Last Thursday we learned that “some laws are so impractical that only politicians vote for them”, which was then backed up by “some stories are so unconvincing that only journalists write them”.

These two adaptations are by groups whose malevolence make the intellectuals in Orwell’s original observation look quaintly benign.

SAFETY

The legislation, of course, is the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill, which passed the House of Representatives (101-13) on Wednesday and then the Senate (34-19) on Thursday.

It will force certain social media platforms (but not porn sites, obviously) to “implement some form of age assurance” that all their users are older than 16 years old.

The authors of this legislation, who yield to nobody in their intricate knowledge of such newfangled interweb sites such as Mybook and Facespace, have noticed that “technology and the digital space continue to undergo significant change at a rapid pace”.

Thus, they have written the legislation in such a way that “platforms and the age assurance industry (can) evolve over time and continue to comply with the obligation, without the need for legislative amendments”.

It’s reassuring that as the government’s ruinous energy and industrial relations policies destroy our ability to sustain traditional manufacturing industries, new ones like the “age assurance industry” are emerging to replace them.

And what an industry this is going to be! Because who knows how complex this requirement to “comply with the obligation” will become?

You can see the government already crunching the numbers necessary to not only monitor all social-media use throughout the nation but also develop new ways for social media companies to comply with the legislation’s deliberately vague conditions.

LEGIONS

Achieving that will require legions of new public servants, which the government will quickly hire before the next federal election (which is due in less than five months).

It can then add them to the hundreds of thousands of other new public servants across the country who artificially keep the employment rate at acceptable levels.

But that’s not even the real agenda. This legislation adds yet another lever with which the government can control free speech in Australia, one that will be exercised with megalomaniacal glee regardless of who wins the next election.

All it will take is one little tweak of the (did I mention they were vague?) rules for a free-speech crusader like Elon Musk to withdraw his platform X, the freest platform in the world, from Australia, as he has already done in response to similarly draconian laws in Brazil.

Those platforms that remain will be on notice to keep the dissenting chatter to a minimum or face the consequences. And with one stroke the government (Labor or Liberal) will have eliminated all that pesky free speech under the guise of “protecting children”.

It’s wonderful how democracy works these days, don’t you think?

And just as the authoritarian agenda will be implemented under cover of protecting children, so too will the “age assurance industry” be forced to use the “voluntary digital ID” under cover of increasing government efficiency.

Then, when Anthony Albanese (or Peter Dutton if he replaces him as Prime Minister) flies off to some globalist gabfest in the latter half of next year, he can sidle up to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and say, “Mate, are you still locking up individual people for posting on social media? You’re an amateur! Crack the whip over the platform owners instead. They’ve got more to lose!”

The legacy media, meanwhile, doesn’t need such disincentives in order to comply with the government’s agenda.

DESTROYED

It has its own interests to worry about. The rise of social media has utterly destroyed the legacy media’s dominance of news, public discussion and advertising revenue.

So, anything that slows that fatal process is welcomed by the former titans, who simply can’t accept that their hegemony is over.

And so it is that the mainstream media is reporting the passing of this legislation (if it reported it at all) not as a leap towards totalitarianism, but as the “reclamation of childhood” welcomed by parents and mental health authorities, and “praised around the world”.

This is the same legacy media that mostly endorsed locking kids out of schools during COVID, then emphatically recommended jabbing them with an experimental, potentially lethal vaccine to “protect” them against a harmless virus.

You’ll understand if I say their newfound concern for children is about as convincing as Jim Jones in the Guyana jungle handing out refreshing glasses of Kool-Aid.

There are silver linings on all this, one of which is that the legislation is, as I said, impractical.

Does anybody really believe that teenagers can be forced to comply to the letter of this law, let alone the spirit of it?

If they don’t find creative ways, not envisaged by the boomer Luddites in Canberra, to remain logged into social media, they will simply migrate to sites outside the legislation’s domain.

It is feasible that the laws will be so slow in keeping up with teenagers that parliamentarians will within a few months throw up their hands, say “those darn teenagers!” and quietly revoke the laws for being unenforceable.