A rally took place on the lawns of Par­lia­ment House in Canberra on Tuesday 29 March 2022 organised by the United Australia Party (UAP). Its advert­ise­ment in UAP-yellow labelled it the “Budget Day Rally” to begin at “Par­lia­ment House at 11am”, with “Craig Kelly and many other headline speakers.” Nothing out of the ordinary.

However, one speaker, Mark McMurtrie, a sub­scriber to the sovereign citizens’ ideology, stood on a stage on the tray of a truck and told the rally, at 11:15am:

• “I notice there’s a lot of people here today wandering around with the red and the blue flags. That piece of shit that’s in the corner of that flag is the Union Jack, the union of Jacob, rep­res­ents three or it is three Hebrew tribal flags. And if you’re worried about their standing under the Jews and what they represent, that’s what you’re standing under when you carry that flag.”

Imme­di­ately, a woman in the crowd yelled “Get rid of them!” and another woman yelled “Zionists!”, and after a few more words from McMurtrie, there were cheers from the crowd.

McMurtrie’s speech was videoed and a link to the segment quoted above was tweeted by a left-wing activist, Tom Tanuki, that afternoon. Tanuki also tweeted:

“Sov cit Mark McMurtrie, guest speaker at today’s @UnitedAusParty Par­lia­ment protest led by Craig Kelly, tells the rally that if they’re worried about standing under the Jews they should shun the Union Jack, which he says is secretly a Jewish symbol.”

McMurtrie’s speech was also published by the Jewish community media outlet, J‑Wire, on 31 March, including a link to the video footage of McMurtrie’s speech that had been included in Tanuki’s Twitter post.

Another Jewish community media outlet, Plus61J, then ran its own story on 1 April, also with Tanuki’s Tweet of McMurtrie’s speech. Plus61J inter­viewed Kelly and the Plus61J article included the following:

“But when asked how and why McMurtrie had got up to address the rally, Kelly said he had not been invited to speak, and he repu­di­ated the comments McMurtrie made to UAP members who heard him.

“[Our event] commenced at 5am and we packed up at around 10am. Sep­ar­ately another group organised a protest, which they brought a stage on the back of a truck. This was not a UAP event. We have no control, over them – directly or indir­ectly,” he told Plus61J.”

In summary, Craig Kelly MP, leader of the United Australia Party, stated that McMurtrie had not been invited by the UAP to speak, was not part of the UAP rally (and was part of another rally), and that McMurtrie stood on a truck tray brought in by organ­isers of this other rally which had nothing to do with the UAP.

However, the day’s events were videoed by several people and many segments were posted on Twitter. The video footage shows that McMurtrie, who spoke at 11.15am, and Kelly, who spoke at 12.42pm, stood on the exact same stage and truck tray, (the times are recorded on Tanuki’s videos). The stage had a massive black banner with the words “Convoy to Canberra Australia 2022”. And yet Kelly told Plus61J that he had packed up by 10am (despite the UAP advert­ising the rally to start at 11am) and that the truck stage had had nothing to do with the UAP.

Another speaker at this rally was David Cole, who is also known as Lurnpa, a sovereign citizen advocate from Darwin. Cole addressed the crowd, with McMurtrie next to him. Cole has pre­vi­ously posted content about “Zionist Jews” on Facebook and Youtube. In a video on Facebook posted on 20 November 2021, and later posted on Bitchute, Cole, speaking to the camera, stated:

• “They’re happy to wipe out 15 million Aus­trali­an people in the process… Ernest Roth­schilds… keepers of the planet… The ones who control the keepers… banking system… corporate agents… The Free­ma­sons are nothing but the foot-soldiers for the Zionist Jews that are running this shit.

 To all you Zionist Jews that look at us as Goyim, trying to wipe out us the people, and trying to take out my sovereign tribal people in the process – your days are numbered too. People will be coming for you. Justice will be served. You think you can wipe out the entire planet? And genocide 95% of the planet and get away with it? … We are standing against the tyranny that you Zionist Jews, and Freemason, you child-raping dogs.” 

This begs the questions:

How was it that McMurtrie appeared to par­ti­cip­ate as a speaker and make an antisemitic statement at the UAP rally?

Why did Craig Kelly make state­ments to Plus61J which are clearly con­tra­dicted by footage of the rally and by the UAP’s own advert­ising of the rally?

Why hasn’t the main­stream media picked up on the overt antisemitism that was mani­fes­ted during the day’s pro­ceed­ings?

Julie Nathan is the Research Director at the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry