Thank goodness for Elon Musk
His fight against the Australian government is drawing much-needed attention to the country's censorship regime.
Australians should be grateful to Elon Musk for the valuable public service he's performing.
For the last week, Musk as the owner of X (Twitter), has been fighting a public servant's efforts to censor what Australians are allowed to see about what's happening in their country.
Julie Inman Grant, Australia's eSafety Commissioner (that's not a typo, that's its official spelling), has directed X to remove from the company's website and its applications the video of the stabbing by an alleged terrorist of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel on 15 April during a church service at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, Sydney. X has agreed to remove what Australians can access, but is taking action in the Federal Court to overturn Inman Grant's direction. The company argues the video shouldn't be banned, and the consequence of X complying with the direction would be to stop anyone anywhere in the world from seeing the video. Inman Grant issued the same directive to Facebook, who complied.
X says, 'We believe that no government should possess such authority. X believes in respecting the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction and also believes that Governments should not be able to censor what citizens of other countries see online.'
Musk's opposition and the resulting controversy have brought a few things to the public's attention. They've highlighted the huge, essentially arbitrary, and unaccountable power of Inman Grant, a left-leaning bureaucrat. Australians have gained a glimpse into the future about how public servants would wield their power to censor ‘misinformation’ - if the Albanese government succeeds in its plans.
And, as if we didn't know it already, and as I wrote about a few weeks ago, we see yet another example of why 'freedom is too important to be left to politicians'. When it comes to freedom of speech, the Liberal Party is little different from the Labor Party. Inman Grant was appointed by Malcolm Turnbull, and her authority comes from legislation introduced during Scott Morrison's prime ministership.
(Morrison obviously believed what he said in 2017 when he defended his opposition to Tony Abbott's proposal to repeal Section 18C. Morrison said at the time, freedom of speech 'doesn't create one job, doesn't open one business'. The fact that freedom of speech created the modern free world - the world in which Morrison can practice his religion in Australia without persecution, proselytise his beliefs, and sell his forthcoming book on his Christian faith - seems to have escaped him.)
It's hard to disagree with what Rita Panahi wrote in the Herald Sun yesterday:
It should shame members of the Coalition that they appointed [Inman Grant] and that many of them continue to stand by her activism. The opposition's position on this issue has been remarkably unprincipled and inarticulate, as evidenced by this comment from deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley on Friday. 'I'm not for the actions and statement of our eSafety Commissioner being ignored,' she said.'We back her 100 per cent.'
That was written before an article by the Liberals' former communications minister, Paul Fletcher appeared in this morning's The Australian newspaper. Fletcher was the minister responsible for the passage of the Online Safety Act in 2021. He was also responsible for drafting Morrison's laws against 'misinformation', which didn't proceed because the Coalition lost the 2022 federal election. Labor's laws against 'misinformation' are modelled on what the Liberals drafted. In the course of 2,500 words, Fletcher attacks Musk, defends Inman Grant, and urges the Albanese government 'not to blink' in its fight against X. In those 2,500 words, there's no reference to the importance of freedom of speech.
I've seen the Wakeley video. It's confronting. But it's no less confronting than the video of George Floyd’s arrest that Inman Grant allows to freely circulate. Right now you can go to the X account of the Australian-government-owned SBS and see six minutes of Floyd being choked to death. 'I can't breathe. I can't breathe' is harrowing. Those images are far more shocking and violent than what Inman Grant wants censored. And there's no restriction on it being able to be watched by children. At the beginning of the Floyd video on SBS's X account is the following - 'Warning. The next story contains graphic images which some viewers may find distressing.' That's appropriate, and that's how the video of the Wakeley attack should be treated. The video should not be banned. I share Michael Shellenberger's position - 'It's true that violent content online can be disturbing. I think platforms should put warning labels on them and find some way to prevent minors from seeing it.'
It's worth looking for a moment at the legislation that gives Inman Grant her powers. I'd be surprised if, before this week, more than a handful of MPs had even heard of the Online Safety Act 2021, let alone read its 200 pages.
Put simply, under Section 109, the eSafety Commissioner can order a social media company to remove material from its services' if the Commissioner is satisfied that the material is or was class 1 material'. In this case' class 1 material' is something that if it was a film 'would likely to be' banned from public display, by the Australian Classification Board. For material to be banned, its content 'is very high in impact and falls outside generally-accepted community standards.'
The enormous scope for the eSafety Commissioner to apply their personal discretion, preferences, and biases is obvious. There is no requirement for the Commissioner to explain or justify their decision. The Commissioner only has to be 'satisfied' that if the video of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel were a film, it is 'likely' it would be banned. But unlike the classification of films decided by a majority vote of the Classification Board, what's banned on social media in Australia is entirely at the behest of one person. Indeed, this is made clear in the guidelines Inman Grant has issued. 'The issuing of a removal notice is ultimately at eSafety's discretion. This means eSafety makes the final decision about whether we will take action.' (Page 13 - Online Content Scheme: Regulatory Guidance, December 2021) To appeal a decision of the eSafety Commissioner, you must go to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and, after that, the Federal Court, which is what Musk has done.
