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In recent weeks, many Australians have voiced their opposition to Labor’s Bill which could see social media platforms and users fined hundreds of thousands of dollars over “mis or dis information” online.

The Combatting Mis and Dis Information Bill appears designed to gain control over platforms like X which circumvent their agenda, and people on both the left and the right of politics are concerned.

I have opposed this Bill from day one, and I thank those who have contacted me and other MPs for their input.

With independent Senator Lidia Thorpe stating that she will not support the Bill, Labor’s assault on free speech looks dead in the water. Labor needs the support of four out of the seven crossbench MPs, and all seven have stated that they will vote against it.

State Censorship

In years past, the political left has typically advocated for freedom of speech, even if it was mostly to promote absurd and dangerous ideas. Today, the left has fallen more overtly in love with censorship, but many Australians from all walks of life can see the threat to free speech posed by Labor.

US journalist Michael Shellenberger, who worked on “the Twitter files”, has generally identified with the left, but he visited Parliament House this sitting week to highlight the importance of defeating the Bill. Michael Shellenberger, Senator Matt Canavan (LNP), John Storey from the Institute of Public Affairs and I took the opportunity to address the media on Labor’s attack on free speech. Much of the mainstream media has (unsurprisingly) paid little attention to this Bill, but it drew a lot of attention on X.

This fact illustrates the point nicely. X is not as left-wing as much of the mainstream media, and that’s where a lot of the criticism of this Bill was made. Elon Musk’s X is inconvenient for Labor, which explains why they might wish to manipulate it.

Furthermore, over 30,000 people signed my petition opposing this Bill and calling out Labor’s agenda, which I had the opportunity to briefly discuss with Michael Shellenberger.

You can watch that video here:

Thank you @elonmusk !

Without X we wouldn’t have the ability to deliver our message without the risk of shadow banning, and this afternoon the great American free speech advocate and author Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger helped me deliver my petition to the Communications… pic.twitter.com/dOK7HmQlEk

— Senator Alex Antic (@SenatorAntic) November 20, 2024

As with Labor’s Voice referendum, Australians have rejected Labor’s controlling, big government agenda and demonstrated how out of touch the current government is.

We can defeat this Bill and, as we head into the next federal election, defeat Labor.

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Republished with thanks to Senator Alex Antic. Image courtesy of Adobe.