The Member for Kew posted several images on Twitter of Labor ministers on playing cards on Monday.
“WANTED,” he captioned the image.
“The Labor Minister or civil servant responsible for the hotel quarantine fiasco, that has killed 800 Victorians, destroyed thousands of business, created a mental health crisis and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
In another image, Mr Smith called on the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews -- whose image was edited onto an Ace of Spades -- to resign.
In a third post, Mr Smith claimed Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Chris Eccles “should follow Chairman Dan out the door”.
Critics of the MP claimed Mr Smith incited violence by posting the graphics of Labor MPs due to the historical context of the cards.
During the 2003 Iraq invasion, the US military developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of President Saddam Hussein's government.
Dr Axel Bruns is a Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology. He told The Feed it’d be “difficult” not to link the playing cards with the ‘most-wanted’ Iraqi playing cards.
“It's an unusual choice at the very least to create these sorts of cards to turn this into a kind of manhunt,” Dr Bruns said.
“The general metaphor of wanting to collect them all... Certainly seems a bit on the nose.”
“If it’s not based on Saddam Hussein, what’s it based on? It seems quite unlikely this would just emerge out of thin air and they’d accidentally invent something that looks exactly like this.”
Mr Smith did not answer The Feed’s questions about whether the images were modelled off the US ‘capture to kill’ playing cards or if he believed he had incited violence.
However, he told The Age he had not drawn comparisons between Saddam's regime and Victorian politicians and denied inciting violence.
“All I’ve done is put a deck of cards up on Facebook with the people that are responsible for the greatest public administration failure in Australian history," he told the paper.
In a statement to The Feed, Mr Smith condemned the Andrews government for the administration of its hotel quarantine program.
An inquiry into the program was launched after it was linked to the emergence of the second wave of COVID-19 infections in Victoria.
“The Andrews Labor government refuse to take responsibility for the most catastrophic public administration failure in the nation’s history,” Mr Smith said.
“I will continue to hold this negligent and incompetent government to account until Daniel Andrews takes responsibility and resigns for his government contributing to the deaths of 800 people,” he continued.
The ‘play the man, not the ball’ approach
Clashes between those on either side of the political spectrum in Victoria intensified as the state experienced a second wave.
Rising tensions have seen Mr Smith hurl a barrage of insults at the Premier, labelling him “Chairman Dan”, a “dictator”, “schmuck” and “friendless loser”.
While former Victorian Health Minister Jenny Mikakos -- who also features on the playing card graphics with a red cross striking out her face -- requested “privacy” last week after her home address was leaked by someone online.
Dr Bruns told The Feed the card graphics were just another sign of the growing tendency of politicians and some members of the public “to attack the person rather than deal with policies”.
He said politics, both in Australia and globally, is becoming increasingly personalised and divisive.
“There is a really significant tendency for the opposition simply to take the term opposition literally just to oppose everything,” Dr Bruns said.
“I think that just leads us to a real impoverishment of politics where we will end up just with the two sides endlessly arguing.”
While politics is undoubtedly becoming uglier in nature, Dr Bruns said that may also be a symptom of people’s frustrations during the pandemic.
“With this unending crisis, everyone is keen to get back to some sort of normal and that just seems a very long time away still,” he said.
“That's not the fault of politicians or anyone else really, it's just the nature of this particular crisis and the problems in dealing with it without having a vaccine.”
