The Australian government has announced its intention to forge ahead with misinformation legislation.
The idea is to empower the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to force social media platforms to tackle any alleged “misinformation.”
This means views incompatible with the official narrative could be deemed “harmful” in the view of the public authorities.
Of course, reasonable people have different views about what constitutes harm.
For example, many reasonable people would assume that the government’s information about mRNA vaccines as being “safe and effective” constitutes harm and misinformation. However, the country’s leaders who control government content will ensure this is not the case.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says the Coalition is willing to work with the government to strengthen eSafety laws.
The deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, also communicates that the opposition will support Labor “in cracking down” on social media platforms.
We should not be surprised.
The former Coalition government, under domestic terrorism response protocols, sought out cyber censorship of COVID-related content that, in practice, amounted to the silencing of voices daring to question vaccines, lockdowns, and mandatory vaccination.
As such the Coalition government treated concerns about the safety of COVID vaccines as domestic terrorism.
The official government narrative about the safety of vaccines was based on research conducted by pharmaceutical companies selling these experimental vaccines.
Australia Takes Aim at Social Media
Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowlands now candidly confesses that “the Albanese government has been steadfast in resolve to combat the scourge of mis- and disinformation online.”
The one who enforces compliance with the communication minister’s directives is the eSafety commissioner, an unelected bureaucrat.
Accordingly, Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has just used such a power to order X (formerly Twitter) to remove material claimed to depict “gratuitous or offensive violence with a higher degree of impact or details,” within 24 hours or face fines.
However, X has rightly rejected these demands to remove content and accused the online watchdog of censorship.
“We will robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court,” X said.
The owner of X, Elon Musk, wrote that the “Australian censorship commissar is demanding global content bans!”
Amid the feud, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has had the back of Ms. Inman Grant, saying she “is doing her job to protect the interests of Australians.”
Information That Threatens the Elite
History repeats itself and now the Australian government, via its communications minister, has been galvanising support around the globe, talking to Canada, Spain, the EU, and UK, to form a global consortium to pressure X and Meta into compliance.
The first step on Feb. 20 was to sign an MOU with the UK Secretary for Technology entitled the “Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of Australia Concerning Online Safety and Security.”
This is an Orwellian use of language, because free speech is not a threat to democracy but a core principle of every true democracy. Anyone who has studied a skerrick of history knows that protecting free speech is about giving voice to the powerless against the more powerful.
Of course, free speech may cause embarrassment to the government when any particular agenda is being advanced that is potentially contrary to the best interests of society at large.
In this sense, it is really not so difficult to understand why the ruling classes want to reduce any threat to their official (mis)information.
If there is one thing those horrendous violations of people’s fundamental legal rights over the last four years or so have revealed, it is precisely the existence in this country of an invidious trend to authoritarianism.
