Politicians and bureaucrats love impossible targets and law enforcement, well, they love them even more.

The Australian Federal Police have announced a new national security investigations team to, in their words, target groups causing high levels of harm to Australia’s social cohesion. That’s right, the police are going to make us all get along or else. What could possibly go wrong? And I hate to be a downer, but yes, we should be worried about this because if the UK experience is anything to go by, social cohesion will be an impossible and ever moving target, which will ultimately lead to the federal police becoming the word police and making arrests for well, we’ll talk about some of the craziness that’s gone down in the UK in a minute.

Now, full disclosure, the Australian Federal Police have had a file on me since at least 2009. That’s when they contacted me for the first time wanting to know why I’d been filming outside of the security fence around a power station in the Latrobe Valley. That was my first ever video. And yeah, I have been treading on toes ever since. 10 years later, I had a bit to do with the AFP again when I was the MC of a farmers rally on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra on December 3rd and 4th, 2019, if you’re wondering. And at an individual level, the officers were great. No complaints. And in both cases, they were doing legitimate federal police work, ensuring the security of critical infrastructure in the case of the power station and ensuring the security of Parliament House in the case of that protest.

And I’m sure that none of them signed up to be a federal police officer so that they could go and arrest people for Facebook posts or stop street preachers from quoting the Bible. But then again, that’s not why the UK police signed up to be officers either. And yet, when the orders came down for them to go and do things like arresting women who claimed they had been raped because they made the claim on social media, or when they get orders to go and arrest street preachers for the crime of asking genuine questions about the Quran, the UK police just followed orders.

What the Australian Federal Police have announced is a moral test for us all.

A test for you and I as to whether we will continue to speak truth despite the risks. And a test for federal police officers as to whether they will uphold their oaths to serve or whether they will simply become enforcers for the government of the day and whatever socially fashionable causes they are ordered to serve this week.

More about that in a minute. But first, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher project and I help busy people like you to cut through the crap and make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. I am 100% viewer supported. So, if you appreciate what I do, then please buy me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my no-nonsense videos, then you will love my no-nonsense books about government, power, human rights, and civil disobedience. My first book is titled Good People Break Bad Laws, and it’s about the role of civil disobedience in the modern age. My second book is titled Good Christians Break Bad Laws, and is all about obeying God in a fallen world. You’ll find both of those on Amazon. But you’ll find both my books, plus my multi-award winning DVD, Battleground Melbourne, and all of my t-shirts, hoodies, and more at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. And everything you buy will help me to keep the Topher project going.

Okay, first I’m going to read you the announcement from the Australian Federal Police. Then we’re going to talk about a little thing called mission creep, which is what I experienced firsthand when I was charged with incitement during Dan Andrews Covid lockdowns in Melbourne. Then I want to play you a video showing exactly what Australian Federal Police officers must not do and who they must not become.

Here’s what the AFP had to say about this new unit: The AFP has set up new national security investigations teams to target groups and individuals causing high levels of harm to Australia’s social cohesion. The NSI teams will work closely with state and territory police, law enforcement, and national security partners to provide a coordinated, consistent, and intelligence-led response to security threats and also work on a global level through operations capabilities and relationships with the international law enforcement intelligence community. There are current and emerging groups dispersed across Australia and in some cases overseas who are eroding our country’s social fabric by advocating hatred, fear, and humiliation. While many of these crimes may not meet the threshold of terrorism, the AFP has identified concerning behaviors which could escalate to politically motivated violence or hate crimes which seriously put the Australian community at risk. There is no place for hate or violence in our communities and the AFP will defend and protect Australia and Australia’s future from these threats.

Now, as is always the case, the language that these announcements are written in sounds very reasonable. I’m not in favor of hate or in favor of violence. So, why would I have a problem with this? Well, I have a problem with it because, as we’ve seen time and again, when they say hate or talk about hate speech, they don’t actually mean speech that is filled with hate. They mean speech that they hate because it doesn’t align with the current cultural fashions that these days are enforceable by law. When they say violence, let’s not forget that the government and our courts seem to believe that words are violence, which is funny because no one has ever been punched in the pronouns.

Once these sorts of laws are on the books, and once these sorts of task forces are in place, they have to justify their own existence. They’re a hammer going in search of a nail. So they start to redefine what their mission is just to keep themselves busy and justify their own existence. I personally experienced this during Covid. You may know my story, you may not. The very quick version is that I participated in the protests against the Covid lockdowns which destroyed so many lives in Melbourne, my former home city, and I encouraged others to participate as well. I was arrested and charged with incitement along with a bunch of others, famously Zoe Buhler, but plenty of others as well. You’re watching part of my multi-award winning documentary, Battleground Melbourne, which lays out all of the Victorian government’s crimes during the Covid lockdowns. You can watch the whole thing for free at battlegroundmelbourne.com. I’m just going to let that play for a minute to give you a taste.

