Unprecedented public backlash kills MAD bill!

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Lead Editorial

27 November 2024
Vol. 26 No. 48

In the global battle over internet censorship, the frontline of Australia was the scene of a massive victory for free speech this week.

On Monday morning, Labor Senator Karen Grogan moved that the Senate adopt the recommendation in the report of the rushed inquiry she had chaired, namely “that the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 be withdrawn and immediately discharged from the Notice Paper”.

The motion passed with no dissenting votes, and Albanese’s MAD bill was dead.

Labor had no choice after Greens Senator Sarah HansonYoung announced on Friday that the Greens would vote with the Coalition and pretty much all the Independents against the bill, leaving Labor stranded.

The decisive factor in this result was the overwhelming public backlash against the bill, expressed in an unprecedented number of submissions to the original exposure draft in 2023 (24,000) and to the rushed Senate inquiry (30,000 in one week), and thousands of calls and emails to Senators.

The fact that concerned citizens acted—not just complained—in unprecedented numbers sent a powerful message to all the political parties that Australians don’t trust their excuses for censoring free speech.

The Greens were the last to take a position, but one Greens Senator revealed that his office had received “3,240” emails against it, which shows how closely they were counting!

This victory is all the more extraordinary considering the bill was originally bipartisan—the Liberals instigated it when they were in government.

The Australian Citizens Party said all along that the motive for using the pretext of mis- and disinformation to censor social media is to rein in the way social media facilitates the circulation of information that the mainstream media usually suppresses in collusion with the establishment political parties in government.

It’s supremely ironic that much of social media was developed with funding from the US military-industrial complex  propaganda machine as a tool to help the CIA and MI6 incite rebellions in foreign countries to overthrow governments targeted by Washington and London for “regime change”.

But now that the same technology is a vector for spreading the truth about the lies and crimes of the US-UK-Five Eyes gang, which is contributing to the decline in votes for establishment parties, they want to censor it.

While there are plenty of domestic controversies the establishment would like social media to suppress, the main motivation is to be able to control the information that citizens receive in relation to the global geopolitical tensions that Washington and London are stoking with Australia’s support.

As former Ambassador John Lander noted of the MAD bill in a 2 October 2024 Citizens Insight interview, “This is wartime censorship.”

Our governments don’t want the people to be aware just how close their policies are pushing the world to a thermonuclear world war.

So defeating this bill is timely, to say the least, because the nuclear war danger has literally never been greater than it is now, following the US and British escalation in Ukraine by authorising and guiding their long-range missiles to be f ired deep into Russian territory.

You aren’t hearing the seriousness of this danger on mainstream media.

The British, and the gang of warmongers controlling a geriatric Joe Biden behind the scenes, seem hell-bent on lighting a fuse for WWIII that, by the time Donald Trump is inaugurated on 20 January, he won’t be able to put out—if he is genuine about achieving peace in Ukraine. (p. 7-13)

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to this escalation by firing, for the first time, an intermediate range ballistic missile, albeit with conventional warheads.

Combined with Russia’s revised nuclear doctrine, this is the clearest possible warning that the US-UK-NATO project to use Ukraine as their proxy in their war to weaken and break up Russia is crossing a red line that can only end in global catastrophe.

We must use our free speech to stop our governments from killing us all.

In this week's issue: 

• Dutton wants all Aussies to hand over their biometrics to Big Brother, to ‘save the children’
• Citizens Party submission to Senate inquiry into under 16s social media ban bill
• ASIC: a whimpering watchdog
• BRICS dynamic impinges on G20
• Russia’s shocking answer to Anglo-American escalation in Ukraine war
• Will Biden presidency end in impeachment or removal for incompetence?
• Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’
• Blocking fascism with citizen engagement
• Don’t let Kennett loose on Victoria again
• ALMANAC: Reclaim economic sovereignty with a post office People’s Bank

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