by FRED PAWLE – THE Australian mainstream media marked the death of the government’s Censorship Bill today by censoring debate about it.
As hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens celebrated the announcement on Friday evening that the government’s Bill will fail to get the necessary votes when it is presented to the Senate next week, the media resumed its role as the government’s chief tyrannical collaborator by pretending that there were more important things to discuss.
- Politicians and media now find themselves alienated against voters.
- Killing off this hated Censorship Bill doesn’t mean the war is over.
- Sieg heil, Albo.
You can take your pick of trivialities news organisations have today deemed more worthy of homepage prominence than the near death of free speech.
From an investigation into how a particular Barossa Semillon developed its “complex” flavours, “the Sydney suburb where nobody is behind on their mortgage” and a “fake emergency” at Perth Airport to something about the “ancient trade of metallurgy”.
IGNORED
The media collectively ignored the most despotic legislation ever presented to the Australian Parliament because, well, it didn’t apply to them.
The Bill that would have jailed citizens for wrongspeak carved out an exemption for what it called “professional news content”.
Ordinary people would have been jailed for posting comments deemed by apparatchiks as “harmful” to national interest, but journalists working for large companies wouldn’t.
This clause was, and still is, the modern Australian equivalent of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – two ostensible opponents calling a ceasefire while they enslave and destroy their common enemies – the uppity citizens of Australia and the unregulated, free social media platforms from which they, the citizens, increasingly prefer to seek their news and engage in debate.
Just as the Poles were forced to grudgingly accept the presence of barbaric Nazis, then Soviets, on their streets, Australians too would have been cajoled into conceding that having the government controlling their speech was for their own good. Sieg heil, Albo.
But the killing of this hated Censorship Bill doesn’t mean the war is over.
Rather, it’s merely revealed the opening of hostilities. The government and the mainstream media still resent the people for wishing to speak freely – and social media for allowing them to do so.
They are both still reeling from Donald Trump demonstrating that a charismatic businessman and TV star with an anti-elite agenda can spark a peaceful revolution.
After decades of a cosy symbiotic relationship, the members of the political and media classes now find themselves alienated against the voters/readers they once took for granted.
And they have responded in the only way they know how, by desperately flailing at the levers of power. Are those levers attached to any machinery any more, or are they as fake as the slogans about freedom and independence the media proffers these days?
We are about to find out. Both sides of politics are pressing ahead with a plan to require digital registration for the privilege of using social media in Australia.
PRECIOIUS
It is the sort of State control that provides precious vindication for career politicians, regardless of what side they come from.
While the media is supporting it, not because it makes the internet safer for children but because it punishes their biggest commercial rivals.
Trump’s Vice President-elect, JD Vance, has already said that military alliances with the United States may soon be predicated on shared values of freedom.
If anybody tips Vance off about what’s happening in Australia, he might be tempted to question why Australia shouldn’t be put in the same foreign affairs category as North Korea and Cuba.
Lobbying Senators worked in getting the Censorship Bill killed off. Perhaps for us to win the next round, however, we should be lobbying Vance and the US Congress.PC
– Fred Pawle
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