Misinformation and Disinformation Bill (A.K.A Government Censorship Act 1984)

We, the people, cannot allow the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill to pass through the upper house of parliament for numerous reasons, reasons with which I will elaborate on below.

Allowing the Australian Government to police what people say online, is to accept that the Australian Government always does what is best for the people. Historically, we know that this just isn't true. The Australian Government is full of corruption, whether it is brown paper bag cash drops from Chinese interests, "jobs for the boys" situations in which merit processes are thrown out the window to install someone like John Barilaro into a fantastic $500k taxpayer funded posting, tossing out a lady (Jenny West) who previously won the position on merits. Public servants who are lying because they have a vendetta against you. The government is disgusting, it is full of disgusting people who look after themselves, and they couldn't care less about us... How in good conscience can we let these people dictate to us what we can or cannot read online?

As you can no doubt tell from my other posts on this blog, I am constantly fighting corruption within the Australian Government department known as Comcare. Comcare is always twisting the law to suit itself, it does not work for the people, it works by enabling Commonwealth employees to abuse their power, breach our privacy, and go on fishing expeditions with our health information so they can try and paint a picture that they want to use to deny liability.

Given the bad behaviour that I encounter regularly from my own government, there is just no way I can have any faith in the government to do the right thing, and neither should you.

It's not just me raising concerns about this bill, would you believe it, even the government itself, by way of the Human Rights Commissioner, has issues with this bill. Here is a link to an opinion piece by the Australian Human Rights Commissioner.

If we fail to ensure robust safeguards for freedom of expression online, then the measures taken to combat misinformation and disinformation could themselves risk undermining Australia’s democracy and freedoms.
- Lorraine Finlay (Australian Human Rights Commissioner)

Let's now look at what the government's equivalent of a teacher's pet has to say about it, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). PwC is one of the big four consultancy firms that win all government contracts, leaving small business to get the crumbs if they're lucky.

Adrian Chotar and James Patto from PwC are on point here. Their references to the political motivations and the arbiter draw towards my main concerns. Allowing the government in a sense, to be the judge, jury and executioner on what is the truth, is entirely untenable. The government already has a large amount of power. Given that the government makes the law, if we allow the government to arbitrate what constitutes the truth, we therefore allow the government the ability to withhold 'unapproved truths' to steer support for new laws, the government itself, things of this nature.

Also, finding truth can be very difficult. Remember COVID-19 vaccine mandates? For a period of time, the government was enforcing vaccine mandates in the work place on the basis that if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to spread the virus to your co-workers. Turns out that is untrue.

It seems that the government is itself susceptible to what I call 'parrot syndrome'. This is where the government had heard, or was told, that the vaccine reduced transmission, and therefore it went on to state that as the truth and enforced vaccine mandates on that basis, despite it very obviously not being true. Despite 90%+ of Australian's being vaccinated, the virus continued to spread rampantly, person to person. The vaccine had little, if any, effect in slowing down the spread of the virus. Therefore, anyone who enforced a vaccine mandate has egg on their face. Can you believe that the executive staff of the Australian Federal Police are so ignorant that they're still enforcing a vaccine mandate? Seems that nobody has told them, and their own intelligence gathering teams are unable to gather enough intelligence to realise that the vaccine is not stopping the spread...

A job posting to be a copper, here in the ACT, requires you to have evidence of receiving 2x COVID-19 vaccines... never-mind the fact that if you had them last year they would be entirely ineffectual by now... what a joke! This is the kind of non-thinking that is in full display by our government. Do we really want these people telling us what is or isn't true? Surely you can see the problem here?

Another interesting thing is that the government is exempt from the proposed legislation. On one hand we're told that misinformation and disinformation is a huge threat to us. Yet on the other hand, we're expected to accept that the government excludes itself from being held accountable should it spread misinformation/disinformation? How is that palatable!?

