Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

i24News – Several thousand people rallied in Melbourne against new vaccination mandates on Saturday, with a few comparing the state government to Nazis and calling for violence against politicians, local media said.

In Australia, where 83 percent of people aged 16 and above have been fully inoculated against the coronavirus, nationwide vaccinations are voluntary. But states have mandated vaccinations for many occupations and barred the unvaccinated from activities such as dining out and concerts.

But a reporter at The Age, a local outlet, posted video on Twitter of a protester carrying a mock gallows with three nooses hanging from it, and the newspaper showed a protester carrying a poster depicting Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with a Hitler mustache and the hashtag #DictatorDan.

“We’re being governed by insane medical bureaucrats,” Craig Kelly, former Liberal Party member of parliament and now the leader of United Australia Party, told the rally, media reported.

The Age said some protesters called for violence against politicians but did not offer further details.

An Australian singer Claire Woodley dedicated a song to “victims of satanic ritual abuse” – a rhetoric common in the QAnon conspiracy theory about abducting children for satanic rites.

Australia has seen frequent, occasionally violent, anti-vaccine rallies in recent months, though the movement remains small, with polls showing nationwide opposition in the single digits.