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Most of us know there is a draft bill before the Parliament with a verbose title: Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill. Its name alone should tell us something smells. The answer to bad speech is MORE speech, not less.

From our initial analysis, we have significant concerns. While the Misinformation Bill is an improvement on the previous iteration, and provides some protections for religious speech, it still puts the power of censorship in the hands of unaccountable private corporations.

As with bits of most government legislation, the Misinformation Bill is worded in such a way as to sound quite innocuous and safe – even helpful and necessary. But that is so often not the case, and the opposite outcome is what we must fear.

One of the most shameful and alarming events of modern history took place from 2020-2022. Under the guise of saving us from the COVID-19 virus, much of the world went through one of the most shocking periods of statist control and violation of basic human rights.

Labor’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 attempts to label opinions and facts, that don’t suit the government’s narratives, as “misinformation”, “disinformation”, or “harmful” on social media.

The problem with the government’s approach is that it goes way beyond truth and lies, but about an arbitrary judgment by faceless bureaucrats of what is or isn’t true or what is or isn’t harmful. 

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland tabled a new version of the bill which she said is intended to “carefully balance the public interest in combatting seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation with the freedom of expression that is so fundamental to our democracy.”

Today is the darkest day for Freedom of Speech in Australian history. The Labor Party has introduced its revised misinformation legislation to Parliament.

Brazil’s Alexandre de Moraes’ overreach has gone nuclear. The far-left judicial El Jefe is freezing Starlink’s finances, preventing the Elon Musk-owned company from doing further business in the country.

After a five-year wait, Dr Jereth Kok finally had a hearing in Melbourne last month. He was represented by the Christian legal group, the Human Rights Law Alliance. They did a terrific job, but the case continues.

Social media gets such a bad rap! It distracts. It shortens attention span. It kills the art of conversation. It breeds isolation and loneliness. It triggers depression because we can never live up to the perfect lives of our friends. How does it do this?

One meme making the rounds at the moment on social media says this about Zuckerberg vs Durov: “Mark Zuckerberg is free because he sells people’s personal information. Pavel Durov is not free because he does not sell people’s personal information.”

From Asia Bibi to the Kausars, Pakistan is a well-documented flashpoint for Christians living under, near, and next to Islam.

Life-long Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr has now ended his presidential bid and has thrown his support to Donald Trump. That should shake up the American election a bit.

Dave Pellowe, founder of the Church and State (CAS) ministry, faces a complaint put before the Queensland Human Rights Commission, accusing him of racism and vilification. Pellowe is being "forced" into a legal battle simply for replacing "Welcome to Country" with Psalm 24:1.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif wants the freedom to think he’s a woman, while denying others the freedom to say what they think. Khelif is all in for gender freedom, while all out to suppress freedom of speech.

Donald Trump, reflecting on his close brush with an assassin’s bullet, says he’s now more a believer in God. The former president and 2024 candidate made the comments on X during a live conversation with Elon Musk.

A shockingly frivolous complaint against the Church And State ministry and me personally has since been made with the Queensland Human Rights Commission, falsely alleging that I vilified and humiliated an individual because of his race and religion.

Melbourne doctor Jereth Kok was suspended under emergency provisions by the medical regulators in 2019 after two anonymous complaints triggered an investigation into his social media posts.

The cancelling of opinions and the censoring of ideas is how all totalitarian societies thrive and survive. The examples of this sort of thing are of course endless today, even in so-called free and democratic societies. And that makes it even scarier.