Katie Hopkins claims to be back in Australia after deportation for flouting Covid rules

Far-right commentator from Big Brother VIP and had visa cancelled in July for mocking quarantine precautions while staying in Sydney hotel

Katie Hopkins

British far-right media personality Katie Hopkins has claimed on Instagram that she is back in Australia a month after having her visa cancelled and being deported for deliberately flouting Covid-19 quarantine rules.

Hopkins posted a picture of herself on the site sitting on the floor in an airport terminal with a laptop on her knees, a face mask hanging from her chin and a trolley parked by her side holding her suitcase.

“The glamour is REAL people …” she wrote in the post, adding: “Let’s get amongst it. Are you ready Australia? Deputy Prime Minister - I’m back with my bongos - you utter C***womble. #freeaustralia”

The concluding hashtag appeared to indicate her continued opposition to lockdowns in the country, which she had originally visited to take part in the new series of Network Seven’s Big Brother VIP before being ordered out on 18 July.

However, as the news site Perth Now observes, the picture contains “a few tell-tale signs the photograph was not taken Down Under”, notably the fact that the phone charger Hopkins is seen using features a plug “noticeably larger than a two-pronged Australian plug” and a slogan visible on her trolley is printed in Spanish, not English.

Hopkins was dropped from Big Brother VIP and escorted out of Australia in July after mocking and disobeying isolation rules during an Instagram Live event conducted while she was staying in a hotel in Sydney.

“When they knock on my door I have to wait 30 seconds till I can open the door,” she explained to her followers.

“So what I have been doing, this is so sad... so I have been lying in wait around the corner in my bathroom... and what I am trying to do as someone knocks on the door, I’m trying to get to the door and spring it open and frighten the s*** out of (them) and do it naked with no face mask.”

Australia’s home affairs minister Karen Andrews was less than amused and, concerned by the example Hopkins was setting and the potential danger her behaviour posed to hotel staff and police, responded by saying: “We will be getting her out of the country as soon as we can arrange that. I am hoping that will happen imminently.”