I'm shocked. Just shocked to find out that hypocrisy is going on!
I have been watching ABC Insiders for I can’t remember how long. But this morning, I have been left completely speechless.
4 “journalists” who make a very comfortable living from their exercise of speech in an environment protecting their speech piled on to Elon Musk’s defence of free speech.
All while parking their fat arses on the tax payer funded couches on the tax payer funded broadcaster that exists to support “public interest journalism”.
That this was a matter for discussion was justified. That there was unanimity in support of suppression of speech by 4 Australian journalists was unsurprising. David Speers agreed with Shane Wright who agreed with Karen Middleton who agreed with Bridget Brennan who all agreed with each other.
That moron Shane Wright, of the SMH of course, even suggested a conspiracy with Musk looking for a distraction from Tesla share price issues.
John Roskam write clearly on this subject on his blog here and I have nothing to add to it.
Just wait. There will be calls for a China style great internet firewall soon. We came close earlier this millennium with Labor Communications Minister Stephen Conroy trying to legislate for one with his own great firewall to force ISPs to block certain websites. From 2009:
The Federal Government's decision to press ahead with compulsory internet filtering has come under fire from lobby groups and the Greens.
The Government wants to pass laws to force internet service providers to block banned material hosted on overseas servers.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he intends to introduce legislation in the first half of next year.
This task is all the more easier now given almost all residential content flows through the government owned NBN and only 3 mobile carriers who leverage off the NBN also.
What would be the workaround? Oh, that’s right. Elon Musk’s Starlink.
This “fight” between the government, with the support of the feckless Coalition opposition is the equivalent of serving a list of sovereign grievances to the Twitter.
Never forget, some of the WORST assaults on freedom in Australia were implemented by Coalition governments. In addition the dross highlighted by Roskam, consider:
The grossly abused metadata laws - Championed by Communications Minister Turnbull. The abuse of which was highlighted by the Commonwealth Ombudsman in 2019 but still not remediated.
The disgusting quarantine act - Championed by Commonwealth Agriculture Minister Joyce - that gave the Commonwealth some of the most offensive powers that were used and abused during Covid.
And of course the horrid counter terrorism act - Championed by Saint Prime Minister Abbott - that gave the Commonwealth powers denied to government in more civilised nations (like the US and UK) which gave the state powers including the denial of habeus corpus.
But out journalistic elite a comfortable on the ABC lounges - conveniently forgetting the assault on their colleague Annika Smethurst:
Police have raided the Canberra home of a News Corp journalist after she reported that the Federal Government was considering spying on Australians.
We are governed by cowards and fools. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts. As Thomas Jefferson wrote way back:
The natural progress of things is for the government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.
The moto of the Washington Post may be “Democracy dies in darkness”.
Australia’s moto might as well be Democracy dies in Canberra.
Great article, Spartacus. Thank you for watching the ABC so that we don’t have to. I turned it off six years ago – I just couldn’t cop the smug self-righteousness and manipulative deception of those talking airheads and their Fake News any longer. John Roskam is indeed a treasure. As for the Liberal Party politicians – I won’t be voting for or giving them my preference votes again. Because I am still on the Liberal Party email list, they keep sending me emails asking for donations – but never once do they ask for ‘customer’ feedback on any issue. What mugs! They are clueless about how to market their political ‘product’. They are so disconnected from political reality that they have no idea how to relate to ordinary Australians. I am reliably informed that Liberal party branch meetings are minimally attended, disorganised, meaningless shambles. The only issues that my local federal LNP MP ever talks about in his emails are political trivia – such as highway improvements etc., which aren’t even federal issues. I suspect that some brain-dead ‘adviser’ in the Liberal party apparatus with a shiny new political science degree has told him that that is the way to get votes. It is becoming pretty clear that the party founded by R G Menzies is dying. May heaven help us all.