There is nothing more disgusting than adults using kids as political props. We were covering the so-called “kids” rally against Pauline Hanson last week when one of the students started screaming profanities about Nazis towards me. I asked the kid why. The unhinged cries of “Nazi” continued while an adult woman looked on.

Then she stepped in to justify it. What we saw at the protest was ideological grooming, plain and simple, right out in the open, and the interaction with the woman that followed only confirmed it.

 

These weren’t kids leading a protest. They were political activists putting schoolchildren on the front lines.

Their goal wasn’t education or free speech. It was to build an anti-Hanson campaign and put children at the centre of it. This was adults recruiting children, giving them the slogans and sending them out to fight battles that weren’t theirs.

Look at the timing. We’re three months out from the Victorian state election. One Nation is running candidates, yet most of these high school students can’t even vote. They’re not there to change the result. They’re there to provide the organisers with a photo, a headline and a crowd shot.

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Barnaby Joyce, the former Deputy Prime Minister now sitting as a One Nation MP, called it for what it is. He said left-wing teachers were making their statement and using the kids as a prop. Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, One Nation’s only member in the Victorian parliament, said the same thing. Everyone has the right to protest. Using socialist groups to drag schoolkids into it is a different story.

If these organisers actually believed in their cause, they’d stand at the front themselves. They don’t. They use schoolkids as human shields because they lack the courage to do it any other way.

The public deserves to see who’s really running these campaigns. And Australian kids deserve better than being turned into political props by cowards who won’t fight their own battles.

Thanks to your support at ProtectAvi.com we were able to stay on the ground, speak to the protesters and have the conversations that exposed what was really happening behind the slogans and placards.

But being able to do this work comes at a cost.

If you think it is important that we keep going into these protests, asking the uncomfortable questions and showing you what is really happening on the ground, please chip in at ProtectAvi.com.