Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith denies he is inciting followers to violence with his latest onslaught on the Andrews government, in which he imitates an American military campaign tactic used against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the American military handed out decks of playing cards bearing the pictures and names of the “most wanted” members of Saddam's murderous regime.
Tim Smith’s latest social media attack on Premier Daniel Andrews has been labelled “tasteless”.Credit:Paul Jeffers
Almost all of the 55 people pictured on the cards were eventually captured or killed, leading to the colloquial use of the term “catch and kill” cards.
Now Mr Smith has chosen to publish his own version of a “most wanted” deck, replacing Saddam and his cronies with Premier Daniel Andrews and leading ministers and civil servants.
In doing so, he has placed himself at risk of transgressing the law of defamation, according to a leading Victorian barrister.
Tim Smith denies “inciting anything”‘with his version of the “catch and kill’ cards.Credit:Twitter
Matthew Collins, QC, said Mr Smith had resorted to a “desperate refuge” by drawing a comparison between senior Victorian politicians and public servants pictured on playing cards with similar imagery that had been used by the US military to identify “terrorists”.
If ordinary reasonable people were to think less of the Victorian politicians and public servants portrayed on the cards, then a case of defamation could be made.
Mr Smith’s campaign portrays Mr Andrews as the No. 1 “most wanted”: the ace of spades, reserved for Saddam in the 2003 version.
Former health minister Jenny Mikakos appears with a large red cross over her picture, just as American troops scrawled a red cross over those they had wiped out.
Mr Smith’s deck of cards includes six other ministers and three senior Victorian public servants: Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kym Peake, Jobs Department secretary Simon Phemister, and Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles.
Lest anyone find themselves confused about the purpose of the cards, Mr Smith spells it out on his Twitter feed.
“WANTED,” he tweeted.
“The Labor Minister or civil servant responsible for the hotel quarantine fiasco, that has killed 800 Victorians, destroyed thousands of business (sic), created a mental health crisis and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Mr Smith’s accusations become more specific above the pictures of the Premier and the head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.
He charges them with leading a government and a public service “that is responsible for the deaths of almost 800 people, economic catastrophe, mass job losses and a mental health crisis".
Victoria's hotel quarantine failures have been blamed for the state's deadly second wave of coronavirus infections. A board of inquiry, due to report next month, heard the quarantine breakout caused more than 99 per cent of second-wave infections.
A research fellow with the Lowy Institute, Middle East expert Rodger Shanahan, said he was aware of the US military’s use of playing cards depicting high-level members of Saddam’s regime, mostly members of the Baath Party or Revolutionary Command Council.
“They were designed to offer an easy way of identifying people if you detained them,” Dr Shanahan said.
He said neither he nor anyone he knew would employ such cards in the way Mr Smith was using them, which he described as “tasteless”.
“He’s obviously trying to grab a headline, but it’s a strange way of doing it,” he said.
Mr Smith said he had drawn no comparisons between Saddam's regime and Victorian politicians and civil servants.
“All I’ve done is put a deck of cards up on social media depicting those who are responsible for the biggest public policy failure in Australian history," he said.
“I’ve been using all sorts of devices on social media to try to get someone to take responsibility for a disaster, and this is among them.”
Asked whether he could be accused of inciting violence, Mr Smith said: “I’m not inciting anything.”
State Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien, asked whether Mr Smith’s appropriation of the “capture and kill” imagery was reasonable, said he had been “far too busy to worry about what other people are posting on social media”.
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