ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
At the conclusion of the Australian Civil War in 2055, the Bundaberg Trials were conducted in part with the cooperation between the Free Australian State, their allies and the UN International Court of Justice.
The conflict, which began in 2049 when the 89-year-old West Australian President Troy Buswell ordered the extra-judicial killing of Eastern loyalists in a camp close to the Northern Territory border, triggered a domino of separatist movements that saw Australia fracture into dozens of semi-autonomous regions and states.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians died in the war and with the invention of time travel in 2053, reporting on the conflict in contemporary journalism has been made possible.
It lasted until the surrender of the last Commonwealth separatists in the Snowy Mountains, led by Sydney warlord Jack Vidgen who himself was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal extra-judicial killing of Lime Cordiale during the 2054 Battle of Careel Bay.
Prosecutors have argued, however, that the roots of conflict can be traced back to the campaign of disinformation led by Sky News during the housing bubble bursting in 2023.
In response to that, all living employees of Sky News were arrested in 2055 and placed under a house arrest until trial.
One of them being Hunter Coulder, who worked as a Sky News business presenter in 2030.
“I was only following my orders,” he told the court.
“We had a job to do and if I didn’t do it. I’d be fired. I had a mortgage to pay, the employment rate was nearly 25%,”
“I was only doing what I was told to do.”
Hunter was found guilty of high treason and ordered to spend 30 years in the Norfolk Island Re-Education Zone.
More to come.
