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The Albanese Government wants Australians to trust an online regulator empowered to speak without telling you who is speaking.

Australia desperately needs an eSafety Commissioner… to protect us from the eSafety Commissioner.

It was revealed today that, hidden deep within the fine print of the Albanese Government’s Digital Duty of Care exposure draft, are powers that would allow our eSafety Commissioner to create fake online accounts.

And she would have the power to use these fake online accounts to — and I’m quoting here —

“generate material (including by means of artificial intelligence)”.

Er…

Hasn’t the government spent the past few years telling us that fake online accounts are spreading harm?

Government Wants Anonymous Power

Back in May 2024, Anthony Albanese told 4CA radio in Cairns that,

“People are prepared to say things online that they would never say to your face. And often that’s behind anonymous accounts where people aren’t held to account … It is just shocking that people can get away with this stuff.”

Quite right.

It is shocking when people hide behind fake accounts and say things they would never say to your face.

Unless, apparently, the fake account belongs to the eSafety Commissioner. Then it’s government policy.

By the way, hasn’t the government spent the past 12 months complaining against the spread of propaganda?

And hasn’t the government spent the past few days warning that AI could destroy humanity?

And now we discover, while they’ve been saying all that to us, they themselves want the power to create fake online accounts to spread their own propaganda using AI.

Apparently, the rules are different when the people behind the keyboard are wearing a government-endorsed lanyard.

Funny how Anthony Albanese and his Communications Minister Anika Wells never mentioned any of this when they fronted the media to promote their Digital Duty of Care legislation.

The PM told everyone at the time,

“This is not about giving government control, it’s about giving people control.”

And if you believe that … imagine what you’ll believe after the eSafety Commissioner has been empowered to create fake online accounts to tell you what else is up.

By which, of course, I mean down.

Yet buried inside it are powers that would allow a government-appointed regulator to do some of the very things Australians are being warned not to do.

Anonymous accounts.

Generated material.

Artificial intelligence.

Information without an identifiable author.

These aren’t powers over some abstract concept called “the internet”.

These are powers over what Australians can see, what Australians can say and, potentially, what Australians are told is true.

And the Government wants us to trust it to tell the truth, anonymously, using AI.

Even if we trusted Albanese — which we don’t — this would not be okay.

A Track Record Of Online Censorship

As for the eSafety Commissioner: why would we give her even more power to shape the public conversation, let alone use online sock puppets!

Remember when the eSafety Commissioner tried to ban us from seeing footage of what NSW police alleged was an Islamic terrorist attack on a Christian Bishop in Sydney?

This was despite the fact that the victim, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, said he wanted people to be able to see what happened to him.

The eSafety Commissioner ignored the victim and went all the way to the Federal Court in a bid to have clips of the attack removed from X, including one posted by a sitting Federal Senator.

Or what about the time Australia’s eSafety Commissioner tried, unsuccessfully, to force a Canadian citizen to delete a social media post criticising the World Health Organization for appointing a transgendered Australian to help write treatment guidelines for young people with gender dysphoria?

I could give you more examples, but you get the idea.

The eSafety Commissioner already has opinions about what Australians should and shouldn’t be allowed to see online.

Now the Government wants to give her more power.

And they want a provision for her to be able to use that power anonymously?

That should be a concern for everyone who thinks accountability is a vital feature of government. Which means… it’s a concern for everyone apart from those currently in government.

But as I said earlier… how is it that Anthony Albanese didn’t tell us about this provision in his Digital Duty of Care when he announced it two weeks ago?

How is it that we only found out about these new powers after someone decided to go digging into the fine print?

Maybe Anthony Albanese didn’t realise this was in the exposure draft. That’s possible. He did, after all, propose a major constitutional change – the Voice to Parliament – without reading all the details of what it was he was proposing.

When asked if he agreed with the Uluru Statement from the Heart, on which the Voice was based, Albanese famously replied,

I haven’t read it. It’s 120 pages. Why would I? I know what the conclusion is.

Details and Anthony Albanese go together like Fremantle and Wharfie Time on Grand Final Day.

The other possibility is even less flattering.

Perhaps the Prime Minister knew exactly what was in his Digital Duty of Care exposure draft.

And perhaps he simply didn’t think Australians needed to know.

Because that’s the problem here.

It isn’t just the power. It’s the secrecy surrounding the power.

It isn’t just the hypocrisy. It is the expectation that Australians should accept the hypocrisy without asking questions.

And, of course, it’s the lying. The constant lying.

If anyone out there wants to give us control over our own lives… save us from the eSafety Commissioner.

And save us from this secretive, lying Albanese Government.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Adobe.