Viewing this from America, Michael Shellenberger is astounded the Australian government has given one person almost untrammelled authority to adjudicate on what Australians are allowed to see -'… it's first important to understand just how powerful she is. Here is Julie Inman Grant, boasting of her extraordinary censorship powers. 'Yes, we do regulate the platforms. We have a big stick that we can use when we want to… They're going to be regulated in ways that they don't want to be regulated.' 'That's not the language of someone who cares deeply about the right of free expression or is concerned about government overreach.
In 2022 Inman Grant was at Davos where she freely admitted to her political beliefs. This is from The Daily Telegraph of 31 May 2022:
Australia's eSafety Commissioner has controversially declared we need to 'recalibrate' a range of human rights, including free speech, at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos.
'We are finding ourselves in a place where we have increasing polarisation everywhere and everything feels binary when it doesn't need to be,' Julie Inman Grant told the conference last week. 'So I think we are going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online, you know, from freedom of speech to the freedom to be, you know, free from online violence,' she said.
'If free speech means only the loudest voices are heard, then I would argue it is only the illusion of free speech, when the voices of maginalised communities are suppressed. Free speech intersects with other human rights that must be balanced, including the rights to dignity, equality and non-discrimination,' she said.
Her comments drew criticism from free speech advocates who believe they are part of a worrying trend that has seen both the Coalition and Labor working to restrict what people say and do.
'Australians would be right to wonder who this unelected bureaucrat even is, must less what gives her the right to redefine what rights and liberties we're allowed to have,' said Morgan Begg, director of the Legal Rights Program at the Institute of Public Affairs.
Inman Grant's statements at Davos and her actions are those of a political activist—not a disinterested and neutral public servant carefully and cautiously exercising her immense power. She's an activist pushing a left-wing political agenda.
I'd acknowledge there might be situations where the government should censor images - subject to three conditions.
The first condition is that censorship should be a last resort - not the first. The presumption should always be against government censorship. There is no presumption in favour of freedom of speech in the Online Safety Act 2021.
The second condition is that if something is censored, the decision-making process to reach that conclusion must be transparent, and the decision must be publicly explained.
Acts of censorship are intrinsically political. It's a political act for Inman Grant to censor images of a Christian bishop stabbed in his church in front of his congregation in an act of alleged terrorism but not censor images of a black man being murdered by a white policeman (Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder). Hence, the third condition.
The decision to censor something such as the Wakeley video should only be made by a government minister. Ministers are subject to forms of democratic accountability and political scrutiny in ways public servants are not. Politicians should own the decisions they make. They shouldn't be allowed to claim, as communications minister Michelle Rowland did on ABC radio this week, that the censorship of the Wakeley video had nothing to do with the government. Rowland was at pains to stress - 'I think the key thing here [is] to step back and understand the context for your listeners is that this is an independent regulator implementing a law of Australia.'
The power of censorship is so great that any politician who would allow such a power must accept responsibility for its use. It's a power that should not be delegated. Censorship is authoritarian, and censorship by a government functionary is doubly authoritarian.
I look forward to talking with you more about this in the coming weeks. There's a lot more to be said. A Federal Court hearing on the case, 'ESAFETY COMMISSIONER v X CORP' is scheduled for 10 May.
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Allister Heath in the UK Telegraph on Wednesday wrote about what's happening at the moment on American college campuses:
There is a fatal contradiction at the heart of Western societies, a nihilistic impulse, a pathological self-loathing that threatens to destroy our way of life. We live in the freest, wealthiest, healthiest, fairest and most technologically advanced polities in history, and yet millions of young people are being taught to hate the West, to despise the liberties that make their lifestyles possible, to tear down every institution and tradition.
Marx was wrong: it is not the working classes that are alienated by modernity but the bourgeoisie, and especially their morally adrift children, many of whom genuinely believe that the West is an evil hellhole. The revolutionary urges emanates from the universities, and their guilt-ridden graduates. Too many have turned themselves into woke indoctrination camps, with hard-Left administrators encouraging post-modern academics to brainwash a generation.
There is now a striking correlation between levels of education and holding stupid, destructive ideas, between being highly credentialed and falling for every fashionable conspiracy theory, tribalistic affliction, and online fad.
This madness has culminated in the explosion of anti-Semitic hatred on campuses across America, in scenes that should not be acceptable in any civilised country.
These protests are even more toxic than those of 1968: today's woke ideology is totalitarian, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-family, anti-capitalist and collectivist.
In his Substack post a few days ago, Nate Silver says, 'Go to a state school - The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem - and they deserve it' explains the consequences for American universities. While some of what Silver talks about is specific to the US, a lot of what he says applies to Australia's universities.
Thank you for your support.
kind regards John
I, also, admire Elon Musk. He started at the bottom with nothing ,and worked his way up.He crashed...and started again...a man of stubborn determination.
He seems little interested in politics...only interested in improving technology.I believe he has woken up to the corrupt globalists and will do all he can to oppose them.
I am so pleased to see him taking the Australian government to task over censorship...it needed someone powerful to do that.Will they take heed, though?
Inman Grant is a Davos devotee pure and simple. With more power than a Putin or Ping could dream of. That the coalition under Morriso et al gave her credence and total authority is shameful. That the coalition under Peter Dutton backs her to the hilt is terrifying.