PETER Dutton and the Coalition will oppose the Labor/Greens/Teal misinformation laws, according to the conservative political action group Advance Australia, who were major players in the anti-Voice campaign.
The decision is a major back-down by Dutton, who, as we reported earlier this year, spoke in favour of the Bill, prompting broadcaster Alan Jones to comment: “Well, there you have it. The Uni-party. We are screwed.”
Dutton’s statement on the ABC’s Insiders program might have been a matter of him playing politics in front of the Canberra media elite, who are, of course, in favour of the censorship Bill because it supports their privileged position as official arbiters of truth.
The significance of this decision by the Coalition however, cannot be brushed off as just politics, because the so-called “global community” is pushing online censorship. Its supporters include Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the World Economic Forum, UK PM Starmer and the European Union. Starmer is already jailing people for “racist” Facebook posts.
Advance spokeswoman Sandra Bourke said in an email to supporters that the “attack on free speech has been in the works for years. With your support, Advance launched its Ministry of Truth campaign against these laws in July, 2023 and we’ve been piling on the pressure ever since.
“These laws have been on the woke agenda for a long time and they’re not dead yet. Albo has been working on them since he became PM. Last year, he put out a version which was bucketed by 20,000 Australians who opposed them in submissions to the Parliament.
“Almost 50,000 Australians signed the Advance petition to Australia’s federal MPs to oppose them.
The PM was forced back to the drawing board and now the misinformation laws are back with a Ministry of Truth that would be worse than ever,” said Ms Bourke.
“These laws would give social media companies a big financial incentive to censor mainstream Australians. If Labor decides that they have not censored enough ‘misinformation’, companies like Facebook can face massive fines, and who decides what is ‘misinformation’?”
“Not you and me, that’s for sure. The government will get to decide what’s “true” and what’s not and get this, you’re exempt from the laws if you are an ‘academic’ or a ‘scientist’ or if you work in the creation of ‘professional news content’. You guessed it, more elitist ‘us versus them’ laws.”
So journalists working for the mainstream media or an academic or scientist working at a university can say whatever they want, says Mr Bourke. “And they could never be accused of ‘misinformation’ but if you criticise them, you could be guilty of ‘misinformation’.”
Ms Bourke went on to say that the Coalition’s communications spokesman David Coleman was right in describing the legislation as “rotten to the core”. “This is a terrible piece of legislation – it should not have been put forward by this government,” Coleman told Sky News last week.
“Peter Dutton and the Coalition should be commended for their strong opposition to these laws. It’s big news and we should welcome it. Why? Because it means you are now one step closer to defeating this attack on our freedom,” said Ms Bourke.
Bourke was to speak at the 2024 Environment & Energy Forum in Chris Bowen’s seat of McMahon over this weekend.
