The "anti-vaxxers" protesting on Capital Hill are a disparate and incongruous group.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
On the face of it, they might seem to be united, but a closer look at their symbols indicate they are actually people with very different aims and ideologies.
If they spent much time with each other, they would not get on. The Eureka Flag, often seen as a symbol of left-wing rebellion, does not sit easily beside the banners praising Donald Trump, often seen as the epitome of right-wing demagoguery.
The protest on Monday opened with an Aboriginal Welcome to Country - but it's hard to imagine the meeting of minds between Indigenous peoples and some of the people on the right who support Mr Trump.
Nor is there an obvious convergence between the truck drivers who honked their noisy way past Parliament House, and the "eco-warriors" who arrived from their refuges deep in nature.
The protest is better seen as a shout of anger by those who feel they have been sidelined and left out. It is not so much a coherent ideology as a cry of rage.
That does not make the anti-vaxx cause right. It is not. It is stupid and wrong-headed, particularly when it is wrapped up with theories about conspiracies to take over the world, perhaps involving 5G networks.
But seeing the protest as a cry of inchoate rage does help us understand something serious which is going on in society.
There are currents of discontent below the surface which could one day be dangerous - as they were in the United States, firstly with the election of Donald Trump and then with his defeat at the subsequent election, a defeat which he and his simple-minded followers spun into a dangerous falsehood.
One lesson is that anti-scientific nonsense has to be called out loudly as such, and not just by one side of the political divide.
Politicians of right and left have to denounce dangerous views which are not based on science - and promoting the belief that vaccination is an attack on freedom is a dangerous view. We need the great bulk of the population to be vaccinated in order to come out of the pandemic.
There are signs that people are standing up to the anti-vaccination nonsense. The large numbers getting vaccinated testify to that. When the anti-vaxxers set up camp next to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, the elders in the embassy were quick to distance themselves.
They didn't want to give credibility to people with crazy and harmful views. Public health is not just about personal freedom.
It is a collective matter.
Governments make countless laws limiting personal freedom. Laws restricting our desire to drive as fast as we like or light fires wherever and whenever we like are introduced for the greater good.
The best course now is to keep doing what we have been doing: counter the anti-vaccination "argument" with facts and science. Keep giving publicity to the increasing number of media stories where people who have refused vaccination end up in hospital and then the morgue.
The Canadian parliament faced the same protest as did the Australian parliament (anti-vaxxers thrive in the dark world of the internet). Justin Trudeau said Canada would not be intimidated. Nor will Australia be.
