These clauses allow the eSafety commissar and approved researchers to assume false or fictitious online identities; use AI to make up images, videos or memes; post under the fake names; and watch what happens—in other words, all the things they ban you from doing. The exposure draft states that the eSafety commissar's testing powers operate without limitation. There's no mechanism requiring eSafety to seek an independent warrant before deploying fake accounts nor is there a statutory requirement to publicly report on how many liar identities they operate, what they said, who they impersonated or whose images they deepfake—nothing. This provision will allow the government to make any claim, promote any agenda and attack any person, party or idea without consequence. The only limit to fraudulent identities is the provisional liar accounts can't do something which is a criminal offence. How reassuring.

The bill explicitly states that this authority applies despite anything to the contrary in other federal, state or territory privacy and identity laws. This is despite section 3 of the Privacy Act 1988 explicitly stating federal law is not intended to exclude or limit the operation of state or territory laws that protect personal information, provided those laws can operate concurrently with it. Section 109 of the federal Constitution provides, where the state law is stricter than the Commonwealth law, the state law generally applies, except now where the government is impersonating people to sway public opinion.

Section 25C of the act provides the minister with the power to add anything she wants to the list of harms and then require the eSafety commissar to have that removed from the internet. There's no guidance at all on the use of this power. It's a blank cheque. The minister's decisions under this section are under a legislative instrument. Woe betide Australia if a government ever gets a majority in both houses again. This is terrifying. The UK shows how this provision can be used to eliminate political dissent. In two years, 19,883 UK residents, almost 20,000, have been arrested for saying things on the internet the government did not like. Examples of this so-called hate speech include 11 Britons tracked down and arrested for abusing England players in the World Cup for missing penalties only for abusing black skinned players, abusing white skinned players was considered just fine. This is an example of the single post and company rule I mentioned earlier. A woman was arrested for posting rap lyrics that included the N-word, despite her not having any ill intent. She posted song lyrics for goodness sake. That N-word is ubiquitous in rap, yet, on social media, it's hate speech. Graham Lineham was arrested for saying trans men are still men, which is true. This is where legislation like this always ends up: in policing thought and opinion, rather than worrying about actual harm.

Our major defence ally, the United States, expressed concern. In a communique issued on 22 September, it said, as to the exposure draft:

A framework that empowers governments to enforce vague definitions of "harm" risks becoming a mechanism for viewpoint-based censorship …

The United States nails this reason for this bill: viewpoint based censorship. Their concerns are threefold. Firstly, this is a mechanism of overcensorship, which pre-emptively censors free speech. Secondly, it explicitly warns that such a framework risks reducing the reach of independent journalists and alternative voices. Thirdly, the White House registered its strong opposition to foreign measures that result in the extraterritorial censorship of protected speech.

You all laughed when One Nation said we were heading down the same path as Communist China. Now look: according to the Supreme People's Court public blacklists, 23 million Chinese are now non-persons, unable to access the internet or public transport or leave the country. Five million people have their employment, their income and their spending limited, under the control of the state.

Meanwhile, most of the companies caught up in this power grab are out there taking care of business, thinking Australia is a democracy, blissfully unaware of our descent from democracy to totalitarian communism in just four years. Four years—that's all it took.

Never in the history of humanity has a ruler had this level of power—never. One Nation strongly opposes this bill. In government, we will repeal it.