• Australian politician Craig Kelly has been privately castigated by Prime Minister Scott Morrison for distracting from the government’s COVID-19 vaccine strategy with his social media posts and media appearances.
• While the scrutiny from the Opposition and the media is a mostly new thing, the controversial representative has promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories for years.
• Kelly has one of the biggest reaches on Facebook out of any Australian politician, which he uses to mostly post about his beliefs about COVID-19 treatments and denying climate change.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Controversial Australian federal Liberal politican Craig Kelly is in the eye of a political maelstrom.

On Wednesday morning, the embattled MP had a fiery back-and-forth with Labor’s Tanya Plibersek in the halls of Parliament over Kelly’s promotion of “crazy conspiracies”.

The Opposition used their time in Parliament this week to call on the Prime Minister to condemn Kelly for using his enormous Facebook audience to share medical misinformation.

Kelly was then hauled into Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s office who reprimanded him about his social media posts and media appearances distracting from the government’s vaccine rollout plan, according to a statement released by the Member for Hughes.

This much attention on Kelly is a relatively recent development. But the MP has been using his position to promote misinformation, conspiracy theories and making unproven allegations for years.

Here’s a list of his greatest hits:

Promoting disproven and unproven COVID-19 treatments

Craig Kelly has spent the better part of the pandemic posting on Facebook about two drugs that are not approved for use to treat COVID-19, the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine and horse dewormer imervectin.

In January, Business Insider Australia revealed emails between Kelly and Australia’s top medical experts politely explaining how his advocacy was based on junk science, non-peer reviewed studies or small and fringe publications.

Kelly also called for Victorian Premier Dan Andrews to be jailed for “workplace manslaughter” due to his stance on hydroxychloroquine. Kelly has also downplayed the severity of COVID-19 and criticised lockdowns.

Casting doubt on the narrative around climate change

Prior to his pivot to spreading COVID-19 misinformation, Kelly’s favourite topic was denying or minimising man-made climate change.

When he wasn’t posting about cold weather around the world to ‘disprove’ global warming or falsely claiming that 2020 was the coolest year ever, Kelly was also incorrectly accusing the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) of altering weather records. (The BoM does adjust temperature records using statistical tests and comparing it to other historical records to remove artificial biases, such as a change in weather station location).

Implied environmentalists were responsible for arson during Australia’s bushfire season

Early last year, Kelly went from denying that climate change was exacerbating Australia’s bushfires to pointing the finger at one group in particular: Extinction Rebellion.

At the time, the controversial green group had been making headlines for their audacious stunts. Kelly took this a step further and publicly wondered whether anyone from the group were “trying to fulfil their prophecy” and linked that to reporting about arson arrests. His fellow party room member Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells went on to make the same, unproven claim in Parliament.

Kelly also posted a prank sticker shared from a fake Extinction Rebellion Twitter account saying ‘Corona is the cure. Humans are the disease’.

Promoted a conspiracy theory about World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative

At the middle of last year, the World Economic Forum held a meeting with business and political leaders to discuss how to ensure the world would come out of the pandemic fairer and more sustainable.

Craig Kelly was among the first people worldwide to pounce on the meeting — which discussed environmental, social and governance concerns — and turn it into an anti-government conspiracy theory.

In a redux of classic New World Order conspiracy theories, Kelly has claimed without evidence that the WEF wants to end private property, and even linked the Great Reset to the proposal to take away medals in light of the Brereton war crimes report.

Falsely claimed that the US Capitol invasion was a hoax

As the world watched the US insurrection, the Member for Hughes was quick to try downplay the role that Trump supporters played in the insurrection.

Citing a Washington Times article which had its central claim retracted, Kelly claimed that “neo-fascists and Marxists engaged in a highly co-ordinated ‘false flag’ operation”. Another Coalition MP George Christensen also shared the claim.

After the article was retracted, Kelly doubled down on the claim.

Kelly has also courted controversy for other acts, including:

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