Ladies and Gentleman
On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.
After 28 years of oppression, the people of East Germany had had enough.
Enough of a government controlling their lives. Enough of censorship, surveillance and the suppression of dissent.
They rose up, they demanded their freedom, and the wall came down.
Thirty years later, we experienced our own alarming confrontation with the power of the state.
It was particularly bad in Victoria. The ring of steel. Curfews. Families torn apart. Loved ones separated. Some cruelly dying alone.
Schools, workplaces, parks, and beaches closed. Businesses forced to shut the doors, children denied an education.
Unjustified vaccine mandates. Forced quarantine. Border controls.
Police firing rubber bullets at protestors. They even tried to stop TV news helicopters taking to the skies the cover these shocking events.
There were arrests for Facebook posts and putting the bins out late at night on the nature strip.
Our ring of steel was no Berlin Wall. But it was a chilling reminder of how quickly freedoms we take for granted can be denied.
And how readily those in power can justify extraordinary controls in the name of keeping us safe.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, once again, we are being asked to trust the government with sweeping new powers in the name of protecting our kids.
This time, over what Australians can say, read and debate online.
The Albanese government’s digital duty of care raises the grave prospect of lawful voices being suppressed under the masquerade of online safety.
At stake is something generations of Australians have fought and died to defend.
Your freedom of speech.
The freedom to question authority. To challenge government. To expose injustice.
And above all, the freedom to disagree.
The freedom to disagree is not a gift from Anthony Albanese. It is not a privilege bestowed by Anika Wells. And it is not something a regulator should be able to ration.
And that is why this fight matters.
Labor’s proposed digital duty of care is dangerous, undemocratic and it must be stopped. So please go to our petition – protectfreespeech.com.au and sign our petition to kill the bill – because your voice matters.
Let’s not mince words here. Labor is desperate. Desperate to control the narrative. Desperate to silence its critics – the podcasters, the influencers, its political opponents.
Desperate to stifle dissent. Desperate to impose political censorship, to shut down your voices.
This is a trojan horse to reintroduce Labor’s failed misinformation and disinformation laws of two years ago.
We know this because both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Greens let the cat of the bag.
In a speech at a sideline event at the United Nations in New York, the Prime Minister claimed his digital duty of care was all about protecting children – then went off script – funny about that – saying:
“…whilst today we’re concentrating on the impact on children, the truth is this is having an impact on our entire society and how it functions with misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we’re seeing as well in the political system, where people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right. And that is why we think that this [the digital duty of care legislation] is a very positive move that’s being put forward.”
So let me just say that part of his speech was removed from his official website. But he let the cat out of the bag as did the leader of the Greens, Senator David Shoebridge, who also exposed the dark underbelly of these proposed laws, claiming they were all about “having an algorithm that doesn’t actually promote and generate hate”.
He cited both the so-called offensive views of Pauline Hanson and the Coalition, and he said “we need digital duty of care so that those messages aren’t amplified and they don’t become the content that kids are digesting when they flip open their phone and wonder what’s happening in the world.”
Senator Shoebridge has now tried to walk back those comments but we don’t buy it.
Ladies and Gentleman, Australians want children protected online and they want the world’s biggest technology companies held to account.
But protecting children should never become an excuse to give politicians sweeping powers over what Australians can say, read, or debate online.
Labor’s proposed bill is one of the most incoherent pieces of legislation ever to see the light of the day.
This again demonstrates the utter incompetence of the minister for Ooshies and travel rorts, Anika Wells.
The devil is in the detail.
The minister unbelievably has given herself unfettered powers to prohibit any category of online harm by way of legislative instrument, without parliamentary oversight. So, what was the plan – to shut down material critical of climate change science, or net zero? There is absolutely no limit. Anything is possible. This is an utter outrage.
While it’s been reported today this provision will be removed from the bill when it’s introduced at some point – perhaps this week, perhaps in a few weeks time, this bill is fundamentally flawed nonetheless.
The bill includes dangerously vague definitions of online harm which demonstrate the government’s insidious agenda. These include material or conduct which is hostile to women or gender equality.
What a load of nonsense. What does this even mean? What constitutes hostility towards gender equality? Does it include opposing gender quotas? Does it include arguments about biological sex in women’s sport? What about religious convictions concerning marriage and family? Or criticism of contentious gender policies?
These are legitimate matters for public debate. I cannot believe they were so stupid to put this in the bill, because it tells us everything we need to know about this government.
Let me add Labor – they talk about protecting women but Labor no longer even believes in protecting women. Under the Sex Discrimination Act, despite the very best efforts of the wonderful Sall Grover, the definition of women now includes men who identify as women which is an appalling betrayal of the single sex rights of women and girls – the right to privacy, dignity and safety in sport, change-rooms, jails and domestic violence refuges and other places.
While we have vowed to change the law so that biological sex is recognised and protected, Labor is desperate to shut down this debate.
People like Celine Baumgarten who raised legitimate concerns about a queer club and the teaching of extreme gender ideology in a primary school. Yet the eSafety Commissioner, in an abuse of her powers, shut this down – though with the help of the Free Speech Union of Australia, Celine took on the Commissioner in the Federal Court and she won.