Now, what is incitement? Well, the Victorian Parliament made it a crime to incite others to commit crimes

so that, it was possible to hold people accountable when they were, for example, an organized crime boss who didn’t personally get involved in the dirty work but gave the orders. It was supposed to be for drug smuggling kingpins and mob bosses and even terrorist masterminds who made things happen but didn’t actually do it themselves. But then mission creep set in. The police went looking for a way to shut people like me down during the Covid lockdowns and the incitement laws were abused to accomplish that purpose. I fought my charges for 2 and 1/2 years until Victoria police eventually dropped them. But the point still stands. Once those laws are on the books, they are a hammer in search of a nail.

Now, the same is most certainly true in the UK. I could give lots of specific examples, but let me instead play a clip from an interview between Konstantin Kisin and former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, the Honorable John Anderson, which covers it better than I could.

[From video]

In Russia last year, 400 people were arrested for things that they said on social media. 400 people in Russia. Obviously, this country is very different. How many people do you think were arrested in Britain for things they said on social media last year?
Go on, take a guess.
I have no idea.
3,300.
Really? Arrested for what they’d said on social media?
Really. What sort of things get you?
One example I give on my show is u there was a young woman from Liverpool called Chelsea Russell. And people can look this up. uh her friend was killed in a car crash, 19-year-old woman, and she posted the lyrics of his favorite song on her Instagram, the lyrics, and it was a rap song. So, the lyrics contained several instances of the n-word.
She was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, given 500 hours of community service and a fine, tagged, and for a year, she was under 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. curfew.
My goodness.
In Britain.
In Britain in 2018.

[End video]

Think about the officers who arrested that young woman and think about when they first signed up to be police officers. Do you think that’s what they had in mind? Arresting people for using hurty words on Facebook? Of course not. And yet, when the order came down the chain of command to go and do it, they did it.

This new task force that the AFP have announced is ripe for mission creep. What exactly is social cohesion and what is harm in this context? It’s highly subjective and open to abuse and critically open to politicization of the federal police force. Laws like this put police officers into a morally compromised position, forcing them to choose between obeying orders in these highly subjective and politicized cases or doing what their conscience requires and probably losing their jobs and facing disciplinary action as a result.

We saw exactly this compromise play out during Covid where police officers who really did know that what they were doing was wrong chose to collect the paycheck for the sake of their families. One protester managed to record this conversation with some officers who thankfully weren’t looking for a fight that day.

[From video]

Go home. Otherwise they start issuing tickets.
We don’t want to do it but we will do it.
Right. Well, if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Stand up for what you believe in rather than just go home.
We get paid to do this, mate. I’m just as over this [….] protest as you are. By protest, I mean lockdown, right?
Unfortunately, I got to do what I got to do.
You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to. You’re choosing to do
I’m not skilled to do anything else, mate. So, unfortunately, at this time of my life, that’s what I have to do.
And the people of us that aren’t skilled, we don’t we don’t get paid. We’re not getting food at the moment.
I hear you, mate. My wife’s in the same position. She’s out of a job at the moment as well. [End video]

That officer’s own family was weaponized by the state against his own conscience. They forced him to make a choice between putting food on the table or doing what he knew was right. Now, I think he made the wrong choice. You can always find a way to get another job or a new career. You can always rebuild, but you can never buy your conscience back no matter how big your paycheck may be. So, I believe he made the wrong choice and he has to live with that for the rest of his life. But I also know that many other officers, including Australian Federal Police officers, who joined the AFP for all the right reasons, will compromise like he did when the orders come down, and they will allow themselves to be used to do the wrong things, but they’ll justify to themselves that they’re doing it for the right reasons.

We already have laws against actual violence and incitement to actual violence.

We already have anti-terror task forces, anti-organized crime task forces, and all manner of task forces to deal with actual threats. This new national security investigations team, mark my words, it is only a matter of time before they will be showing up to arrest people for nonviolent opinions and hurty words online. And when that happens, when those officers have a failure of courage and choose to just follow orders, we the people need to have the courage as the people of Australia to call it out no matter what the risks may be to us to declare it to be the human rights violation that it is and to ensure that what’s happening already in the UK simply cannot happen here because the public push back and the outcry is too great.

I’m sorry to say it, but this is an incredibly serious moment because based on what we’re seeing in the UK and what we saw in Australia during Covid, we the people of Australia simply cannot afford to give the benefit of the doubt to the police. And instead, we need to watch them. And you’d best believe I will do that right here on the Topher project. And if they end up doing what I think they will do sooner or later, then I’ll make sure you know about it as soon as possible.

Politicians, bureaucrats, and police love impossible targets made up of rubbery words with nebulous interpretations because they’re a blank checkbook for them to do whatever they want and to give themselves as much power as they desire. I talk about that in my first book, Good People Break Bad Laws, about the fact that the limit of a government’s power is reached only when we the people reach the limit of our obedience to them.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project and I help busy Australians like you to keep up with the world as it changes around us. I am committed to speaking truth come what may, just as I’ve done for 16 years as a political commentator and just as I was arrested and charged for doing during Covid. I will continue to do it in the coming days, weeks, months, and years as well. I’m very thankful to viewers who have supported my work, either by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net or by buying my books, DVDs, and merch from goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. Every little bit helps me to keep speaking truth to power and committing little acts of treason every day in this ever growing empire of lies.

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