This is evident today by looking at Comcare. If you read my post here, Comcare deliberately undermines the law. S59 is clear that Comcare must produce any relevant document, but Comcare decides it wants to invent its own version of S59 where it only supplies some documents, if it even bothers to do so at all. Comcare also engages in numerous breaches of the Privacy Act 1988, and when asked about it, simply states (words to the effect of) "we are the government and we can do whatever we like". To put this simply, the government does what the government wants, the law is no impediment to the government, and so the exemption is entirely unnecessary.

Why does the government want to control what we say online?

In my opinion, the current Labor government (ALP), is the most incompetent government we have seen in quite a while. Now make no mistake about it, I don't like the LNP coalition either, I don't have any particular political affiliation, I prefer to judge a party or its candidates on their policies, but it must be said that there have been no remarkable outcomes from the Anthony Albanese led government, at least none that are positive for the majority. I believe they're well aware they're facing the prospect of being a one term government, and they will do anything they can to control the narrative by the next federal election.

To give you an idea of just how incompetent the Albanese led government is, in September 2022, Labor (the ALP) announced that they would increase permanent immigration to address a workforce skills shortage. What followed can only be described as societal carnage. The immigrants who flooded our country needed a dwelling to live in, and suddenly the availability of rental dwellings on the market shrunk to the point where entire families are living in tents because they cannot afford to pay rent, even if they could secure a rental dwelling in the first place.

And if that weren't already a kick in the guts to Australians, Penny Wong, Labor's 'Senate Leader', throws $21.5 million of taxpayer money to displaced people on the other side of the world... Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with helping other people in the world, but where is the $21.5 million dollars for the Australian families living in tents due to Labor's own immigration policy failure? You couldn't make this shit up, Labor is more interested in their image to the world than looking after Australians! And I think for this, and many other reasons, the ALP will not survive the next election.

A government that cares about the people does not force the people into sleeping in tents. This Albanese government has zero compassion for Australians, and it won't stop until everything is taken from us, and given to refugees overseas instead.

The Albanese government despite being well aware that their immigration policy is displacing families into tent cities, was slow to provide a response, and when it finally did, it was to mildly curb immigration, instead of putting an end to it until rental stock can grow. The current government is an entirely incompetent government, the people know it, the government knows it, thus they want to control the narrative going into the next federal election.

If you want evidence of how desperate these people are to control the narrative, Tony Burke MP, a Labor Minister, installed an ex Labour Minister named Greg Vines as the CEO of Comcare. I have been complaining to Comcare relentlessly about corruption and injustice that is occurring within that government department. My complaints fall on deaf ears except for a response by Greg Vines. What is Greg Vines's response to my complaints? He sent ACT Policing to my home in an attempt to try and get my blog posts removed. But this is the government shooting itself in the foot here, because the police came to my home, and in doing so, they affirmed I am doing nothing wrong to speak my truths, they left without charging me or any incident whatsoever. All my blog posts remain online to this day. The government tried to strong-arm me into silence and failed. The Misinformation and Disinformation Bill is an attempt by the government to be able to silence their critics without needing to use the police as their own personal censorship police.

The Misinformation and Disinformation Bill cannot be allowed to pass and be formed into legislation. As a nation, we will be forced into being fed a government (ACMA) employee's version of the truth, and not necessarily the actual truth, should this legislation be passed. Buyer beware!

What can you do to push back against the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill?

Head over to binthebill.info for information on how to contact your politicians, and ensure this bill does not get passed into legislation. Specifically, I would recommend NOT bothering to contact Labor politicians, it's obvious that they're going to tow the party line regardless. I would focus on Senators in the opposition, minority parties, or independents. The reason I would focus on Senators rather than MPs is I feel the Senate is where the fate of this bill will ultimately be decided, therefore support from Senators is going to be key to getting this egregious bill returned to sender.

Make it known that you will not vote for anyone who supports the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill in the next federal election, and you can use this website to see who does vote for the bill to pass.