The bill fails to exclude news websites and other forms of journalism – which would have a chilling impact on political debate and news reporting. Consider what is at stake. An investigative journalist examining government misconduct. A columnist challenging immigration policy. A commentator questioning climate targets. A parent campaigning against a controversial education policy. A religious organisation expressing traditional beliefs.
These voices must be free to participate in public debate without the threat that broad and uncertain regulatory obligations will encourage their suppression. Because in a democracy, the government must answer to the people.
We are also concerned about self-censorship. With massive penalties facing all online services, the obvious risk is that lawful material will be removed altogether rather than risk falling foul of the regulator.
This creates a chilling effect on legitimate speech and debate.
And here is another extraordinary insight into the incompetence of the Albanese government. The exposure draft of the bill removes the mandatory unlawful material codes which impose very specific obligations on digital platforms to detect and remove the most serious of online harms – child sexual exploitation, pro-terror material, serious crime and violence material and drug related material.
The age restricted codes which protect children from pornography, suicide material, self-harm, disordered eating, and other age-inappropriate material have also been removed.
Now while I do have some concerns about this regime and how it operates in practice, in the place of the codes and standards is a broad statutory duty of care to take reasonable steps to prevent or minimise foreseeable online harms.
So that is a very big get out of jail card. All of those prescriptive obligations in the codes and standards will be removed if Labor gets it way – and we are going to work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. So what are reasonable steps for a start? This will invariably lead to litigation, maybe many years of litigation. And I also just remind you that the ACCC has been in the Federal Court for some four years fighting Meta over Meta’s appalling online scams, and particularly financial scams, and there is still no resolution in sight to that litigation.
But one thing is for certain. Under Labor’s proposed digital duty of care, Australians will be less safe online. Now that is a scandal. The government spent two years on this legislation and this is the best they can do.
This pathetic attempt by this pathetic government is compounded by their failing under 16s social media ban and the government’s refusal – in recent amendments we proposed in the Parliament – to support parents’ access to digital safety tools, to empower parents and give them choice over what their children say and see online.
Parents should be free to choose the tools they trust to block harmful content, restrict apps and websites, manage screen time and keep their kids safe online. These parental safety tools can ensure the harm never reaches the phone or other digital device.
This is about a simple principle. Families should have the choice in relation to their children’s safety, not Big Tech.
As prosecuted by the Free Speech Union, we also proposed that all social media companies should follow in the steps of X Corp and Elon Musk which has delivered algorithmic transparency for its For You feed.
This would require all social media companies to disclose the key factors and signals driving their recommendation and moderation systems, while protecting source code, personal information, and legitimate security interests.
This gives anyone the opportunity to better scrutinise whether platforms are pushing harmful material, manipulating users, censoring legitimate views, or applying their own rules unfairly.
Big tech should not be able to operate a black box which shapes what millions of Australians see every day without proper scrutiny.
But this was another amendment that we put up to the Online Safety Act which was opposed by Labor and the Greens.
I do want to add the Coalition has also warned against rushing proposals to mandate non-profiled social media feeds, particularly given the potential consequences for Australian small businesses.
There is a legitimate debate about whether Australians should be able to switch algorithmic profiling on or off. But Canberra should not dictate what Australians see online by replacing one compulsory system with another.
You may have this morning, there is another scandal involving the Minister for Communications.
She should not be in the job.
When I first uncovered the obscene cost of her return airfares to New York – around $100,000 for her and two staff – this led to a full investigation into her travel entitlements when she was forced to repay more than $10,000.
Now at the time I called on the Prime Minister, as did James McGrath and other members of the Coalition, to stand down the minister. He refused.
Today there are further revelations today about Anika Wells’ trip she took to Adelaide in June last year.
She justified charging taxpayers nearly $4,000 in business class return airfares by claiming she attended an official meeting with SA Minister Chris Picton*. Now Mr Picton just happened to be at his wife’s birthday which Anika Wells was attending on a Saturday night and of course Anika Wells told IPEA, the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority, that she having a sideline meeting with Mr Picton at the birthday party. Was it at the bar, by the kitchen, next to the pool room? Where was it?
Well Freedom of information documents we’ve uncovered show there was no such meeting recorded in Mr Picton’s diary.
This adds to the evidence that this trip was nothing more than a rort.
This is a breach of the ministerial standards, and the Prime Minister must stand down Anika Wells immediately.
But should Australians have faith in this weak, lying, incompetent Prime Minister to do the right thing?
The answer is no. Because this is the same Prime Minister who is destroying our economy, delivering a housing crisis, turning his back on our veterans, betraying older Australians on their private health insurance rebate, selling out our small businesses and families with his toxic taxes, driving up energy bills with his net zero fraud, and compromising the safety and security of our country with his mass migration agenda.
This is why we are aligned with One Nation on one critical mission – to get rid of the worst, most extreme left-wing Labor government in living memory.
Thank you so much for being here, thank you for joining us in this fight.
Which includes the fight for freedom to challenge a government. To expose corruption. To question authority. To reject the political spin.
The freedom to speak your mind without fear or favour.
A freedom which lies at the very heart of our democracy.
Thank you
*Last name has been corrected