Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

The man accused of shooting two police officers in Victoria yesterday identifies as a sovereign citizen and has called police 'terrorist thugs'. Before I go on, I would like to send my love and thoughts to the families of those officers. I can tell you now that all Australians are behind you.

We have a problem with these so-called sovereign citizens. I'll call it, because I have the courage. They believe that the Australian government, all of us in here, are illegitimate. They believe that the rules and the social norms that the rest of us have to follow do not apply to them.

According to the Australian Federal Police, there is a history of Australians identifying with these ideas and setting up micronations. They're nuts. They lived in small communities and were regarded by law enforcement as being largely harmless. Then COVID-19 hit, and the government's response of lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations, combined with mis- and disinformation on social media, absolutely turbocharged the paranoia to where it's now right of the charts.

According to the AFP, these groups are organised, they have informal leadership structures and they find common ground with the antivaxxers, far-fight groups and conspiracy nutjobs—because there's no other way to put it—that seek to blame governments and institutions for their lot in life.

I got a lot of this heat over COVID just because I came out and said that vaccine mandates were about keeping people safe and alive, especially our elderly, because I'm about putting Australia's first. The hate and abuse that came through my office was absolutely disgraceful. No doubt they will start up again after this speech. But we will need to call these people out. You have to show some courage. And, where appropriate, we need to actually get them help. They need help.

A Victorian called our office during COVID and told one of my staffers that Bill Gates had done a deal with Daniel Andrews, then in Victorian government, to put microscopic trackers in the vaccine so the government could track people through 5G towers. That's how off the charts this stuff is. It's off the charts. Finally, this caller told my staff that she did not recognise the government because she was a sovereign citizen.

You can laugh, and we did at the time, but, seriously, it's out of control. But the extremes of these bullies and the amplifying of these views on social media led to the murders of two police officers and a Queensland man in 2022 and the awful events that are still unfolding in Victoria today.

It's about time that we started putting real pressure on the social media companies to control the mis- and disinformation that these algorithms pump out. You aren't doing anything. That's the problem. Listen to this: in 2012, Facebook said its mission was, 'to expand and strengthen relationships between people'. Thirteen years later nothing but the opposite has happened. All Facebook and other social media companies do, including YouTube, is fan division and hatred within our communities. Extreme examples of this include the 6 January attack on the Capitol building in Washington in 2021, when Americans who believed Trump's lies that the 2020 election was rigged stormed the Capitol building—their own—and seriously wounded American Capitol police.

Since we got social media, we have more countries around the world run by dictators—work that one out—where people don't get free and fair elections and the civil rights that we enjoy. Social media companies know more about us than our governments do. They design their algorithms with one purpose in mind: to increase us clicking to increase their profits. It is just about money. They don't give a stuff about who we are. If these algorithms can be so targeted, why can't they target mis- and disinformation instead of the algorithm that sends Australians down these rabbit holes, serving them up more and more conspiracy theories that make them more afraid and more paranoid?

We still don't have laws in this country that deal with truth in political advertising. You can't lie about a product in Australia, but you can sure as hell lie in political campaigns. How is it leading by example, in saying that that is acceptable behaviour in Australia today? That is not acceptable behaviour.

We need to get onto this. It is really time to put pressure on the social media companies and start talking regulation. What is your fear of social media companies? You've lost control of social media when it comes to our kids. And, if you think AI's going to be any different in the future—because you're already miles behind—you are bloody delusional yourselves. That is the truth of the matter.

You must get onto this. You must show some courage.

Do you know that it got so bad during COVID that I had people in Tasmania telling me that that serum going into their arms was forming a microchip? Well, I'll have you know I've had my body X-rayed over time because of my back complaint and there are no microchips running around in my body. That is the misinformation and disinformation going on in social media That is the reality of it, and we need to wake up in here because people are getting harmed because of it.