We shouldn't really call them sovereign citizens. It's a phoney name for people who think they are above the law. They take up time in the courts and they waste public money.

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Let's call it what it is. Pseudolaw.

This week, Des Filby, 56, was shot dead after a stakeout by Victoria Police Special Operations Group members on a remote property in Thologolong, near Walwa on the Victoria-NSW border. Filby, also known as Dezi Freeman, had been on the run for seven months after killing two police, Neal Thompson and Vadim De Waart-Hottart, near the regional town of Porepunkah. His actions devastated the community and threw tourism and business into upheaval. I mean, who could chill with a deranged murderer on the loose.

Why were the police after Filby in the first place? They had planned to execute a warrant against him, relating to a sexual offence against a child under the age of 16 years. No wonder Filby, who adopted the sovereign citizen pseudonym of Freeman, didn't like the cops.

I asked Harry Hobbs, associate professor in law at UNSW why we were beset by this plague. He and his co-author, Stephen Young, explain it all in Outlawed: Responding to the global rise of sovereign citizens and legal conspiracies, out in August.

He says we don't know the numbers of those dabbling in this bullshit but we do know this: it's always people who have had a personal crisis, who've had a structural shock. These lead to feelings of marginalisation and alienation. And does the sovereign citizen movement ever save them?

No. Not once. He's looked at 32 countries globally.

"It has never worked in any court anywhere around the world," says Hobbs.

People explore these ideas as a way to get out of a practical problem, says Hobbs. "They might get a rates notice or a traffic infringement and they type........

© Canberra Times