud Aranda Banjelung Kalkadin woman from Gadighl country.
Speaker 2: The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
Speaker 2: the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
Speaker 2: all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our
Speaker 2: respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past
Speaker 2: and present.