My first real engagement with a sovereign citizen was in the aisles of Bunnings. Let's call her Bunnings Karen (actually Kerry). And all of Australia knew her.

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July 2020. Cam Smith, a relentless researcher of the far right, posts a video of Kerry Nash fronting up at a Bunnings in Victoria to have a fight about wearing a mask. The woman enters the Narre Warren premises and is approached by a calm employee who asks her if she has a mask. She replies: "It's clear I don't and you are not authorised to ask me or question me about it."

She goes full SovCit - sovereign citizen - on them. Tells them that being asked to wear a mask is an unlawful condition of entry and even cites the Charter of Human Rights. She goes home with her nuts but not her bolts. The Bunnings staff are calmly victorious. She behaved like a jerk. Australians cheered.

We are not cheering now. On Tuesday morning, Dezi Freeman allegedly shot dead two police officers, Neal Thompson and Vadim de Waart, at a property in Porepunkah, about 300 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. The officers were there to serve a search warrant on Freeman, 56, for historical sex crimes.

Freeman, if he's still alive in the bush, describes himself as a sovereign citizen, just as Bunnings Karen did. And he's one of hundreds clogging our courts. This interaction was not the first time he's had an interaction with the law.

Last year, according to the ABC, he launched a Supreme Court challenge after his driver's licence was cancelled and he was disqualified from driving for two years: speeding, refusing to submit to a drug test and using a mobile phone while driving. "I had my firearms licences cancelled and lost my club membership," Mr Freeman told the Supreme Court, which ultimately struck down the challenge. This pathetic attempt to live by his own rules fizzled.

Desmond Filby, as was, changed his name to Freeman. Free Man. Get it? That's just so utterly pathetic. Anyhow, Filby complained all throughout that hearing: "We endured four acts of criminal trespass and harassment on our home by police and I have been dragged........

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