US billionaire Elon Musk, Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant

From the Brownstone Institute

BY REBEKAH BARNETT

Can Australia’s eSafety Commissioner block content globally on demand? Not today, ruled the Australian Federal Court, in a win for Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

In a decision on Monday, Justice Geoffrey Kennett refused to extend a temporary injunction obtained by eSafety last month, which forced X to remove footage of the Wakeley church stabbing, an alleged religiously motivated terror attack.

Under the Online Safety Act (2021), the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has the authority to order removal of such ‘class 1 material’ within Australia under threat of hefty fines.

eSafety argued that X had not gone far enough to block the content from Australians, as a geo-block can be circumvented by a VPN. X argued that eSafety was effectively seeking a global ban on content, straying outside of the Australian online harm regulator’s jurisdiction.

eSafety applied to the Federal Court to extend its temporary injunction against X, with a hearing taking place on Friday 10 May. The temporary injunction was due to expire at 5pm on Friday, but was extended to 5pm Monday—to allow time for Justice Kennett to deliver a decision on the matter.

In his decision, Justice Kennett held that X had taken “reasonable” steps to block the stabbing content as required under Australian law, and that eSafety’s request for a global ban was not reasonable.

Therefore, “The orders of the court will be that the application to extend…is refused,” said Justice Kennett, meaning that as of 5pm Monday, the injunction is no longer effective.

In a statement on the Federal Court decision, eSafety said that the matter will return to Court for a case management hearing on Wednesday, 15 May.

“The application for this injunction should have never been brought,” said Dr Reuben Kirkham, Co-Director of the Free Speech Union of Australia (FSU) in a statement, questioning the validity of the Commissioner’s bid to enact a global content ban on X. “The eSafety Commissioner is overreaching and behaving more like an activist than a responsible public servant.”

Dr Kirkham, who was present for the hearing, told Dystopian Down Under that he counted 12 lawyers present (seven for X, five for eSafety), which, if eSafety is ordered to pay costs, will lump taxpayers with “a considerable amount of unnecessary legal costs.”

Digital civil liberties nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) echoes FSU Australia’s position, stating that, “no single country should be able to restrict speech across the entire internet,” and likening the Commissioner’s actions to “[using] a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

An affidavit submitted by the EFF to the eSafety vs. X proceedings called for the Court to consider the international impact that a ruling in eSafety’s favour would have in setting a precedent for allowing one country to enforce content bans on citizens of other countries.

“If one court can impose speech-restrictive rules on the entire Internet—despite direct conflicts with laws [in] a foreign jurisdiction as well as international human rights principles—the norms of expectations of all internet users are at risk,” stated the EFF in an article summarizing the affidavit.

X’s Global Government Affairs posted about the hearing, stating, “We’re glad X is fighting back, and we hope the judge will recognize the eSafety regulator’s demand for what it is—a big step toward unchecked global censorship—and refuse to let Australia set another dangerous precedent.” At the time of publishing, no updated statement on the Judge’s decision had been issued.

Dr Kirkham calls the Commissioner’s application to extend her injunction against X “part of a pattern where the eSafety Commissioner’s office seemingly engages in gamesmanship rather than respecting the rule of law or acting as a model litigant.”

Indeed, the ruling in X’s favour comes amidst mounting controversy over the eSafety Commissioner’s ongoing battle with X, which appears to be driven partly by Julie Inman Grant’s global censorship ambitions, and partly by personal feelings.

Inman Grant, who formerly directed Twitter’s Public Policy (Australia and Southeast Asia), has repeatedly criticized Elon Musk since his purchase of the Twitter platform in 2022.

Moreover, Musk’s advocacy for a broad interpretation of free speech on the internet conflicts with Inman Grant’s professed view of free speech as a right that needs to be “recalibrated” for online spaces.

For its part, X has failed to comply with routine reporting to the eSafety Commissioner’s satisfaction, leading eSafety to initiate civil penalty proceedings against X in December last year. If found non-compliant, X could be fined up to AUD $780,000 per day, backdated to March 2023, when the determination of non-compliance was made.

Perhaps the biggest controversy between X and eSafety centres on the highly charged and subective issue of gender ideology.

Inman Grant has enforced the removal of a string of posts on X questioning gender ideology, including one suggesting that men can’t breastfeed, and another about a trans-identified male who allegedly injured female players during a women’s football game in NSW.

In an internationally high-profile case, the Commissioner recently issued a removal notice over an acerbic gender-critical post by Canadian activist Billboard Chris, raising questions over whether the Government should be able to police opinions and censor statements of biological fact on the internet.

FSU Australia is currently involved in Administrative Appeal Tribunal proceedings on behalf of Billboard Chris (real name Chris Elston) against the eSafety Commissioner. Additionally, X has threatened to sue eSafety over the matter.

Returning to the issue of the Wakeley stabbing footage, Inman Grant’s attempt to globally ban the content has been supported by the Australian Government, which leveraged the incident to call for more censorship, including the reintroduction of an unpopular misinformation bill.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also responded to calls to address violence against women by proposing to further expand eSafety’s budget and remit, which could see deep fake pornography and “other misogynistic material” censored by the regulator.

No one will argue against explicit pornography being blocked from children’s view, but it is around the grey edges of definition creep on terms like ‘harm,’ ‘adult cyber abuse,’ and ‘misogynistic material’ where disagreements will undoubtedly kick off.

