Senator sent letter to Julia Gillard in 2011 about climate change and global governance
Mind-boggling conspiracy theories are nothing new for One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, who is currently under pressure for sharing a social media post featuring a notorious anti-Semitic mural, among other controversies.
Long before he became a One Nation senator in 2016, Roberts wrote a voluminous letter to then-prime minister Julia Gillard arguing, in what appeared to be sovereign citizen-style language, that he was not subject to Australian law and should be exempt from the carbon tax.
Her letter was addressed to “Female, Julia.Eileen: Gillard takes on the role of the Honorable JULIA EILEEN GILLARD.”
He presented her with a detailed contract he expected her to sign, demanding $280,000 in compensation if the prime minister did not provide “full and accurate disclosure” of 28 clauses explaining why he should not be responsible for the carbon tax.
Roberts referred to himself as “Malcolm-Ieuan: Roberts, the living soul” and described himself as the “beneficiary, manager” of the corporate entity called “MALCOLM IEUAN ROBERTS”.
He also suggested that the Commonwealth of Australia may actually be an American company “listed on the United States securities exchange.”
In his 28-count affidavit sent to Gillard in 2011, he also claimed that he had not been provided with “material facts or evidence” that would compel him “or any other free person to become a member of a society” or that he could not resign from a society at any time.
Roberts’ unusual word structures and punctuation were widely compared to the language used by the sovereign citizens movement at the time.
Sovereign citizens – an anti-authoritarian group little known to many Australians before recent times Fugitive Dezi Freeman became infamous – They often refer to themselves as “freemen” and use strange language, ostensibly to gain independence from government authority, or what they consider to be governments’ use of grammar to enslave citizens.
But Roberts denied in interviews that he was a sovereign citizen after copies of his correspondence surfaced shortly after he was elected to the Senate.
At the time, he declined to take questions from this imprint’s Michael Koziol on the subject, explaining that he would only do live interviews that “couldn’t be edited.”
In an ABC radio interview in August 2016, Roberts confirmed that he was the author of the affidavit he sent to Gillard, but denied being allied with the “sovereign citizen” movement.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “Like hell.”
Roberts has also long argued that climate change, or what he calls “human CO2,” is a global conspiracy created by bankers trying to create a one-world government.
In 2013 – three years before he became a One Nation senator – he claimed there was a problem. United Nations’ global governance campaign.
That year, “CSRIOh!: Climate of Deception or First Step to Freedom?” He prepared a long report titled:
“The UN IPCC’s false baseline claim on human CO2 is part of the UN Agenda 21 campaign on global governance,” its report said.
In a 135-page appendix to the report published online, he detailed his claim that “an international group of bankers” had great influence on world affairs.
His report claimed that the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England were privately controlled companies and that their owners wanted to introduce carbon trading as a way to make money and expand their control over the world economy.
“The goal is to achieve global control through global socialist governance by international bankers who hide control behind environmentalism,” he wrote.
One section of the 2013 report cited the late Eustace Mullins, an American Holocaust denier, white supremacist, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, as a primary reference.
Roberts was accused at the time, and to this day, of using “international bankers” as a trope to refer to Jews.
However, he always denied this and insisted that he was not antisemitic.
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Tony Wright is associate editor and feature writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
