(Image: Mitchell Squire/Private Media)

Ministergate? That was funny for 10 minutes. Now it’s just ScoMo drawing us back into the torturous inside of his head. Anyone got anything else? Step forward Susie O’Brien, the Hun‘s go-to “political correctness gone mad” columnist who has a shocking expose about a Melbourne private school allowing a Year 8 student to identify as a cat.

A cat! Can you believe it?

Susie can:

A Year 8 student at a private school in Melbourne identifies as a cat, and as long as she does her school work, the school is supporting her assumed identity.

Although she is “phenomenally bright”, she is understood not to be verbal at school.

“No one seems to have a protocol for students identifying as animals, but the approach has been that if it doesn’t disrupt the school, everyone is being supportive,” a source close to the family said.

Oh no! The madness is spreading! This followed on from a report from The Courier-Mail‘s Kylie Lang that girl students in Brisbane were walking on all fours, licking their hands like paws.

This was said to be the effect of dreaded “furries” — adults who dress up in animal costumes for sexual gratification. The apocalypse was happening!

Actually, the apocalypse had already happened in 2021, when this hilarious hoax began in the US.

It was separately reported in Kentucky, Michigan and Nebraska, all with the same details: litter trays in school toilets, kids cutting holes in their uniforms for tails, and a teacher sacked for not meowing back at a cat-identifying student. By April, it was in Minnesota, even though it had already been repeatedly debunked. It had even reached Canada, in exactly the same form.

Was there any truth to it? No one found a group of students or parents of such who were part of a cat-identifying subculture, even in oversharing America. No school was found that had instituted “animal identification” policies. It’s been suggested that some teens had been taking on furry names as a prank, and as part of such may have been responsible for that kitty litter tray. But no one has come forward.

The identity politics cat-astrophe story made it to these shores in March, with the Brisbane story, which was then featured on Sky News, and debunked by Out in Perth. Courier-Mail reporter Lang stuck by the story, and on Outsiders Daisy Cousens doubled down. James Morrow, the brains of the outfit, gave them a let out by suggesting that the events were the acts of students knowingly trolling “woke” school administrations.

Er, no. There was no evidence it had happened — at all, anywhere. It was a tale with whiskers on, made either by right-wing operatives trying to catalyse a political reaction, or left-wing cultural jammers eager to see what they could get away with.

So how did Susie spin this story? The same way the original hoax was spun in the US, by quoting a source who was “a parent” at the school. In the US stories this was usually a “parent who had heard about it”. In this case, Susie doesn’t even bother with that. It’s just “a school” and a disembodied voice.

Then The Courier-Mail story is quoted, followed by an unsourced claim made that, in the US, kids are going into school as furry personae. Then back quotes from a Melbourne furry who may or may not have known the story she was being interviewed for, and finally a quote from the author of a random pop development book (Judith Locke, The Bonsai Child), who appears to have been informed that the story was verified.

So who fell for it? Leonardo Puglisi at 6 News rounded them up. Cory Bernardi, of course:

Apology, Cory? From whom? The obstetrician who dropped you?

And speaking of which, thank you, Senator Baby:

The “you goto school to learn reading, writing…” is a nice touch.

The interesting question is, who’s fooling who? Are Lang and O’Brien being played by a local hoaxer, and so gullible that they pounce on the story immediately? Or do they know it’s a stunt, and report it anyway? They of course wouldn’t be making it up from the US reports alone, solely to meet their “anti-woke” quota. They’re journalists of integrity, and that would be the most serious breach of journalistic ethics. If O’Brien et al can produce a school that has developed “animal identification” protocols, and an actual cat-identifying student, have at it.

Quite possibly, Cory, Senator Baby Driver and Cousin Daisy don’t much care whether the story’s true or not, as long as they can keep the “anti-woke” propaganda going. One thing they might want to think about is this: if you devote the resources of a whole News Corporation to making your readers stupider and more gullible with each passing year, then they may not twig that a bunch of doctors, etc standing as independent candidates have a chance of winning. Could it be that a neurodivergent student has been found who is simply being catlike, without militant demands? Possibly. But in the absence of any evidence, we’ll assume an urban myth has just been rolled over.

How ironic that the page with Susie’s bio photo on it will soon be lining the very litter trays said to be appearing in school bathrooms across the nation…