In a move of ‘no confidence’ against eSafety, FSU Australia has launched a petition to abolish the office of the eSafety Commissioner altogether, arguing that a combination of parental controls and platform incentives will suffice in keeping children safe on the internet.

A more moderate approach may be to curtail eSafety’s remit to its original function of dealing with child abuse content (as in 2015), and revenge porn (as in 2017), before the regulator’s purview and powers were significantly expanded with the introduction of the Online Safety Act in 2021.

However, in the media and political conversation, there is little appetite for a moderate approach, as conveyed in a viral guest appearance by media personality Tracey Holmes on a recent episode of the ABC’s failing show Q+A.

Calling out the double standard in the censorship conversation, Holmes told the studio audience,

“I don’t agree with any kind of censorship in a general sense. I don’t think Elon Musk is contributing to any social cohesion split inside this country. I think our mainstream media is doing enough of that. I think our politicians do enough of that…

“Of course there are fault lines everywhere, but there’s only one way you can stop those fault lines from getting bigger, and that is to have the ability to have the town square to hear different points of view…

“And I think unfortunately we’ve been fed ‘this side or that side’ for so long, people are giving up on mainstream media, that’s why they’re tuning out. That’s why they’re going to YouTube…we have let them down.”

Hopefully, some higher-ups in the corporate media tuned in to hear what Holmes had to say.

Read more about the judge’s decision

Republished from the author’s Substack

From LifeSiteNews

By Stephen Kokx

The star quarterback argued that Dr. Anthony Fauci was financially incentivized to suppress COVID treatments like ivermectin, adding that Americans should have compassion on those who were convinced by the ‘full-court propaganda.’

NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers has not been shy about his opposition to the COVID shot in recent years. During many public appearances on television, he has strongly denounced mandates, lockdowns, and government and media officials who pushed the jab. Now, he’s striking a somewhat different tone. 

“How do we call these people forward, in love and acceptance… to step into the truth?” Rodgers asked Tucker Carlson in reference to Americans who bought into the “full-court propaganda” and received the shot.  

“They went through all the mass-formation psychosis that we all did… and are now going, ‘Oh s***. Maybe that wasn’t the best. Maybe they lied to us. Maybe this wasn’t safe.’” 

Rodgers spoke with Carlson earlier this month in a timely, two-hour long interview on his  The Tucker Carlson Show. As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, they touched on an array of subjects related to how global elites control the world, including blackmail and pedophilia. 

There are “a lot of really interesting secret societies, not just the Skull and Bones at Yale, which has produced all those presidents and Freemasonry at its highest level,” Rodgers said. “There is a sexual component, I think, to a lot of that.” 

Rodgers won Super Bowl XLV with the Green Bay Packers in 2010. A sure-fire Hall of Famer, he was one of the highest profile professional athletes to push back against the shot at the time. During an appearance on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show in January, he courageously argued that Dr. Anthony Fauci had a financial incentive to vilify alternative treatments like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, zinc, vitamin D, and vitamin C. He made similar points with Carlson.  

“If we’d called this ‘gene therapy,’… maybe we thought it was about 5 to 10 percent of people that might take this. We call it a ‘vaccine’ then that brings in all the potential [of] being canceled as an anti-vaxxer, because that’s what they did to me and you as well,” he said. 

READ: Bill Gates predicts mRNA ‘vaccine factories’ worldwide and $2 vaccines for every disease 

Rodgers, 40, has been a vocal supporter of medical freedom activist turned pro-abortion presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He told Carlson that Kennedy asked him if he would consider being his running mate. He ultimately said no but he hopes that if he was elected “Bobby” would make the hard decisions to take on the Deep State and the “alphabet” agencies like the FBI and CIA. 

“There’s a top line in a lot of those organizations that are actually at their core anti-American and are not doing things that [are] in the best interest of our people,” Rodgers said. “[Trump] had four years to do it and didn’t drain the swamp, and whether he just got scared because of what he learned when he was in there, I think it’s very plausible.” 

Rodgers and Carlson also discussed COVID propagandist Bill Gates.  

“I think there’s some people that want depopulation… Bill Gates… if you look at his track record and what he’s done around the world,” Rodgers said, referring to Gates’ vaccine activism in Africa. 

“I think he’s strongly pro-death,” Carlson replied.  

“I think he’s not the only one. I think there are a lot of other people. I don’t understand what that motivation is… but I think those are some of the evils that we’re up against,” Rodgers commented.  

Rodgers revealed that he has done a seven-day fast to improve his health and encourages others to try it as well. He also explained that he doesn’t eat a lot of sugar because cancer cells thrive off of it. He then pointed out that there has been a proliferation of ailments developed by children in recent decades, seemingly hinting that he believes that is a result of the massive increase in vaccines they receive.  

Although raised in a Christian home, Rodgers told Carlson it is possible religion is a tool to “control” people. At the same time, he said there is a “demonic” element to UFOs and that, regarding the COVID shot, he thinks “evil kind of overstepped a little bit too far. And now that the tides are turning.” 

“There’s a battle that’s going on between the seen and the unseen world, between good and evil, between the powers that we can see and the powers that we can’t see,” he stated. 

At one point in their conversation, Carlson asked Rodgers, “do you know anyone who didn’t get the vax who’s upset he didn’t get the vax? Does anyone regret that decision?”  

“No,” Rodgers replied. 

“Right. Not one person, ever,” said Carlson.