Censorship is here. By David Evans.
Sadly, the censorship regime is Australia is rapidly changing for the worse, right now. Check out the first half minute of this for NSW Chris Minns telling the pubic that government now explicitly preferences multiculturalism over free speech:
See also PM Albanese 4:35 – 5:10, and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen 7:00 – 7:35 on the new laws coming in tomorrow. Isaac Butterfield from 7:35 is worth a listen as well.
In Britain, people are going to jail for private Telegram posts. Australia is not that bad yet but, like Britain, Australian lacks constitutional protection for free speech. Also like Britain, we have a leftist activist government that has an existential need to censor their opposition, because their positions are so crazy and unpopular when exposed. They cannot withstand people talking naturally, on say immigration or The Voice.
A real structural problem has developed: vague speech laws + discretionary enforcement + platform liability = strong incentive to self-censor before anything actually happens.
When laws are broadly worded, complaint-driven, enforced selectively, and delegated to regulators rather than courts, the risk isn’t “what is clearly illegal”, it’s what might be reinterpreted as illegal in the future, in a changing political climate.
Australia’s recent direction (especially around online safety, misinformation, and “harm”) has created exactly that uncertainty. Even if enforcement is currently light, what will it be tomorrow? The chilling effect is here.
The Wentworth Report has always disallowed comments, in order to help protect it on controversial topics. But with the new climate of censorship, Australians simply cannot talk about many, many topics anymore. Truth is no defense in Australia, sadly.
There is a new appetite for attacking free speech in Australia, backed by the latest set of laws (whose details we only just discovered, btw). The government doesn’t like our opinions on many topics. Who knows what ruling class lawyers and judges might decide about what we publish? Maybe we must relocate to the US to continue (check back occasionally). Perhaps we will now get into trouble for quoting from US sources, even mainstream ones.
In any case, this is it. Goodbye. We might continue, but only on a much narrower range of topics and material.