“Egg Boy” and Australia’s Most Hated Politician
I’m sure that by now you’ve seen it, the video from March 16, when Australian Senator Fraser Anning was giving a speech and was egged in the back of the head by 17-year-old William Connolly, who is now being hailed across the internet as “Egg Boy.” While the video itself is funny, I was also interested with it on a deeper level. I had many questions, such as who is the man getting egged, what is the context for the video, and why is Willam being seen as the hero in this situation? With these questions in mind, I began to do some research.
March 15, 2019, was the date of a horrible shooting in New Zealand at a mosque, that killed 49 people. If you want to read more about it, The Elliott’s own Rose Sanders has written an article you can read here. After this shooting, many politicians from around the world responded with sympathy and sadness, but one man's response felt different: Fraser Annig’s. He began his statement by sending sympathy to the victims and families, then he condoned the gunman. His formal statement continued: “The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.” On top of that, he had also posted such controversial comments on his Twitter as the one below.
All of this led to the fateful egging. During a speech about the shooting, Egg Boy showed up with eggs in his pocket and one intention, to crack an egg on Mr. Annings head. You can see in the video that he pulls out his phone, starts to record, then eggs the senator in the back of the head. He then see the senator turn around, completely in shock, before punching the 17-year-old in the face twice. After this, people pull them apart as Mr. Annings supporters tackle the boy and leave him in a choke hold until the authorities arrive.
Even before the egging many were outraged by these remarks, but this is not the first time that Mr. Anning has experienced extreme outrage because of his actions and words, He has always been considered one of Australia's farthest right politicians and comments such as these are not out of the ordinary for him. He was only allowed to stay in office this term because of a loophole in Australia's government, and now there's a petition with 1.5 million signatures to get him removed from office (which you can see here, if you would like to). He is also receiving severe backlash from his fellow politicians as well, and it seems the chance of his reelection is extremely slim.
The outreach for “Egg Boy” has been immense, with people from all around the world reaching out, thanking him for “finally doing it” and multiple musicians have already given him free lifelong tickets to all of his shows.
Update: As of 3/22/19 we have some more information on the legal aspect of the situation. A GoFundMe page has raised $78,000 for any legal charges. This money was raised by 3,268 people in just 6 days! Mr. Anning is planning on pressing charges for the egging, but “Egg Boy” himself is not planning on pressing charges for:
Being punched in the face twice by Senator Anning
Being tackled and choked out by his supporters despite his lack of protest.
He has also announced that all the money raised for him will instead go to the victims of the shooting, and he is receiving pro bono legal help for Senator Anning’s charges.
By Owen Stone