Given our larrikin and ratbag tradition it is sometimes tempting to dismiss contrarian COVID-19 sceptics such as Craig Kelly, and climate science deniers and fossil-fuel diehards such as Matt Canavan, George Christensen and Barnaby Joyce as colourful, if pig-headed, eccentrics. Unfortunately, especially during times of national emergency, we can't afford to do that.
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While the lies and fake news might be relatively harmless if being espoused by Fred Nerk at the local bowlo, they are toxic and dangerous in the hands of populist politicians with massive social media followings and a parliamentary pulpit. Recent events in Washington DC showed what can happen when demagoguery and "alternative facts" are allowed to get out of hand.
This type of divisive and self-serving populism is far from new. Its best known 19th century incarnation was the odious "Know Nothing" party that briefly blossomed as a force in American politics around the time of the Civil War. Anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Asian, anti-immigration and just generally xenophobic, its members included John Wilkes Booth, the disgruntled thespian who killed President Lincoln.
Australia has also spawned its fair share of far-right movements with organisations such as The New Guard and the Australia First enjoying short vogues during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and, from the late 1990s to now, One Nation, which has had mixed fortunes.
The members of such organisations, and the more mainstream politicians who have built their political careers by pandering to the vocal minority of the disaffected, and sometimes apparently deranged and deluded, have one thing in common. They invariably cite "free speech" as their licence to say whatever they please, about whoever they please".
The wannabe demagogues always argue there is no absolute truth - except, of course, their own. There are "alternative facts" that need to be taken into account. The science, whether it be of COVID-19, anthropogenic climate change, the viability of renewables, or the positive benefits of immigration, is always said to be "contested".
That, incidentally, was the phrase Nationals MP Bridget McKenzie used when asked to comment on Mr Kelly's controversial views on COVID-19, face masks, and vaccines on Wednesday. She also refused to concede Mr Kelly's actions were undermining the rollout of the national vaccination program.
Mr Kelly's colleague, David Littleproud, said he was a "proud defender of free speech" and Mr Kelly was a "great guy". He did go so far as to say, however, that when it came to distributing false information about COVID-19 "he is on his own".
Both of these responses were inexcusably lukewarm given it had been reported only a few hours earlier the Prime Minister had had enough. He had apparently carpeted Kelly and made him issue a "teleprompter-Trump" like statement to the effect that: "I have agreed to support the government's vaccine rollout which has been endorsed by medical experts" and "I believe that the spread of misinformation can damage the success of our public health response during the pandemic".
Sadly this seems to be too little, too late and, as Senator Katy Gallagher pointedly observed, it all rings rather hollow given none of the misinformation on Mr Kelly's social media accounts appears to have been taken down. If the PM was truly sincere in his determination to pull this recalcitrant into line he would have ordered all the posts questioning masks for children, plugging hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and saying vaccines can't be trusted to be removed immediately.
