Rather than protect kids, the curriculum teaches children that “intergenerational patterns of inequity” (in other words, the values they learn from their parents) are evil, and that they should instead adopt “new social norms that foster personal identities not constrained by rigid gender stereotypes”.

This, as we all now know, is a euphemism for encouraging their confused friends to undergo government-approved irreversible sex-change surgery that will be regretted for life.

BRAINWASHED COGS

This is just a tiny example of how the curriculum uses children to create a future dystopia of brainwashed cogs to be installed in the government’s giant woke machine.

So, we can take it as given that the government’s motive is not the protection of children. But what is it then?

The answer to that is implied in the timing of this legislation. There is less than five months to the next election.

Instead of rushing this divisive, unpopular and ill-conceived Online Safety Amendment Bill through parliament, the government could put the proposal to the people as part of the forthcoming election campaign.

That would be the approach taken by politicians who believe such fundamental issues should be decided democratically.

But if we learned anything during the COVID lockdowns, vaccine mandates and subsequent whitewash inquiry that exonerated the guilty, politics these days is about the exercising of power for the sake of it, or for the sake of some mysterious cabal of globalist villains, depending how far down the rabbit hole you currently are.

The outcome of this Bill will not be that children in Australia are protected from online trolls.

Technology, especially in the hands of teenagers, has travelled round the world before politicians and bureaucrats have put their pants on (if, in each other’s company, they ever do), so no legislation they ever devise will be even remotely effective.

The true and intended outcome is that, by seizing control of who can use social media to discuss the news of the day, the government protects itself from the criticism of voters and whatever electoral consequences that might entail.

These days, every government in the “liberal” west (with the exception of Argentina, El Salvador and the incoming Trump administration) is mortally afraid of citizens who just want to be left alone to run their businesses and raise their families, and will seek to sack any politicians who obstruct this simple ambition.

One of the myths of modern western society is that the media will at times like this stick up for their readers’ freedoms.

But the collapse of the old media business model, in which millions of tiny advertisements for second-hand cars, job vacancies and brothels masquerading as massage parlours printed at the back of newspapers collectively financed the melodramatic retelling of mundane affairs at the front, exposed the media companies’ shortcomings.

It was a rude awakening, especially for those who enjoyed the fringe benefits of newspaper and broadcast proprietorship.

POWER

The emergence of the internet and social media platforms as alternative sources of news and discussion not only obliterated the profitability of media companies, it reversed the power structure their owners had with politicians.

Suddenly, politicians realised they could dangle rare lucrative advertising contracts under the media’s noses on the condition that certain, ahem, editorial stances were assumed.

The media companies were forced to choose between the libertarian principles that had enabled them to exist in the first place, and their own profitability.

We learned during COVID how that turned out, and we can see it again today as they whistle Dixie while this draconian legislation cruises through parliament.

You can guarantee that if this legislation caused old-media company profitability to decrease, rather than temporarily maintaining what remains of their commercial advantages, the perpetrators would be front-page news and hacks would be riffling through the garbage bins for evidence of immoral private behaviour.

There was much jubilation in Australia in 1992 when, in a case about political advertising on television, the High Court brought down a judgment that found the Australian Constitution included in it an implied guarantee of free speech in matters that pertain to politics.

The commentariat of the day rejoiced, and uniformly speculated that the same right might soon apply to all speech. You know, like they have in the United States.

But that collective and instinctive celebration of newfound liberty happened in a nation that is barely recognisable now.

It is frightening to see how much Australia has changed in the mere 32 years since then.