Malcom Roberts and ‘the 28’

In Sydney’s rally in Hyde Park, a man who declared a black t -shirt “28 punishment”, T -shirt “rope. Journalist. Some assembly required” stimulation was standing in front of another man.

In September 2023, the event was apparently opposed the game to the parliamentary referendum. Again, another T -shirt wrote “Yes, no”. The nation would soon vote for the voice offer, but the signs of the participants betrayed a wider interest.

Recently, someone said, “28 is released”. Later, as the speakers took the stage to gather the crowd against the vote, two other protesters appeared in front of the speakers, and the white cardboard signs punished 28 with black marked.

The “28″ signs referred to a list that is not similar to Epstein files and the fiery speculation surrounding it. Both are documents at the center of conspiracy theories about child abuse rings at the highest levels of society. Epstein files in the United States follow Jeffrey Epstein’s real crimes of legal proceedings and investigations in the 2000s.

In Australia, our “28” version appeared in 2015. During the Senate forecasts, the liberal party senator Bill Hefffernan, who was sitting in one of the Anonymous Wooden Panel rooms of the Parliament House, explained the existence of a document that gave the name of 28 people alleged to be pedophilia, including Australian politicians and legal figures.

For the first time against the members of the judiciary, he did not make accusations. Hefffernan in 2002 made claims Under the privilege of parliament against the Supreme Court justice, he accused him of using government cars to get young men for sex. The vehicle records of Hefffernan as evidence Shown later “fake”.

He did not name the names at this hearing on a Canberra Spring Day in 2015. He said it was a document containing “a lot of leading people”. This was a “police certificate ve and there was a former prime minister between 28. “Some time ago he was delivered to me by a police institution because he seems to not want to cope with them,” he said.

Hefffernan claimed that he had gone to the royal commission for institutional reactions to child sexual abuse. The Commission had just started a few years ago and spent years to investigate the sexual abuse of children in Australian schools, churches and other organizations, and made a painful conflict of the scale and horror of Australian institutional complexity and action failures.

At that time, the coalition government’s chief prosecutor Senator George Brandis tried to put the hearing back. Heffernan said, “Of course, it does not make them guilty because someone’s name appears on a list,” he said. Officially, very little came.

Nevertheless, years later, this list became a ghost between Australia’s eaves. Since 2015, “28 emerges” references are a basis for some corners of the Internet and a guaranteed part of almost every protest of the pandemic era.

The fact that Hefffernan’s list is not explained to the public has become a proof of the accuracy of the list for believers. Some claim that there is a “90 -year -old printing order” in the document without evidence. The existence of 28 names list has become a way to awaken the government’s amorphous and creeping insecurity and anonymous fears.

For centuries and between international borders, threats to children are the central narrative of many theories that claim the conspiracy of elite or foreigners.

As Professor of Elem Dr Michael Salter He said in 2020“The child is really an empty marker that can be manipulated as a kind of ships for a series of inchoate concerns, concerns and projections in a kind of an empty symbol or conspiracy theory.” This also makes children a political weapon allegedly abused.

In recent years, and perhaps the most famous fame, Qanon has come to embody these concerns. The conspiracy theory claimed that US President Donald Trump was a demonic pedophile cabinet – politicians, celebrities and other elite – who participated in the ritual abuse of children.

In 2020, Qanon believers began to gather around #Savathechildren hashtag to overcome Facebook’s content restrictions, but at the same time talking to some of the themes of the idea: “Children were a more cool, closer version of Qanon. His book Trust in the plan.

It is important to point out that such claims are completely ignored by the way child sexual abuse of child sexual abuse completely: for both girls and boys in Australia, the abuse is probably themselves and often a family member. It is noteworthy how a small number of conspiracy theories about the abuse of children think about how these facts or the claims of a small number of supporters can affect the survivors who try to understand what they are.

Qanon’s ideas found a fertile ground in Australia, even before pandemic and locks in 2020, a cohort-28 of local conspiracy theorists and Australia’s hidden pedophiles.

To claim that someone is abused by children without evidence is to turn them into a deep figure of evil. When conspiracy theories blame a particular group of this crime, it is a way to finally define them.

The “other” can be defined by ethnicity or religion, even with sexuality – something completely separate from the rest. Journalist Anna Merlan, “the enemy defines the enemy, and ‘the person you need to hate’ or ‘person or group you can fix this world’ they say. said Mother Jones.

Of course, as many terrible stories that emerged in the Catholic Church showed, the Scouts Association, Children’s Houses and many other institutions have been conspiracies to cover up the continuous and terrible actions of child sexual abuse in Australia. Conspiracy theories are the most adherent when they can stick to real concerns and embers of truth.

This phenomenon helps to explain ten years of permanence of hefffernan’s 28 alleged pedophile list of conspiracy theories grown at home. According to Tom Tanuki, a writer and anti-fascist activist on the YouTube channel, he spent years to be shaped as a conspiracy with his own life.

He remembered a poster he saw in an Anti-Lockdown incident. It was a double -sided sign on the 28 list, but he predicted that there could be 56 names there. “They started with 28, but then they wrote 29 in a small article in the corner. But then they went over the page and only bought paedophile,” he said.

Around 2016 and 2017, a nation senator Malcolm Roberts remembered that he had received a call and e -mail to his voter office about the list, but until 2019 he did not contact Hefffernan. “I approached various national party members of the parliament and finally got Bill Hefffernan’s phone number,” he said. (We made attempts to reach Hefffernan, including Via Post, but we failed.)

He remembered meeting with Hefffernan with Roberts staff with a legal history. He remembers that hefffernan brings a small suitcase full of paper. Roberts’ staff spent a day, Roberts remembers. Roberts said, “He’s back to me, and 28 has a list. But the list is unsigned. It can’t be verified. “And he said he was unacceptable in court, because it does not work.

Later, Roberts prepared a Youtube video about the 28 list and put a page on the website for the public. “There are many urban legends about all this,” he said in the video. Im My investigations revealed that there was no suppression order in this document. There was never a order of printing. The document is not reliable enough to publish it outside the Parliament privilege without a writer.

Im I was hoping to reveal evidence to prove and quit the perpetrators of disgusting actions if it was brought to light as it was started, ”he said. “Despite my best efforts, this is not what I find.”

Roberts, a long -term suspicion of climate change science, is not alien to being called a conspiracy theorist. In our conversation, he argued that çal from Climate Change was evidence that it was a fur for only one front for an attempt to form an unpledged socialist global government.

He does not hesitate to the label of the conspiracy theory: “When people use it, I thank you for declaring the winner because you do not have the facts that will enter a logical, rational argument with me,” he said.

In the 28 list, he is pleased that he and his team did the research. “Focusing on 28, because it is unacceptable and not intact… The deviation of effort and attention,” he said. “Most politicians escape from it because they know that many components feel very strong in this matter, but what we prefer to do is to say the truth and confront people and say that there is nothing there. We cannot do anything for you.”

This is an arranged quote Conspiracy By Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, now through Ultimo Press ($ 36.99).